The Scottish government is once again champing at the bit to satisfy the LGBTQI+ lobby. Holyrood’s grandiose plans for sex self-ID might finally have hit the buffers, but the voters need to keep a close eye on what is coming in its wake.
Yesterday, Emma Roddick – the Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees – announced a public consultation on ‘detailed proposals for legislation to end conversion practices in Scotland’. The way Roddick sells it, it sounds uncontroversial:
Our approach, set out in this consultation, aims to bridge this gap while ensuring that fundamental rights already enjoyed by people in Scotland, such as freedom of religion and the right to family and private life, are upheld. Our focus is on protecting people from harm.
The focus of this consultation is sexual orientation and gender identity. But behind the rainbows and sparkles, there is much to worry about.
In truth, the evidence for the extent of this alleged harm is weak. Roddick has cited the UK government’s National LGBT Survey Report from 2018. That was simply an online survey. It was uncontrolled, and the data and anecdotes were self-reported by respondents who quite frankly had a vested interest in talking up problems and making their situation appear worse than reality. After all, money and resources are hardly going to be directed to a community that is getting on well in life.
These proposals are authoritarian and possibly Orwellian
Furthermore, abusive and coercive practices are already unlawful in Scotland as they are throughout the UK. Roddick’s plans make that clear. To quote paragraph 68, for example, ‘The [new] statutory aggravation will address conversion practices that fall within existing criminal offences.’
Even the SNP must know there is no point passing legislation to ban something that is already illegal, and wasting time, effort, and resources in the process. But Roddick’s proposals struggle to find gaps in the current law. At present, it is not illegal to talk to someone about their sexual orientation or gender identity if you do not mean them harm, or – perish the thought – you are trying to help.
It seems that the Scottish government wants to criminalise what it sees as the wrong sort of help. Let’s say a friend asks you for help. He is a married man who is obsessing over the thought of becoming a woman. (I know how that feels – I’ve been there.) He knows that, if he transitions, the effect on his wife and children will be devastating, so he wants to talk through the various options. Are you allowed to suggest that he snaps out of it and tell him that he is a man, and that is that? At the moment you would not be guilty of a crime, but should the SNP have their way then you could be in hot water.
The potential impact on counsellors and faith leaders is all too clear. Say the wrong thing and you could end up in the dock. These proposals are authoritarian and possibly Orwellian. It would be a criminal act to try and change – or suppress – someone’s gender identity when nobody can tell me what gender identity is without resorting to circular reasoning or sexist stereotypes. The test would be causing ‘physical or psychological’ harm. That ‘fear, alarm and distress’ could be purely in the mind of the complainant.
Under these conditions, those counsellors and faith leaders may feel they have no alternative to affirming whatever they are told. That’s no help to adults who deserve to be challenged to help them test their feelings. For children, though, it could be catastrophic. Young people pick up all sorts of fanciful notions from the internet; they deserve better than unthinking affirmation from adults who are prevented by law from saying anything else.
Aside from the concerns about these proposals, this document is an insight into the mind of the Scottish government itself. It has not (yet) proposed to legislate for what happens elsewhere in the UK. On conversion therapy, the consultation document points out that ‘there would be significant operational difficulties in doing so, particularly in securing the relevant evidence to a high-enough standard’. But the Scottish government is proposing to make it a criminal offence to ‘cause someone who is habitually resident in Scotland to leave Scotland with the intention that they will undergo conversion practices’. Would those practices be unlawful in the view of the Scottish government, or the UK government?’ Once again Holyrood seems to be moving beyond the remit of a devolved administration.
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