The controversial proposal to ban so-called LGBT conversion therapy will not go away, it seems, no matter how many times the UK government and parliament decide against it. Last week, MPs in the House of Commons debated yet another proposed conversion-therapy bill, this time introduced by Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle. The bill was ultimately blocked, but some MPs’ contributions were nevertheless alarming. In particular, Tory MP Alicia Kearns displayed a shocking amount of ignorance as she got into a scrap with Alba Party MP Neale Hanvey.
During the debate, Hanvey raised the important point that plenty of ‘LGB people’ are vehemently against banning conversion therapy aimed at trans people. Many worry that a ban will mean a child who thinks he or she has been born in the wrong body would need to have that delusion affirmed by parents or therapists.
Given that ‘gender-affirming healthcare’ can often further harm already vulnerable children, you might think Hanvey’s concern would be worth taking on board. Hanvey, who is himself gay, has previously expressed concerns that young people who are same-sex attracted are being ushered down the path to hormone therapy. There is a danger here that, wittingly or not, gender-identity services are ‘transing away the gay’. Speaking in parliament last week, he also said he is worried that opponents to the conversion-therapy ban are being unfairly branded as ‘transphobes’ and ‘bigots’.
Instead of addressing any of these points, Kearns raged against Hanvey for referring to LGB people without including the T. She accused him of ‘suggesting that trans people do not exist’. She then proceeded to deliver an entirely fabricated potted history of how gay rights had supposedly been won thanks to the courage of trans activists. According to Kearns, ‘It was trans people who stood with gay people at Stonewall. It was trans people who fought alongside them for LGB rights.’
To say this is pig-ignorant is to do a disservice to all things porcine. In truth, trans groups and gay groups organised separately for over 60 years. In fact, many of the first trans organisations actually banned gay men from joining their ranks. The first trans organisation in the US, the Hose and Heels Club, which later became the Society for the Second Self, excluded gay men when it was set up in 1961. Its main priority was to try to convince the police that transvestites were respectable married men who had nothing to do with those supposedly ‘degenerate’ gays.
The Beaumont Society, the first trans organisation in the UK, was also at pains to distance itself from gay men when it was first founded in the late 1960s. No hint of homosexuality was tolerated within the organisation. Trans pioneers insisted on this because they believed heterosexual crossdressing was much more likely to win public acceptance than homosexuality. In the end, the success of the gay-rights movement proved them spectacularly wrong.
It was only much later that the two groups began to merge into one LGBT cause. This went well for the trans lobby at first. Most notably, UK charity Stonewall embraced the trans cause in 2014. This helped many of the tenets of gender-identity ideology enter into mainstream institutions. But as trans activism became more demanding, it triggered a backlash that led support for trans rights to decline for the first time. No wonder. The public is now waking up to the fact that many ‘transwomen’ are actually heterosexual males, most of whom have retained their fully functioning genitals. As a result, the idea of allowing them access to women’s changing rooms or hospital wards has faced fierce public resistance.
All this was conveniently ignored by Kearns, a patently dim straight woman who thinks she has the right to school gay people on how they should organise themselves.
Kearns’ ignorance is perhaps unsurprising, seeing as she is in thrall to the trans lobby. Previously, she has declared that banning trans conversion therapy is ‘not something we should have to debate’. She has also demanded that the UK government apologise to the trans community for not initially including gender identity in its plan to ban conversion therapy. Last year, she even tried to amend the already draconian Online Safety Act to include a ban on promoting conversion therapy to under-18s.
Alicia Kearns’ behaviour is representative of the wider trans lobby. Instead of addressing Neale Hanvey’s valid concerns about what banning conversion therapy would mean for gay kids, she attacked him for ‘trans erasure’ and attempted to trans-wash the history of LGB rights. Like every other trans activist, she refuses to engage in any meaningful debate. And like them, she will try to shut down anyone who fails to toe the line set by the trans movement.
The trans agenda claims to be the logical extension of the fight for gay rights. But nothing could be further from the truth. The louder its supporters shout about this, the more they reveal their ignorance.
Malcolm Clark is a TV producer.
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