Tina Beardsley, who has written this guest blog, is a Church of England priest and a visiting scholar of Sarum College, The first trans trustee of the former Changing Attitude England, Tina has co-edited/authored a trilogy of books about trans Christians, the latest being Trans Affirming Churches: How to Celebrate Gender-Variant People and Their Loved ones (Jessica Kingsley 2020). Tina is now a member of the current Changing Attitude England’s steering group.
Twenty years ago, when I was transitioning, my therapist, among others, encouraged me not to see myself as a victim. This was sound advice though not always easy due to the amount of stigma attached to be being trans at the time, especially being a trans woman. It was only two years earlier, in 1999, that the Sex Discrimination Act had been amended to protect at work people intending to transition, or who were in the process of doing so, or had previously transitioned. Prior to that trans people were routinely dismissed by employers, and even today transition at work is not always problem free for some people.
Since that time there have been major advances in trans people’s rights in the UK, notably the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 and the Equality Act of 2010, but recent years have seen a concerted pushback against us. One explanation is that we became the target of the political and religious right after they lost the battle over equal marriage. Although their protest is very loud and vocal in social and other media, these people are probably a minority, but the onslaught has been devastating. Poignantly, veteran trans campaigner Stephen Whittle OBE has observed the return of a sense of shame among some trans people, an emotion that had once seemed consigned to history.
So if trans people ask, ‘are we included?’ we are not necessarily playing the victim. Prior to MPs debating a petition calling for so-called conversion therapy to be made illegal in the UK, in March this year, many of us wrote to our MPs to support the ban and received a standard reply. Here’s the one from my MP: ‘I am absolutely clear that this practice has no place in civilised society. Being lesbian, gay or bisexual is not an illness to be treated or cured.’ As you can see, there is no mention of gender identity or being trans and non-binary. I replied, asking for clarification – ‘are we included?’ – and received this reply: ‘I will continue to lobby the Government on this issue. I agree it should cover trans people too.’ That’s great, but it’s important, in this area, as in many others, to actually name things.
The General Synod Motion on Conversion Therapy 2017
A similar ambiguity affected the General Synod Motion of July 2017 calling for a ban on conversion therapy, proposed by Jayne Ozanne, and which passed with a large majority. In the original motion Jayne called on General Synod to support the ban on conversion therapy outlined in Memorandum of Understanding Version 2, which was published three months later in October 2017, and specifically included gender identity:
‘For the purposes of this document ’conversion therapy’ is an umbrella term for a therapeutic approach, or any model or individual viewpoint that demonstrates an assumption that any sexual orientation or gender identity is inherently preferable to any other, and which attempts to bring about a change of sexual orientation or gender identity, or seeks to suppress an individual’s expression of sexual orientation or gender identity on that basis.’
Although signed off by the UK’s major counselling and therapeutic bodies, Version 2 had not yet been endorsed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, though eventually it would be. This was not because the RCPsych had reservations about the harmfulness of conversion therapy in relation to gender identity. The College was actually producing its own Position Statement, published in March 2018, Support for transgender and gender-diverse people which contains this unambiguous paragraph:
Conversion Therapies
Over the twentieth century, talking therapies and medical treatments emerged that tried to make homosexual or bisexual people, heterosexual. These so-called conversion therapies have no scientific basis and have been shown to be harmful in this context in many countries around the world, including the United Kingdom (MoU).
The term ‘conversion therapy’ has also been used to describe treatments for transgender people that aim to suppress or divert their gender identity – i.e. to make them cisgender – that is exclusively identified with the sex assigned to them at birth. Conversion therapies may draw from treatment principles established for other purposes, for example psychoanalytic or behaviour therapy. They may include barriers to gender-affirming medical and psychological treatments. There is no scientific support for use of treatments in such a way and such applications are widely regarded as unacceptable.
There was really no need for the original General Synod Motion to be amended, but amended it was as follows:
That this Synod: (a) endorse the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK of November 2015, signed by The Royal College of Psychiatrists and others, that the practice of gay conversion therapy has no place in the modern world, is unethical, potentially harmful and not supported by evidence; and (b) call upon the Church to be sensitive to, and to listen to, contemporary expressions of gender identity; (c) and call on the government to ban the practice of Conversion Therapy.
Being sensitive to and listening to ‘contemporary expressions of gender identity’ (an odd phrase given that gender diverse people have always existed) is weak compared to the strongly worded section about ‘gay conversion therapy’, but the inclusion of gender identity in the proposed ban on so-called conversion therapy is now publicly endorsed by all the major professional bodies, so there is no longer any basis for equivocation.
Coercive
To be fair, the Church of England’s General Synod Motion of 2017 was unequivocal in its call for a ban on so-called conversion therapy. By contrast, the UK Government, despite the emphatic 2018 statement from then Prime Minister Theresa May promising to eradicate the practice, has not only delayed taking action but has recently begun to add the qualifying word ‘coercive’. Here in the government statement, published on Monday, it seems to be used as a straight-forward adjective:
‘Legislation will be introduced, protecting people from the coercive and abhorrent practice of conversion therapy in the UK.’
There is genuine apprehension however that a distinction is being drawn by ministers between so-called conversion therapy that is coercive and therefore unacceptable, and other practices, such as prayer ministry, that may continue. Hence the outcry following the Bishop of London’s comment on the Government’s announcement of the ban in the Queen’s Speech for introducing the word ‘coercive’ in her description of the Church of England’s position – the word coercive having not being used in the General Synod Motion as passed (see above).
This distinction amounts to a loophole for practices which many LGBTI+ people of faith have and still are routinely expected to undergo in some settings. That both the Government and the Church of England have bought into this distinction is apparent in this exchange on Conversion Therapy between the Second Church Estates Commissioner, Andrew Selous, and MPs in April this year:
Aaron Bell
(Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
What steps the Church of England is taking to support the Government’s plans to ban conversion therapy. (914541)
Peter Gibson
(Darlington) (Con)
What steps the Church of England is taking to implement its 2017 commitment to end conversion therapy. (914546)
The Second Church Estates Commissioner
(Andrew Selous)
The Church of England’s General Synod passed a resolution in 2017 calling on the Government to end conversion therapy, to prevent vulnerable people from being subjected to potential spiritual abuse. The Church remains committed to this and will work with the Government on how it can most effectively be framed.
Aaron Bell
I thank my hon. Friend for his answer and am glad to hear that restatement of the General Synod’s position in 2017. Do the commissioners agree that the Church must reject any assumption that any one identity or orientation is preferable to another and that any one-directional pursuit of a particular orientation amounts to conversion therapy?
Andrew Selous
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. The Prime Minister remains resolutely committed to prohibiting the imposition of any harmful and unnecessary practice in this area, without criminalising clergy and Church members for non-coercive pastoral support that individuals ask for.
Peter Gibson
I thank my hon. Friend for his answer. However, may I urge him to do all he can in the upcoming discourse on this important ban to which the Government have committed to ensure that religious freedom and banning this abuse is not presented as a binary choice? Does he acknowledge that many of Christian faith and other faiths want to see an end to this abuse?
Andrew Selous
The Church believes that it is possible to end conversion therapy without outlawing prayer and private conversations with clergy and Church members that an individual has requested. The Church has not requested an opt-out from the proposed law and will look carefully at the detail when the legislation is published.
The Government also claims it needs to establish a suitable definition of conversion therapy – even though many agreed statements exist. What is also needed, urgently, is clarity about the meaning of coercive and non-coercive in this context. A simple definition of coercive is the use of force or threats. There is massive evidence of the use of threat – ‘you will use your leadership position’; ‘you can no longer sing in the choir’ – when LBGTI+ people come out in their faith communities. The coercion may not be physical, but it is horribly real. The experience of Maria (a pseudonym) – a contributor to our book Trans Affirming Churches – demonstrates how the clergy’s authority as religious leaders, even when ill-informed, can be extremely persuasive:
‘a very close friend who was an evangelical charismatic Anglican priest…persuaded me that it would be wrong and completely ungodly [to transition], and I persuaded myself of that ... To my great regret now that it took me another five or six years before I finally managed to do it.’
Prayer too can be used coercively, but as Alex Clare-Young wisely observes ‘Prayer to change someone else isn’t prayer.’
Consultation
The other ‘C’ word introduced by the Government in this connection is ‘consultation’. Is this a tactical move to delay the ban again? Why further consultation is required when the evidence and good practice support a total ban is unclear, unless it is to establish the difference between coercive and non-coercive conversion therapy and what faith leaders will still be permitted to do or to offer. The thought of a loophole of this kind is distressing to many LGBTI+ people of faith, while the word consultation will be of concern to trans people in particular.
The Government’s consultation on the reform of the UK Gender Recognition Act showed that the majority of participants favoured the non-medicalised route of self-identification, which works perfectly well in other jurisdictions. Yet after delaying tabling any action for two years following the consultation, the Government has chosen to ignore what trans people themselves clearly requested. Why? Because it consulted with those who question our realities. Now it looks as if the Government is consulting with those who are determined to water down the ban on so-called conversion therapy by protecting faith-based practices that do harm to LGBT people. Its proposed ‘consultation’ is a worryingly familiar device to those of us in the Church of England who have lived through an interminable series of consultations: Pilling, the Shared Conversations, and currently, Living in Love and Faith. Now the Government too, like the Church of England, seems to be so intimidated by Christian conservatives that they repeatedly put off commitment to the justice we so urgently need.