I WONDER to what extent the people of Scotland are au fait with what exactly is the nature of the much maligned and misrepresented “conversion therapy” offered to people experiencing great suffering as a result of gender dysphoria. It is offered to the innocents who daily grapple with the depression, anxiety and sense of alienation that this phenomena brings, now being experienced in unprecedented numbers.

I suggest that the human rights and the health and holistic wellbeing of sufferers from this particular brand of dysphoria are not best served by ideologues who seek to limit by statute their range of options in dealing with their distress.

READ MORE: John Swinney says Cass Review must be considered in conversion therapy ban

I and a great many of my colleagues and friends are deeply concerned that despite the lessons of the recent past, the next “continuity” First Minister has referred to “conversion” practices as “cruel and abusive”. This is an astonishingly naive view of a range of therapeutic options and services that permit many profoundly unhappy and vulnerable young men and women the opportunity to explore the many routes to finding a way forward in their lives that do not require dangerous “blocking” of their finely balanced endocrine system and/or irreversible disfiguring surgical procedures to their often very young bodies.

The many poor folk coming forward now in despair from “transitioning” drugs and operations desperately seeking “detransitioning” is a truly modern medical tragedy, and those I have met and listened to have made me seriously question the health of my own profession and its regulatory body.

It has to be said that increasing numbers of these brothers, sisters and their loved ones are using the words “cruel and abusive” to give their own feedback on the advice they received from their erstwhile “expert” advisers who are now eventually being scrutinised and found wanting as regards their outcomes and the pseudoscience they peddle.

READ MORE: Scottish Government committed to conversion therapy ban, says Health Secretary

The phalanx of gender theorists embedded in the Scottish Green Party, the SNP and the so-called Labour Party seek to use their electoral mandate to force their world view on decent, moderate reflective people in Scotland. I can only live in hope that this impertinence will become the touchstone of a radical change in the character of politicians in the coming decade, giving way to the advent of truly popular participative popular democracy rather than more years of an electoral aristocracy.

Never before has so much harm been done to so many by so few across a full range of political and social issues.

I don’t doubt that much that has been put forward by wokery in general and the “Green” party in particular has been well-intentioned, but as we all know and are now seeing in popular culture, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

The SNP and their small but potent group of friends in the “Green” party need to deeply reflect upon the findings of Dr Cass and listen intently to the vox populi as its hitherto mute or restrained voice begins to assert itself about many aspects of governance.

We have tolerated culture wars that detract from promoting the commonweal for far too long. The aggressively progressive in social matters must now focus on the economic and the constitutional matters that require urgent and focused attention.

Dr Andrew Docherty
Selkirk

AN indefinable conversion therapy ban will place therapists in danger of breaching a poorly defined law.

When will the SNP realise it’s this tosh that is losing them support? When are they going to stand up to the trans lobby?

Jim Taylor
via thenational.scot