YOUR piece “Charity chief urges Scottish Government to ‘get on with’ conversion therapy ban” (May 19) may have left readers assuming that, because the encouragement comes from an “LGBTQ+” organisation, the ban recently proposed by the Scottish Government must necessarily protect same-sex-attracted and gender-confused people.
But the Equality Network is itself supported by the Scottish Government and, like End Conversion Therapy Scotland mentioned in the piece, proceeds from contested claims about “gender identity” which many people, including many same-sex-attracted people, do not accept. Its support for the legislation should not be read as neutral evidence that the Scottish Government’s proposals are safe.
READ MORE: Trans women banned from female toilets by UK equalities watchdog
Within living memory, gay men and lesbians were subjected to cruel medical and psychiatric practices by professionals who believed, or claimed to believe, they were acting for the patient’s good. We congratulate ourselves on having put that behind us. Yet the danger now is that one coercive orthodoxy is replaced by another, entrenching an affirmation-only approach to gender identity.
That matters particularly for gender-confused, same-sex-attracted young people. An effeminate boy distressed by his attraction to other boys, or a tomboyish girl distressed by her attraction to other girls, may come to understand that discomfort through the language of gender identity. The review carried out by Hilary Cass noted the high proportion of young people referred to gender services who were same-sex-attracted or bisexual, and the need for careful, exploratory assessment.
Such assessment is not conversion therapy. It is precisely the sort of responsible care that may prevent a young person from mistaking ordinary, if painful, difficulties around puberty, sex stereotypes, autism, trauma, family pressure, internalised homophobia or emerging homosexuality for proof that he or she was “born in the wrong body”.
READ MORE: Women of colour ‘invisible’ in 2026 Scottish election coverage
Yet if a conversion practices ban is drafted so broadly that anything short of “care taken to protect affirming practices” – as referred to in the piece by the Equality Network CEO, Rebecca Don Kennedy – is treated as suspect, the effect could be chilling. Parents, teachers and clinicians may feel unable to ask whether a young person’s distress is really about gender identity at all, rather than sexuality, puberty, trauma or social pressure. Even if few prosecutions ever follow, the law may still teach institutions and others that questioning a claimed trans identity is dangerous, while immediate affirmation is the only safe response. That would risk making exploratory care look like unlawful “conversion”.
For gay people, that is a profound category error. Homosexuality depends on sex. If public policy proceeds as though sex can be displaced by identity, the very basis on which same-sex attraction is understood is weakened. A male child who may grow up gay should not be nudged towards believing he is really a girl because he is distressed by masculinity, attracted to males, or ill at ease in his body.
Any proper ban should criminalise coercion, abuse and pseudo-therapy aimed at making gay people straight. It should not create a new state-backed doctrine under which adults are afraid to ask whether a distressed child may simply need time, patience and support to grow up lesbian, gay or bisexual. That would be a step towards re-criminalising same-sex attraction — which, one hopes, is not the actual intention.
Brian Forsyth
Edinburgh
SCOTS can’t have failed to notice the blanket coverage of ferry delays and cost overruns by both TV and newspapers. HS2 stories have come out in the English papers this week, saying it will now cost £103 billion, will not deliver till 2039, will need to considerably reduce its speed and will only run from London to Birmingham.
Scots taxpayers contribute billions to the UK Treasury and the money is being wasted on English projects like HS2 (as well as other failing projects like Hinkley nuclear) when the UK is skint. It’s strange how this overspend is not picked up by TV and newspapers in Scotland.
READ MORE: HS2 costs spiral as project delayed and too expensive to cancel
The ferries have cost less than two miles of HS2 track, yet they are all Scots hear about.
We’ll never see unbiased reporting in Scotland as long as we are part of this wasteful Union. It’s time the BBC and STV ran some balanced programmes about the potential benefits of independence, rather than running anti-independence propaganda campaigns telling Scots how bad we are at everything.
Garry Thomson
via email
ON reading that plans had been approved for a distillery to be built on the site of the old Glencarse Stud Farm (May 20), I actually felt sorry for the original artificial insemination centre. As far as they are concerned, it really must feel like the last straw!
Bill Drew
Kirriemuir
Share