A media statement made by the McGowan government on December 1, indicates the Labor-majority government is set to introduce a bill to criminalise LGBTQ+ conversion practices. This legislation will likely echo legislation already in place within Victoria, ACT, and Queensland and will set the trend for other states to follow, to the detriment of many, including religious citizens and medical/psychological practitioners around the nation along with LGBTQ+ persons themselves who wish to ‘convert back’.

According to the media statement, ‘accredited health professionals who provide lawful and ethical care will not be included in the ban’ however, health professionals are bound by their own legislation and regulatory bodies which have the tendency to promote cultural preferences over genuine scientific inquiry. With short-term ‘mental wellbeing’ being stressed in medical literature of late, genuine long-term physical healthcare is being diminished.

The media statement calls conversion and suppression practices ‘ineffective’ and indicates they are ‘harmful’ and can have long-term health and mental health impacts on the LGBTQ+ community.

The statement conveniently leaves out the body of scientific literature indicating many who have gender dysphoria or LGBTQ+ predilections have come from traumatic backgrounds, including backgrounds where sexual abuse occurred, prompting a deeper inquiry into cases of gender dysphoria, before medication is placed on the table as an option.

There are also many bodies, including the LGB Alliance, which expressed pushback concerning previous conversion therapy bans in the nation, which indicates there is no agreeable consensus, even amongst LGBTQ+ activists themselves, for a legislative push regarding conversion therapy bans.

The bans essentially stop a person from ‘destransitioning’ and many people in the LGBTQ+ community do in fact, ‘detransition’ or ‘convert back’. A ‘one size fits all’ approach to ‘affirming’ people in every case, is simply against the medical and scientific literature and lacks sensitivity to the complexity of these issues. The LGB Alliance also indicates in a report, that mandatory affirmation conversion practices in fact, target gay children and may send them on a pathway towards medical transitioning which they otherwise should not seek.

They stated:

‘We have seen in the UK that the promotion of mandatory affirmation policy has shown that homosexual and bisexual children are vastly over-represented amongst children presenting to the Gender Identity Disorder Service (GIDS) through the Portman and Tavistock Trust.’

The report also makes a valid point in exposing the rapid rise of individuals presenting with gender dysphoria, particularly the high numbers in teenage girls. The LGB Alliance indicates that further and automatic legal affirmation of every single case of gender dysphoria will result in more de-transitioners in the long-term, ‘suffering irreparable harm’ as there are over 17.2 thousand members on the ‘r/detrains Detransition Subreddit a board’. Experienced psychotherapists such as James Caspian have also been vocal about the alarming number of detransitioners within society, although the phenomenon of detransitioning is being suppressed.

There is also a certain undemocratic and bigoted attitude in wanting to be ‘so inclusive’ of LGBTQ+ predilections to the point where the government is creating laws to stop these same people from choosing to ‘opt out’ should they change their minds.

And there is also the serious ethical consideration of forcing every other non-LGBTQ+ citizen to affirm these practices within their professions or livelihoods which may otherwise have them seek a genuine resolution of the opposite approach. Section 10A(1)(a)(i) and (ii) of the Human Rights Commission Act 1986 (Cth) (HRCA) indicates there is an indivisibility and universality of human rights and every person is free and equal in dignity and rights. If this is true, those who seek and consent to convert back into a heteronormative state after indicating they were initially LGBTQ+, will have these rights stripped from them under new laws.

The new laws may also prejudice religious bodies or people who may wish to pray or lead people back towards their biological reality. The HRCA also provides a religious perspective within its definition of discrimination. The definition of discrimination at Article 7 within the UN Declaration of Human Rights indicates everyone is entitled to equal protection from discrimination at law. Laws to ban anything, must therefore be heavily scrutinised so as to ensure it does not concurrently remove the rights of others.

It appears the Western Australian government is again, hell-bent on promoting draconian policies which disregard the complexity of proper scientific and psychological inquiry. It will do nothing other than cause more turmoil within the scientific, religious, psychiatric, and medical communities which should otherwise get on with their professions without the need for a nanny state to dictate how people ought to do their jobs, and engage with others within the community.