LONDON (LifeSiteNews) — The U.K. government has announced that it will introduce a ban on “conversion therapy” for people who have homosexual desires or gender dysphoria.
In his speech at the May 13 State Opening of Parliament in the House of Lords, King Charles III announced that the leftist Labour government “will bring forward a Bill to speed up remediation for people living in homes with unsafe cladding and a draft Bill to ban abusive conversion practices.”
An addendum to the speech clarified that the proposed “abusive conversion practices” ban would not only apply to therapy addressing homosexuality, but also “gender identity.”
“Conversion practices are abuse, and the government will deliver the manifesto commitment to bring forward a trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices,” the government wrote in the addendum.
The announcement comes shortly after Stonewall, the largest pro-LGBT activist group in the U.K., pressured the government to act on its promise to implement the ban. On April 30, the group said the administration “failed to meet its own timeline to publish a draft Bill to ban conversion practices.”
“Four different Prime Ministers have promised to ban these abhorrent conversion practices, so this is an unacceptable position to be in,” Simon Blake, Stonewall CEO, said in a statement.
Both Conservative and Labour governments have announced a ban on so-called conversion therapy in recent years without actually following through on it. In 2018, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May promised “real and lasting change” on the matter in the U.K. In 2022, Boris Johnson’s government first dropped plans for a ban and then announced it would support a ban if it excluded “conversion” of people with gender dysphoria. In January 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised a ban that would include transgender-identifying individuals, but the plans never came to fruition. Current Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised a ban in 2024. However, Starmer is currently under heavy pressure, with many voices calling for his resignation after Reform UK made significant gains across the country in local elections in May.
If a bill banning “conversion therapy” were to pass, it would at first only apply to England and Wales, excluding Scotland and Northern Ireland.