Hey so I haven’t seen much about this on Tumblr, but the UK Government backed out of including Transgender people in the Conversion Therapy Ban yesterday on TDOV (Thursday 31st of March, 2022)
It was first stated that the ban would be dropped entirely, but a revision was made a few hours later, stating that it would go ahead for sexualities, but not gender identities - against the advice of the NHS (That’s the National Health Service, for those outside of the UK), even.
The deadline is 6 October 2022. It has just over 3,000 signatures so far, and it needs 10,000 for a response from the government and 100,000 to be debated in parliament.
ALT
You can sign if you live in the UK or are a British citizen living anywhere.
It’s being tracked here, so you can see graphs of the rate of signatures over time.
If you’re in the UK or you have followers who are, please consider signing and/or reblogging! Every action helps, no matter how small.
Let me tell you about something very dangerous: Werewolves. They come out at night and they kill people. Sometimes they stop at only brutally maiming people, but then those people turn into more werewolves.
Given how dangerous werewolves are, maybe there should be a law that bans werewolves from assaulting humans. There’s just one problem with such a “ban:” Werewolves aren’t real! There are humans who kill or assault other people during the night, and there are laws against that. But if you talk about a potential “ban on werewolves” you are implicitly saying that werewolves are a real thing.
If someone selling laundry detergent claims that drinking detergent cures COVID-19, that would be illegal. But the law banning such claims isn’t called a “ban on the cure for COVID-19,” it’s a ban on fraud.
If someone were to force-feed laundry detergent to you claiming it would cure your COVID-19, they would also be breaking the law. But the law they would be breaking isn’t called a “ban on curing COVID-19,” it’s called a ban on assault.
If someone locked you up in a cellar and told you they wouldn’t let you out unless you “consented” to drink laundry detergent, and claimed that it was to cure your COVID-19 (whether or not you actually have COVID-19), then that would also be illegal. But the law they would be breaking isn’t called a "ban on curing COVID-19,“ it’s called a ban on kidnapping.
The fact is that right now, there is no medical procedure which can change someone’s orientation. Calling any proposal a "ban on conversion therapy” is buying into the conservative propaganda that “conversion therapy” is real. And it opens the door to bad-faith conservative talking points like “what about people who WANT to be changed?"
What we should be talking about is banning three very real dangerous practices:
1)Fraud: advertising a harmful procedure as being both safe and able to do something it can’t.
2)Assault of minors: poking kids with a shock probe is assault.
3)Kidnapping: Locking up an adult and telling them they can’t leave unless they "consent” to be poked with a shock probe.
All three of those are real things that the people who claim to practice “conversion therapy” actually do.
ALT
