Gavin Robinson: Conversion bill is a siren call to parents and everyone who values religious liberty
No decent person supports cruelty, coercion or abuse directed at someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Where conduct is abusive, it should be investigated and prosecuted.
Northern Ireland already has laws against threats, violence, controlling behaviour and degrading treatment. The PSNI and prosecutors must take homophobic or transphobic motivation seriously.
That is not, however, the question before the assembly. On Tuesday, MLAs will consider Eoin Tennyson's Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill.
This is Alliance Party legislation, conceived by Alliance, promoted by Alliance and presented as though anyone who questions it must be indifferent to abuse. That is a false and dishonest choice. We can protect people from mistreatment without creating vague new offences that reach into homes, churches and private conversations.
Having read the bill and the legal analysis provided by Aidan O'Neill KC, I believe it presents a real threat to freedom. O'Neill describes it as 'jellyfish legislation': its concepts are difficult to grasp, its boundaries are undefined, yet it carries a sting in the tail of up to two years in prison. He concludes that there are very strong arguments that it falls outside the legislative competence of the assembly.
The bill would criminalise efforts to 'change or suppress' a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. Yet 'suppression' is not defined. 'Gender identity' is not defined either. Clause 6 says a person’s gender identity is “what the victim considers it to be”. This is madness.
The Alliance Party wants to place this term at the centre of the criminal law, while leaving parents, pastors, teachers and police officers to guess what it means. Citizens should not face criminal punishment under a law whose essential boundaries nobody can identify with confidence.
Nor would the prosecution need to prove an intention to cause harm. A person who acted from genuinely compassionate motives could still be convicted. The stated threshold includes 'fear, alarm or distress', and the consent of the person who requested a conversation is expressly excluded. The bill states: “It is not a defence that the victim consented to the therapy.” Someone could willingly seek advice, prayer or pastoral support and later allege that the very conversation they requested caused distress. This is downright dangerous.
Alliance will point to a defence where conduct is shown to have been reasonable in the particular circumstances. Yet the bill provides no meaningful definition of reasonableness, while expressly denying consent as a defence and setting psychological harm as low as alarm or distress. Parents and pastors would therefore be left to discover, following an allegation and potentially a police investigation, whether a court considered their conduct reasonable.
Parents should be especially alarmed. There is no general exemption for them. The bill's definition of coercive behaviour includes controlling, regulating or monitoring another person's day-to-day activities, as well as making someone feel punished. Those words describe much of the ordinary responsibility of raising a child: setting boundaries, limiting internet access, deciding where a teenager may go and saying no when necessary.
Because the bill applies across sexual orientations and gender identities, its reach is wider than many imagine. Legal analysis of its wording raises examples such as parents restricting access to pornography or objecting to certain clothing. Whatever the Alliance Party says it intends, criminal law is judged by the words enacted, not by the reassurances offered while votes are being gathered.
Churches are also within range. The bill includes counselling, coaching and instruction. Its free-expression provision protects beliefs or opinions only where they are not directing someone towards a particular orientation or identity. But preaching, prayer and pastoral care are intended to guide. A freedom to speak only when nobody may be persuaded is a freedom emptied of meaning. The reason why a preacher climbs the pulpit steps at each service is to warn and persuade their congregation.
The Alliance Party may have authored this bill, but it will undoubtedly look for assistance from left-wing Sinn Fein and SDLP MLAs. Together they have repeatedly shown a willingness to use government bodies to advance contested social ideology. On this occasion, the consequences could enter the family home, the counselling room and the prayer meeting, backed by the threat of police investigation and imprisonment.
This debate should therefore reach far beyond Stormont.
Next May, voters will weigh the worth of their vote and decide what sort of assembly they want. This bill should be a siren call to everyone who values parental responsibility and religious liberty.
This bill shows that elections are not abstract contests between party labels. The balance of the next assembly will determine whether these kinds of proposals are stopped or strengthened, and whether ordinary families retain the freedom to raise their children according to conscience.
Northern Ireland needs a strong team of MLAs who are grounded in common sense to resist ideological overreach.
The DUP team are courageous and will oppose the bill robustly. We will defend people against abuse, but we will also defend the freedoms that allow families and churches to flourish. Those objectives are not contradictory. A carefully drawn law should punish genuine wrongdoing without placing ordinary parenting or peaceful religious practice under suspicion. This bill fails that test.
The electoral choice is becoming clear. Every additional Alliance MLA strengthens the bloc that will drive measures like this through the assembly with Sinn Fein and SDLP support. More Alliance MLAs will keep every parent awake at night. A stronger DUP will help build the commonsense coalition needed to stop them.
n Rt Hon Gavin Robinson, MP for East Belfast and leader of the DUP