Belfast protest held as part of UK-wide demonstrations calling for inclusion of transgender people in ban on conversion therapy

Protesters carried placards which read ‘Ulster says no to transphobia’ and chanted: “Boris Johnson must understand, without trans people it’s not a ban” at the front gates of Belfast City Hall.

The Government has faced criticism over a series of U-turns on promised legislation to outlaw conversion therapy, and its backtracking on commitments to include transgender people in the ban.

Addressing the rally in Belfast, John O’Doherty, director of the Rainbow Project, said that if conversion therapy was wrong for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, then it was also wrong for transgender people.

He said: “I think it is important that we send a message to Westminster.

“That we send a message to Boris Johnson and we stand in solidarity with our organisations right across the UK and Ireland.

“We are standing in solidarity today to say clearly to this Government that they must end the harm.

“They must end conversion therapy. If conversion therapy is wrong for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, then it is also wrong for our trans and non-binary communities as well.”

Mr O’Doherty added: “For too long conversion therapy has hugely impacted on the lives of LGBTQIA people.

“For too many years we have been told we are not good enough. For too many years we have been told that we must change who we are.

“We are here today in this very iconic space to say…Never. Never. Never.”

Meanwhile the Prime Minister’s LGBT adviser has said he is “dismayed” by the decision not to include transgender people in a ban on conversion therapy, while describing the cancellation of the Government’s landmark equality conference as an “act of self-harm by the LGBT lobby”.

Nick Herbert also called for a royal commission to “detoxify” and take the politics out of the trans debate.

At least 100 LGBT+ and HIV organisations pulled out of the UK’s first international conference on LGBT rights, Safe To Be Me, in protest, leading to its cancellation.

The anger has not abated, with hundreds of people protesting against the Government’s decision outside Downing Street on Saturday.

Lord Herbert of South Downs, Boris Johnson’s special envoy on LGBT rights, wrote on his website: “The conference’s cancellation is damaging to the Government and to the UK’s global reputation.

“But it is also an act of self-harm by the LGBT lobby”.

He accused the LGBT+ charity Stonewall of orchestrating the boycott and of shedding “crocodile tears” over the subsequent cancellation.

Lord Herbert, 59, said: “LGBT groups were understandably dismayed, as was I, when a promised Conversion Therapy ban was suddenly dropped and then only partially reinstated just hours later”.

The exclusion of trans people reflected “concern that more time is needed to ensure that legitimate therapies to help young people with gender dysphoria are not inadvertently criminalised,” he said.

Such concerns can be allayed, he said, while warning ministers against conflating helping people with “ideology” that can “do irreparable harm”.

“We must address the concerns and make the case for change, deploying the evidence and reassuring parliamentarians that a ban which includes trans people is a safe and justifiable course to take,” he wrote, while criticising “shouty protests” over the issue.

The former Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs also said it was wrong to brand Mr Johnson as “transphobic” for saying last week that “biological males” should not compete in women’s sports and that women should have access to single-sex spaces in places such as hospitals and prisons.

Calling for a royal commission, Lord Herbert said: “We must not allow a descent into a political mire which is dominated by extremes and which suffocates the reasonable middle ground”.

Led by a senior judge and with “truly neutral” members, the inquiry would “examine these issues dispassionately”, he said.

“Weighing the evidence on contested areas such as sport, safe spaces for women, and gender identity services for children and young people … would be a better way to detoxify the debate, protect trans people from being caught in the political crossfire, and find the common ground we need.

“No-one will win from a culture war on these issues, and those most harmed will be trans people who already feel stigmatised, people who are different yet just like us, human beings who deserve greater kindness than today’s politics will permit”.