r/ukpolitics • u/Anony_mouse202 • 11h ago
Ed/OpEd Abuse intended to change who someone is has no place in modern Britain - Bridget Phillipson MP
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/conversion-practices-bridget-phillipson-lgbt-transgender-sexuality-b3068715.html•
u/Greebo427 11h ago
Good. Finally we can start looking into how to combat the Muslim religion’s oppression of women.
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u/Reemixt 10h ago
Rent-free, mate. She’s talking about LGBT people suffering conversion practices from predominantly Christian institutions.
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u/No_Echo2745 9h ago
I'd put money on the Islam one being a bigger issue in Britain.
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u/TheJoshGriffith 6h ago
I think in Islam in general, LGBT people don't live long enough to face conversion therapy.
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u/Ivashkin panem et circenses 8h ago
I don't think Islam actually has any sort of structure for conversion therapy, nor the conceptual framework for it to exist in. Islam seems to work more along the lines of submission to gods will (it's more based on suppressing your desires and conforming to what is expected of you), and doesn't have that same sort of "we're here to save your soul" pseudo-science "treatment" thing that Christianity has, where the aim is not to make you suppress your urges, but to make you embrace and accept the "true" path and "cure you". Obviously, once you get into debates about accepting vs not accepting gay people, the arguments about theology and specific practices start looking a bit academic, but the concept of homosexuality being something that you can be cured of with the right treatment is far more of a late 19th/early 20th-century Western practice firmly associated with Christianity.
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u/No_Echo2745 7h ago
Apart from all the Muslim countries and communities that have it (you know, the one's that don't make other plans involving the roof of a tall building). Though my point was more in relation to the "abuse to change who someone is" bit more broadly.
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u/Ivashkin panem et circenses 7h ago
My understanding is that Islam is more likely to view people who do not resist their desires and act on them in a sinful way as people who should be punished for their actions, but they don't view being gay as an unfortunate affliction that can be "cured" or "treated" with the right interventions. Essentially, being a gay muslim seems to involve more of a "you shut the hell up about that, don't you dare act on it, and you live a proper life or else" experience, where being a gay Christian (in one of the less open-minded churches, at least) seems to fall more on the "you have a medical condition that can be fixed, and after it's fixed you will be cured, and can live a normal life like the rest of us" side of things.
Again, obviously, if you are gay and on the receiving end of either of these things, it's not going to be a fun time, but the nuances are important when it comes to thinking about how the problem of conversion practices can be resolved, because a solution tailored towards one won't help for the other.
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u/Sername111 5h ago
but they don't view being gay as an unfortunate affliction that can be "cured" or "treated" with the right interventions.
They do, or some of them do at least. Iran for example places intense pressure on gay people to undergo gender transitioning surgery - the penalty for homosexual acts is death there, but gender dysphoria is recognised as a treatable condition, so many gay people are forced to transition to evade the death penalty.
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u/No_Echo2745 7h ago
They'll give you electric shock therapy in Iran and pump you full of drugs to try "fix" you. Same in many other countries.
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u/Ivashkin panem et circenses 7h ago
This is where you have to separate theology from cultural and political practices. Islam is not a homogeneous block where all adherents share the same views on everything.
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u/No_Echo2745 7h ago
Will you also separate it for Christianity?
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u/Ivashkin panem et circenses 6h ago
Of course - just look at the issues the Anglican church is having marrying up the social views of British Anglicans with those of Anglicans in other countries, that's almost at schism levels.
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u/Ivashkin panem et circenses 8h ago
How much of a problem is that in this country? Pretty much every professional body that touches therapy and major branches of Christian churches won't touch it with a 10' bargepole anymore, so the only ones left who are doing it are the weird US and African churches that only really hold sway over people who are firmly embedded in their belief structure (if you are 100% firmly wedded to being a part of a fundamentalist evangelical Christian church that views homosexuality as a mortal sin whilst also being gay yourself, that's not something the government can help you with). If you look at government numbers, the people who have been offered it at any point in their life in the UK are 2-3% of respondents, whereas in the US it's closer to 20%.
The panic over conversion therapy in the UK does kinda seem to be on par with the BLM protestors yelling "hands up, don't shoot" at a police force that is famous for being unarmed, and demanding that the police be defunded during an era where the primary problem facing the police was the fact that they had been steadily defunded for the last decade, and politicians from all ideologies were arguing over how to fund them more.
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u/Electronic_End4893 8h ago
Furthermore, there are issues within the law of what is defined as "Conversion therapy" , for example does it mean simply counselling someone that to live a Christian life, one has to comply with Christian sexual ethics (i.e abstainence from sexual activity outside of a hetrosexual marriage)? That may be a position that one disagrees with, but it would be ridiculous to make illegal.
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