If they do not affirm

Let’s make it a crime for parents to tell young Billy “No you’re not a girl.”

The government has published a draft bill to ban “conversion practices”.

While there are improvements on previous drafts of this law, it remains an attempt to shift “Stonewall Law” – now slowly being driven out of workplaces and services – into homes and classrooms.

It puts parents, therapists, teachers and partners at risk of being subjected to investigation if they do not affirm that someone is “male” or “female “ (or both, or neither) based on their personal declaration rather than their biology. 

And that someone can be their own damn child.

The offence of carrying out an abusive conversion practice on an individual is defined in terms of causing “serious harm” to the individual’s physical or mental health, or “serious alarm or distress to the individual which has a substantial adverse effect on their usual day-to-day activities”. This could potentially mean a wife telling her husband to stop wearing her clothes, parents telling a child they will not pay for puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, or a school insisting on referring to all children accurately as girls or boys, in line with its safeguarding responsibilities. 

Not to mention its avoiding confusion responsibilities.