New Bill: Prison for taking your son to Church or saying he’s a boy?
A proposed Government Bill could put you in prison for taking your son to church or telling him he’s a boy. Every child deserves their own mother and father, free to bring them up in the truth that marriage itself rests on – that there are men and women. Yet the draft Conversion Practices Bill could make criminals of the mothers and fathers who do just that.
If you have five minutes, please tell Parliament’s committee examining the Bill why this is wrong. Our short guide shows you how. The closing date is 5pm on Monday 16th November.
Last Thursday, a Labour MP on the scrutinising committee said, “Parents fall into this bill.” She’s right.
The Bill makes a crime of “any conduct” meant to change someone’s sexual orientation or transgender identity, if a court finds it abusive and it causes “serious alarm or distress” that badly affects daily life. It lists “psychological or emotional pressure” as a sign of such abuse, and the sentence can be up to five years in prison. A parent needn’t mean any harm, and believing they acted in their child’s best interests is no defence. The Bill makes no distinction between a child and an adult. It speaks only of “an individual”. Yet every parent sets rules for a child that they’d never set for another adult. Under this Bill, a mother who keeps telling her troubled teenage son that he is a boy could be accused of the very crime it creates.
A court could even order parents not to take their own child to church. The Bill lets the court make orders with whatever “prohibitions, restrictions or requirements” it “considers appropriate”. The police or a council can apply for one, the court can make it without warning the parents, and breaking it can mean up to two years in prison. On 25 June, former minister Olivia Bailey told MPs these orders “will be similar to protection orders for forced marriage and female genital mutilation, and can protect people even before abuse has happened”. A mother could potentially face one for taking her son to church, before she ever does anything even the Bill calls abuse.
Ministers say parents won’t be caught, but refuse to write that into the Bill.
The committee is now taking evidence. C4M is preparing its own response, but the committee must hear from mothers and fathers themselves.
In a poll of 4,201 adults in July, fewer than one in four would back the Bill if it could criminalise a mother for refusing her teenage daughter a chest binder, puberty blockers, testosterone or a mastectomy. All we need to end this terrible assault on parenting and child wellbeing is for the silent majority to stop being so silent.
Please send the committee your own evidence. Unfortunately, its form takes evidence only as an uploaded document, such as a Word file. Under the heading “Parental rights”, write a few numbered paragraphs in your own words: who you are, and what this Bill would mean for your family. End with “Recommend: drop the Bill.” Leave out your contact details and omit any individual names. Our guide shows you how to send it and gives examples of things to say. Then forward this email to a friend and ask them to do the same.
At C4M, we know that abuse is already a crime, and that a mother’s love for her child must never be criminalised. Ministers must drop this Bill. The onslaught against real marriage and loving parents feels relentless – but our responses can and must make a difference.