Religion is a Mental Illness

Andrew Doyle: If reports are to be believed, Rishi Sunak is set to roll back on plans for a ban on LGBT+ conversion therapy. After more than 40 Tory MPs signed a letter demanding a U-turn, the prime minister is said to be willing to no longer include legislation to ban the practice in The King's Speech next month.

There's a lot to unpack here, so joining me to discuss it is Barrister and Director at Gay Men's Network Dennis Kavanagh. Welcome back, Dennis.

First thing to ask is, what do they mean by "conversion therapy"?

Dennis Kavanagh: Well this is pure Orwell. These bans are in place all over the planet, and where principally they're directed towards the field of pediatric medicine, believe it or not. Now that's not what people will think of when you mention gay conversion therapy, but we're talking about the trans conversion therapy bit.

Doyle: Right, it's been conflated though hasn't it?

Kavanagh: That's correct.

Doyle: So when you think of gay conversion therapy you think back in the 60s, people putting electrodes on gay men to try and cure them and obviously we all agree that that's horrific and it needs to be banned…

Kavanagh: I certainly do.

Doyle: But it's not going on all that much.

Kavanagh: No, it's not happening at all in this country, thankfully. We could have done with a gay conversion therapy ban about 50 years ago, so we're legislating over a problem that doesn't exist so far as gay conversion therapy is concerned.

In terms of the so-called trans conversion therapy, the government found no evidence of this at all when they went to Coventry University for a study on this. We asked them what it is, we asked them what a ban would look like, and I'm afraid what we know from looking around the planet is what they really want to do is they want to expose pediatricians to the risk of prosecution when they're treating children who are, in explosive numbers, presenting with gender incongruence. 5,000% increase in females, well girls, little girls at the Tavistock between 2003 and 2013. So what the trans activists want, is they want a situation where a doctor is forced to accept the self-diagnosis of a child.

Doyle: Yes that's a problem isn't there, because Hannah Barnes' book on this subject, "Time to Think," found that there were all sorts of other issues going on with young children who who say they are gender dysphoric, or experiencing symptoms of such, such as autism, domestic violence, abuse, all sorts of other things that require a therapeutic interrogation.

Kavanagh: Well of course, and funny you should mention Hannah Barnes, I have some statistics from her book here: over 70% of referrals to GIDS had more than five associated features of comorbidities: abuse, depression, self-harm, suicide; 35% were on the autistic spectrum compared to 2% in the population; 42% of referrals had lost a parent through death or separation; 25%, that's a quarter, had spent some time in care. These are alarming statistics. This is a medical scandal of global proportions.

This is why Dr Hillary Cass, in her interim review on this matter, has said look, the affirmation approach - so that's the approach that this lot wants, and they want to enforce with their "conversion therapy ban" - she said that that is causing tremendous harm, in effect, and it should be replaced with a multidisciplinary model where talking therapies are employed, where doctors try to get to the bottom of this.

Because look, this is the only field of medicine, isn't it, where activists are saying that someone involved in psychotherapeutic interrogation, and I remind everyone of little children, confused little childre, vulnerable kids, autistic kids, kids, according to the Tavistock, 80 to 90% are same seex attracted, it's mainly gay kids, that's who we're talking about.

Doyle: Yes, but the activists would say that, when some a child says "I'm in the wrong body," that you must automatically believe them, and if you don't, and if you try and talk about those other potential issues that could have led to that feeling, you're effectively trying to convert them away from their true trans identity. That's the idea isn't it?

Kavanagh: That's what they say, but let's look at this seriously and as adults. If you leave these children alone, right, if you employ what's called "watchful waiting" or normal exploratory therapy, because that's what you normally do as a psychiatrist, something like 90% of those children will desist from their trans identification.

Doyle: During puberty?

Kavanagh: That's right. Puberty is the cure, and look the more and more I look at this debate, the more and more I form the conclusion puberty is a human right. And if we want to talk about the real conversion therapy that's going on in this country and around the planet, it is gay conversion therapy by gender.

Dr David Bell said in 2018 of the Tavistock, there are homophobic parents here. Matt Bristo, one of the psychotherapists there said, it feels like a new form of gay conversion therapy. Sonia Appleby, the safeguarding lead said, you cannot discuss the safeguarding issue of homophobia either coming from families or internalized homophobia. And it's not just staff at the Tavistock. Dr Hillary Cass, in her interim report said, we have spoken to lesbians, young lesbians, these kids remember, who felt under pressure to adopt a trans identification, cause lesbians felt they were at the bottom of the heap. That is modern gay conversion therapy, what is going on in the gender medicine business.

Doyle: So people are going to find that very confusing, because effectively what you're saying is that, to oppose trans… sorry to promote… sorry to oppose trans conversion therapy is a form of gay conversion therapy.

Kavanagh: I told you it was pure Orwell.

Doyle: That's the problem you know, it's difficult even to get your head around it. So is the problem when it comes to the government getting involved with these things, that they just don't understand that the language has in fact blinded well-intentioned people to a grotesque evil that could be taking place?

Kavanagh: Absolutely, I'm sure that's right. There's one thing that the other side in gender are good at, it's language games. We see this all the time and debates are often framed in ways that sound agreeable, that sound nice. Nobody wants gay conversion therapy, no one wants anybody subject to what is in effect a form of modern torture. But that's not what this is. You've got to look at this with some nuance.

What this is, is a threat of criminal prosecution to a therapist doing their job. I heard Dr Az Hakim on your show just the other week, he he calls the affirmation only approach a form of grooming, a form of reassuring a child that the transgender identity they've adopted is a good thing for them, that they should stick with. This is about concretizing identities in very young people at a time when they're experimenting.

Doyle: And that's a key point, isn't it, we're talking about about children. When it comes to adults, should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies, etc. But when we're talking about children, just to simply say, yes, a child's self diagnosis is what we must persist with, and put them on drugs which lead to cross- sex hormones in almost all cases, which can lead to irreversible surgery, I mean the ramifications here are extremely serious.

Kavanagh: They're tragic. There's a case in North Carolina today of a young lesbian who's now suing all the various gender doctors who she's been involved with. She's had a double mastectomy, she has serious mental health problems the rest of her life, you've interviewed numerous detransitioners here who tell exactly the same story. Who's paying the price for these luxury beliefs that you can change your sex, which as a matter of science you just can't. Who's paying the price? It's vulnerable children who are paying the price for this.

And and now we are in the era of lawsuits because, as you pointed out, this isn't just therapy, these aren't just small decisions. Puberty blockers will lead in most cases to problems with bone-density. God knows what they do to brain maturation. Cross-sex hormones will render children infertile. These are serious issues.

Doyle: And it's important to point out that the Cass review has said that we just don't have enough evidence about the long-term effects of puberty blockers, it doesn't exist. And there are no long-term studies.

Kavanagh: Well that's right. What Dr Hillary Cass said was there was no safe evidential basis for the prescription of puberty blockers and they should no longer be prescribed as a matter of routine. Now, someone dug into the Cass dataset and Professor Kathleen Stock's looked at it this week, and once the data were disaggregated, they found actually the puberty blocker cohorts, 70% had neutral to negative mental health effects. So these drugs are either doing nothing for part of the cohort, or they're actively hurting them. At the end of the day it's an experiment. It's an experiment on kids.

Doyle: Dennis Kavanagh, thanks so much for joining me.