A legal conversion therapy ban will rip the heart out of mainstream therapy

By Peter Jenkins

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Banning conversion therapy is back in the news again. The UK Labour Government has confirmed that it will be shortly presenting a draft law to ban attempts to ‘convert’ therapy clients away from their sexual orientation as being gay, lesbian or bisexual. Much more controversially, this proposed ban will be trans-inclusive, and will outlaw attempts to ‘convert’ transgender clients away from their preferred gender identity. According to Jeremy Clarke, speaking at a recent webinar for the British Psychoanalytic Society, it is almost inevitable that a ban will be enacted. Hence, “we should support the introduction of the legislation against conversion therapy.” However, any law will face major challenges, despite being supported by many MPs, the transgender lobby, and most professional therapy associations.

Research into conversion therapy (or ‘practices’) is still weak and inconclusive. Certainly most alleged conversion therapy occurs in religious settings, not in therapeutic work. Therapy is usually intended to explore and gently challenge our assumptions. Yet there is a strong tendency for trans clients and their allies to see any therapist doing this as inherently transphobic and guilty of conversion therapy.

The therapy profession is deeply split on the issue of how best to work with clients identifying as transgender, ever since the case brought by Keira Bell, a detransitioner first hit the headlines in 2020. This led to the dramatic closure of the Tavistock Gender Clinic. However, a conversion therapy law is often presented as a measure which will only target coercive and unethical practices going on in the secrecy of the consulting room.

What is not widely understood is that conversion therapy bans already operate in many parts of the US, so their damaging effects on mainstream therapy are well-known and documented. What is also missed is that there is already a de facto conversion therapy ban in the UK. This is based on codes of therapy ethics and shared policy agreements. This non-legal ban has had a devastating effect on the work of gender-critical therapists. The UK gender critical organisation, Thoughtful Therapists, has compiled testimonies from members and supporters, who have been harassed and victimised, including the following representative examples from a student, a university counsellor and a senior psychotherapist:

Student: “Gender ideology is taught as fact. There is no acknowledgement that other views are available…Tutors talk about ‘conversion therapy’ as if it is a feature of practice in the UK (it isn’t)…”

University Counsellor: “When James Esses started the petition to safeguard exploratory therapy for gender dysphoric children, I shared it on a professional email group …I thought no more of it until three months later, when I received an email from a law firm on behalf of my regulatory body. They were carrying out a disciplinary investigation, under an article in the disciplinary procedure, equivalent to gross misconduct in a work setting.”

Psychotherapist: “When the Charity Commission launched its investigation into Mermaids, following allegations of safeguarding breaches, the company carried on signposting to Mermaids…I told him [the acting CEO] what my concerns were about safeguarding….the other (less experienced) managers weren’t happy with me going above their heads…at a second meeting, just before Christmas my contract was terminated with immediate effect.”

The above deeply troubling examples illustrate how the dominant trans ideology opposing conversion therapy actually translates into denial of proper debate and free speech, the sidelining of child safeguarding concerns and the victimisation and sacking of a therapist for simply doing their job.

The reported damaging effects of a de facto ban on conversion therapy in the UK are also borne out by wider research (Jenkins & Panozzo, 2024). We explored this issue by compiling a global, non-random sample of members of Therapy First. This organisation is committed to offering psychological responses to gender questioning clients as a first line of intervention (Therapy First, 2025). This is the cautious policy recommended by the influential Cass Review (2024). From our sample (n: 89), 51% responded that they were working in a hostile professional environment, with a further 35% having had experience of a complaint. Thus, the overwhelming majority (86%) either perceived their working environment as hostile, or had experienced a complaint.

Responses from our survey included the following:

· “The McCarthyism-like dynamics surrounding this topic are real!”

· “Very concerned about legal liability”

· “Where I live, three clinicians who have been open and public about their work have had their liecnse(s) threatened by complaints and two are currently under investigation.”

· “A few local practitioners complained to the licensing board about my refusal to offer affirmation therapy. They claimed I am transphobic, homophobic, and racist.”

· “I attended a CEU workshop where a representative from the SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center] spoke. He said that they were continually "hunting" for clinicians who do not affirm LGBT+ in order to bring lawsuits against them with the goal of stripping them of the clinician's license.”

In all, our research on gender critical therapists found that they experienced a “pervasively hostile environment at professional, collegial, and practice level” (Jenkins & Panozzo, 2024: 10). Almost half of participants expressed some degree of anxiety about working in this hostile environment, or of experiencing a complaint. Yet, despite these almost overwhelming pressures, these therapists refused to abandon their work, because of their professional commitment to offering exploratory therapy to gender questioning clients.

A criminal ban on conversion therapy in the UK will replicate these damaging effects across the entire field of counselling, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Such a ban will merely give gender activists free rein to harass and silence their gender critical victims on an industrial scale. It is unlikely that the therapy profession will survive this night of the long knives intact. So, far from welcoming the bland assurance that we should support a conversion therapy ban, as Jeremy Clarke suggests, it must be resisted all the way, in order to save the heart and soul of therapy.

In the prophetic words of social media commentator, Marshall McLuhan:

“There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”

By Peter Jenkins, counsellor, supervisor, trainer and researcher in the UK. He has been a member of both the BACP Professional Conduct Committee and the UKCP Ethics Committee. Peter is also a member of Thoughtful Therapists. His critique of the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy was described as ‘instrumental’ in persuading the UKCP Board of the case for leaving the MOU in 2024.