There’s been another bill before the parliament called the Conversion Therapy bill.
I don’t know if you know about this it was supposed to be finished on Friday and, because of various complications, they’ve held it up for another two months and I did decide I was going to speak on the subject conversion and conversion therapy today.
So, I’m going to carry on with that just to give you the background to this the government bill is being pushed by Stonewall and LGBT people who want to ban conversion therapy.
Conversion therapy they understand to be causing homosexually oriented people to change from that to being straight / normal.
And, if you look on what’s behind the scenes, it’s part of what I call the white tyranny which is trying to impose their views on us and allow no opposition.
Now, they say that it’s an abhorrent practice to try and change homosexuals and they give examples, and, sometimes, there have been some practices they showed a film a program on TV called call The Midwife in which they showed some guy who, back in the 50s, was a homosexual and was put into some terrible concentration camp type environment where they were trying to brainwash him and do drug therapy on him.
And they said this is hermanship this is what we need to stop. I agree that that is wrong.
By the way, the BBC often puts similar clips into their programs as a kind of conditioning for people so that they will follow the agenda which they want you to follow.
Therefore, a lot of these programs are used for that purpose.
Cruel, integrating treatment, we can say that should not happen. However, what they want is to prohibit all forms of, (I’m quoting now from an article on the Archbishop Cranmer website) who says:
“Those who seek to prohibit all forms of conversion therapy are urging the Government to outlaw conversion practices in religious settings, including prayer. Such things are coercive and abusive, they say, and may cause profound depression in the most vulnerable, if not drive them to suicide. So ‘conversion’ prayers along the lines of ‘Please Lord, please take this temptation away’ must be prohibited, and so must all pastoral counselling which does anything but affirm a person’s sexual orientation and essential desires for homosexual exploration. To encourage them to question or resist such urges will constitute a form of abuse. To allude to any sexual behaviour being unnatural will be an expression of hate. Even if the counselling is voluntary and consensual, the priest or pastor may not quote Scripture or refer to the Church’s moral teachings in this context, as this will be a form of manipulative coercion, or undue spiritual influence.”
Do you see where that’s going? It goes on:
“Then there is the Christian home life: will parents be able to raise their children in accordance with the values and morality of Scripture and Church teaching? Or could the police be called when a boy’s conversation with his father begins to feel like ‘therapy’ about sexual orientation or gender identity? The Conversion Therapy (Prohibition) Bill is unclear on this, so the Act of Parliament (should it become so) is likely to lead to dozens of false allegations against priests, pastors and parents simply for having a conversation about same-sex marriage or trans identity issues.
The Coalition for Marriage outlines some possible scenarios:
• Noah, aged 13, asks his dad what he thinks about same-sex marriage. His dad says he’s totally against it. Noah disagrees. He tells a youth worker about the argument, saying, ‘I might want to get married one day, and who knows whether it will be to a man or a woman?’ The youth worker claims to the police that the father was trying to change Noah’s sexual orientation.
• Parents find out that their daughter Olivia, aged 14, has been visiting the website of Mermaids, a controversial trans group. Her parents block her access to the website. Olivia mentions it to her teacher in passing. The teacher reports it because he believes Olivia is actually a trans boy whom the parents are trying to change. Police interview the parents.
• A school is heavily promoting trans rights, using Stonewall and Mermaids materials. A teenage boy, Jack, tells his school teacher he thinks he’s a girl trapped in a boy’s body but doesn’t want his parents to know. The school treats him as a girl. When Jack’s parents find out, they withdraw him from the school. The parents are reported for conversion therapy.
Those are possible scenarios that are coming out of this law. And Adrian Hilton says:
“The Conversion Therapy (Prohibition) Bill does not simply concern itself with physical and emotional abuse in the realm of sexual identity, but with the definition of sin and the nature of temptation in the realm of spirituality. Religious exemptions and freedom protections may find their way into the Conversion Therapy (Prohibition) Act, but these will be ineffectual in the face of totalitarian demands for gender-identity ‘neutrality’ and compassionate counselling conformity.
We return to the fundamental question which nobody advancing this agenda seems to be willing (or able) to answer. Why should consensual spiritual counselling be banned when it concerns unwanted same-sex attraction in teenagers, while irreversible medical interventions with profound developmental consequences are encouraged in the context of gender transitioning children? Why should homosexual affirming organisations like Stonewall and Mermaids be free to encourage children to practice homosexuality or to change sex, but Christians be forbidden to say this is not in line with the will of God?“
That’s what it comes down to. He says:
“Surely a Conservative government is not going to make windows in a pastor’s soul and coerce them by law to affirm that a person is transgender and ensure that they propagate the state’s definition of sin? Surely a Conservative government isn’t going to make it illegal for people to be ‘transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
The issue is one of ‘conversion’. And I want to ask a question:
What is conversion? Is it at the centre of the Christian message?
If you start saying that one group of people can’t be converted, then they might not say that other people can’t be converted in the same breath.
The Pope has already said that Christians should not attempt to convert people of other faiths to Christianity.
The Pope holds up what he calls evangelization by which he means doing ‘good works in the name of Jesus’.
So, going to a group of asylum seekers and washing their feet is evangelization in the eyes of the Pope but what he calls proselytization, he says is bad.
And what he calls proselytization is what we call evangelism which is trying to turn people who are believers in other faiths or who have no faith to believe in Jesus.
Therefore, he’s saying that you mustn’t try and convert people from one faith to another.
For example, when Mr X comes here and says he’s a from a Muslim background and wants to follow Jesus, we should say: “Okay, follow Jesus but follow the Muslim Jesus and go back to the mosque.”
Is that what we should say to him?
No! Because the Muslim Jesus can’t save you. The Muslim Jesus didn’t die on the cross, and didn’t rise from the dead, and it’s only through believing in Jesus who died and rose from the dead that we can be saved.
Therefore, we have an obligation and a duty, according to scripture, to preach the gospel to all people, to all creation and to encourage people to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Absolutely amen , continue to preach the truth Tony. I pray for you regularly and all at Bridge Lane who evangelise, with the truth of the gospel, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life and no one comes to the Father but by Him.
As it becomes darker we proclaim the Light of the World. And we realise as we look at the fulfillment of prophesy that we are nearer to His return. We must continue to look up as our redemption draws near.
May God strengthen you in every way to boldly CONTINUE to proclaim the truth as you have done for so many years.
Thank you for your encouragement, Carolyn! God bless.