This is the speech I gave to the 2015 Liberal Democrat Spring Conference, introducing an amendment to the mental health motion to call for an end to transgender conversion therapy.<\/p>\n
The amendment passed without opposition.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to read from a young girl\u2019s Internet diary<\/a>.<\/p>\n \nI really need help.<\/p>\n Hi, I’m Leelah, 16 and ever since I was around 4 or 5 I knew I was a girl. As soon as I found out what transgender meant, I came out to my mom. She reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl.<\/p>\n I wanted to see a gender therapist but they wouldn’t let me, they thought it would corrupt my mind. They would only let me see biased therapists, who instead of listening to my feelings would try to change me into a straight male. I would cry after every session because I felt like it was hopeless. <\/p>\n Please help me, I don’t know what I should do and I can’t take much more of this. I don’t know if my problem is serious enough that I can contact authorities for help and even if it is I don’t know how much that’ll damage or help my current situation. I’m stuck.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Two months after writing this cry for help on the Internet, transgender teenager Leelah Alcorn took her own life. This was in the US, but it could easily have happened here.<\/p>\n Studies show that when transgender people express a need to undergo gender transition, if they are not able to then 50% will try to kill themselves.<\/p>\n Conversion therapy does not work. This is not opinion, this is established fact. If you try to talk a transgender person out of changing gender, there is a better than evens chance they will try to kill themselves. This is not opinion, this is established fact.<\/p>\n If you subject a transgender person to conversion therapy, you might as well drive them to Beachy Head and tell them to jump. Conversion therapy kills transgender people.<\/p>\n When the NHS, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and other bodies signed a memorandum of understanding against conversion therapy for lesbian, bisexual and gay people in January, they called it \u201cunethical and potentially harmful\u201d.<\/p>\n They also left transgender people out.<\/p>\n Well, conference, conversion therapy for transgender people does worse than potentially cause harm: it kills them.<\/p>\n All this amendment asks is that transgender people are given the same protection from dangerous quackery that lesbian, gay and bisexual people are given.<\/p>\n Coercing vulnerable transgender people into discredited conversion therapy is not a valid psychological practice. It is not helping people who are struggling with their gender identity to come to terms with themselves.<\/p>\n It is attempted murder.<\/p>\n Conference, I implore you to support this amendment and put a stop to this appalling practice. Thank you. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is the speech I gave to the 2015 Liberal Democrat Spring Conference, introducing an amendment to the mental health motion to call for an end to transgender conversion therapy. The amendment passed without opposition. I\u2019d like to read from … Continue reading