Churches in the Australian state of Victoria have ramped up a campaign against a proposed bill banning gay conversion therapies, taking out full page ads in newspapers in which they urged the State Government to retract the proposed legislation.
Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020, which is due to be introduced to the state’s upper house of parliament this Thursday after passing through the lower house, criminalises gay conversion practices with penalties of up to 10 years jail for people who subject others to change or suppression practices that cause injury or serious injury and fines of close to $10,000 for anyone advertising such practices.
The Victorian State Parliament. PICTURE: Wei-Sung Liao (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The proposed law has been criticised by church leaders – with Melbourne’s Catholic Archbishop Peter Comensoli previously describing it as a “dramatic over-reach” – and has also in recent days attracted criticism from groups including the Victorian branches of the Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.
A double page advertisement seen this week, which bore the names of more than 300 mostly Christian faith leaders, was headlined “Dear Premier, we are not criminals” and went on, in a letter to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, to state that the bill “encroaches excessively on religious freedoms, and makes all faith communities and people of faith vulnerable to prosecution and heavy penalties”.
The faith leaders said the bill would “regulate the subject matter of prayer”, “make some consensual prayers into criminal acts”, “criminalise voluntary faith-based support groups for people who want to live out their sexual orientation or gender identity consistent with their faith”, “make certain conversations about faith-based sexual ethics illegal”, “make all faith-based teaching or discussion on issues of sexual orientation or gender identity legally fraught” and “force parents to affirm and encourage a child’s felt gender identity at any given time, regardless of ciircumstance, and permit gender transition medical therapies”.
“Under this Bill, all people of faith will be stripped of their freedom to practice and share their faith,” they said.
The leaders who signed the bill included representatives of churches within the Baptist, Presbyterian, Seventh Day Adventist, Anglican and pentecostal denominations.
Another full page advertisement, this time signed by leaders of the Catholic Church and the Islamic Council of Victoria, expressed “profound concern” over the proposed bill, saying that it doesn’t just ban “out-dated and insidious practices of coercion and harm” but also “criminalises conversation between children and parents, interferes with sound professional advice and silences ministers of religion from providing personal attention for individuals freely seeking pastoral care for complex personal situations”.
“It includes ill-conceived concepts of faith and conversation, vague definitions, and scientifically and medically flawed approaches,” the leaders said.
Both advertisements called for the progress of the bill through parliament to be stopped and a dialogue to be held between the government and faith leaders.
Not all faith groups are opposed to the bill – among those which have voiced support for the bill are the lay reform group Catholics for Renewal and the Uniting Network, an LGBTQ+ network within the Uniting Church of Australia. The latter has described the bill as “the world’s most significant achievement in legislation curtailing the diabolical influence of the conversion movement”.
Queensland is the only other Australian state to have passed such a law but the proposed Victorian law is significantly broader in its scope.
