Mrs May’s Agenda: Will She Even Survive?

Theresa May has launched an LGBTQ ‘Action Plan’, promising to tackle, among other things, violence towards people who are attracted to the same sex. Good. Violence is wrong, especially when it targets minorities who might already feel vulnerable.

She goes on, saying her government will ban ‘gay conversion therapy’, which she considers ‘abhorrent’, having ‘no place in modern Britain’. I’m not sure such ‘therapy’ was ever effective, and, as ITV reports, its Christian versions sometimes involved ‘coughing up’ demons and looking at family trees to identify when historical divorces allowed spirits to enter the genealogical line. This kind of theology is rather unhelpful at best, but I am concerned that any person who wishes to be supported in this way might find their options unnecessarily restricted. 

She was also asked, by Paul Brand of ITV, whether she’d be happy to share a changing room with a man who self-identified as a woman, seeing as her new Action Plan will seek to de-medicalise gender transition. Having ducked the question once, she answered in the affirmative. The proposals are not yet published, but there must be a great many women who are concerned at the prospects of men who self-identify as women sharing their changing rooms at the swimming pool. It might be easy enough for a senior politician who uses private pools and is accompanied by a security detail, but ordinary people are right to feel concerned.

Yesterday, Mrs May lost two senior ministers. Her new-found interest in transgenderism may well be short-lived.