So-called ‘academic’ wants conversion therapy to remain legal so gays can ‘explore their heterosexual potential’

Belinda Brown conversion therapy

An anti-feminist “academic” has insisted that conversion therapy should remain legal in the UK so that LGBT+ people can “deal” with” their “same-sex attraction”, and “explore their heterosexual potential”.

Belinda Brown is a researcher, writer and speaker who “has a particular interest in men’s issues and the damage caused by feminism”, and a patron of the anti-LGBT+ Scottish Family Party.

She has described the suffragettes as “terrorists”, said that queer children being bullied is a “myth”, compared university lectures on feminism to the “type of thinking that lead to the mass killing of Jews”, and thinks LGBT-inclusive relationships and sex education (RSE) in the UK is a “vehicle of indoctrination” which “proves that Section 28 was necessary”.

Now, in a piece for The Conservative Woman, to which she is a regular contributor, Brown has insisted that the traumatising practice of conversion therapy must remain legal in the UK.

Outraged at the idea that an LGBT+ person in therapy should be affirmed in their identity, she wrote: “This is a problem for adults seeking help, as it discounts the possibility that these tendencies may be symptomatic of other underlying issues.”

Referencing the fact that conversion therapy has been condemned by all major UK medical, psychological and counselling organisations, she added: “Since the statutory and professional associations in the field of psychology and psychotherapy succumbed to the demands of LGBT activists, attempts by counsellors to address homosexuality as a problem are banned.”

Even though prime minister Boris Johnson has promised to “bring forward” a UK conversion therapy ban, Brown said a ban would mean the “LGBT lobby” would be “denying freedom of choice” for the “many homosexuals [who] clearly express the desire to explore their heterosexual potential”.

Although Brown states in her piece that “our behaviours do not need to be ‘sick’ or ‘disordered’ for us to desire change”, she has previously described being LGBT+ as a “sickness” and said that there were “psychological explanations” for homosexuality “to do with development of masculinity”.

The UK does not currently ban the practice of conversion therapy, and the beginning of July 2020 marked two years since the Conservatives vowed to end the traumatic practice.

Conversion therapy is often compared to torture and has been linked to higher risks of depression, suicide and drug addiction.