A call to understand and respond to proposed legislation.
Northern Ireland Assembly. / [link]Facebook NI Assembly[/link]
The Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill was introduced to the NI Assembly in June 2026, it passed Second Stage on Monday 28 September 2026 and Committee Stage of the Bill commenced on Tuesday 29 September 2026.
The Committee for Communities issued a call for evidence, which closed on 1 October. [1]
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In this article I hope to explain what the Bill contains, what is good about it, what concerns it raises, and how Christians can respond.
The Bill would introduce three new offences in law:
Providing “conversion therapy” with the “intent of changing or suppressing the sexual orientation or gender identity of the victim”Conversion therapy is defined as “any of the following – counselling or any form of talking therapy; coaching or instruction; a treatment or purported treatment”. Providing or carrying out such practices would be an offence if the “victim suffers physical or psychological harm as a consequence of the therapy”. Psychological harm is defined as including “fear, alarm or distress”. Sexual orientation and gender identity are defined as “what the victim considers it to be” and “what the person [providing the therapy] considers it to be”.
Engaging in coercive conversion behaviour Coercion is defined as including violence, threats, control or regulation of daily activities, depriving or restricting freedom, or “making the victim feel frightened, humiliated, degraded, punished or intimidated.”
Removing a person from Northern Ireland for the purposes of conversion practices – including facilitating someone to leave.
The Bill allows for each of these offences to be punishable by up to two years imprisonment or with a fine or both. It also specifies that there would be no right to claim trial by jury for these offences.
The Bill includes some further clarification on what may or may not count as a defence against these crimes and who would be exempted from the Act:
Consent is specifically not a defence – it is immaterial whether or not the person consented.
It is immaterial whether conversion therapy is paid for or not.
It is immaterial whether the therapy or behaviour is capable of actually changing or suppressing sexual orientation or gender identity.
People regulated by certain regulatory bodies – the General Medical Council, the Health and Care Professions Council, the General Pharmaceutical Council, and the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland – would not be subject to the Act if acting in line with the body’s code of ethics at the time of the therapy.
There is a potential defence of “reasonableness” against all three charges, but the Bill clarifies that the burden of proof of reasonableness rests with the accused person and gives no clarity on what might count as “reasonable”, while the explanatory memorandum accompanying the Bill states that “it is the Bill sponsor’s view that such a circumstance is unlikely to occur”.
Intent to change or suppress sexual orientation or gender identity will not be judged present if there is no intent to direct someone towards a particular orientation or identity, “the intent is solely to express beliefs or opinions, without directing” towards a particular orientation or identity, or the intent is to affirm the orientation or identity the person already holds.
In summary then, this Bill does the following:
Defines sexual orientation and gender identity subjectively as whatever the person decides it is, whatever that person’s age (the Bill does not limit it to adults) and whatever they include within it (e.g., it would protect against attempts to discourage paedophilia, zoophilia or criminal fetishes if someone calls these their sexual orientation).
Criminalises anyone else (including a parent or pastor) who challenges this in any way that encourages a suppression or change of the chosen orientation or identity, even if the person has consented to it or sought it, should the person subsequently report any degree of “fear, alarm or distress” of any duration (note, the threshold here is very low, with no requirement for this to be severe or persistent).
The only defence would be to argue that what they did was reasonable, which is not defined and expected by the sponsor to be rare as a defence.
Before commenting on the problems I see with this Bill, I wish to be clear that I believe that Christians should be in full agreement with the intent to outlaw coercive practices in counselling about any issue including sexuality and gender identity.
Scripture is clearly opposed to pressurising or manipulating anyone into adopting a particular belief or behaviour that goes against their conscience (2 Corinthians 4:2). We can agree with the Bill’s sponsor that any such activity is wrong and harmful to people.
If that was all that this Bill sought to criminalise, we could support it, although it is still worth considering whether a specific Bill is necessary on this issue alongside existing laws protecting against discrimination and harassment.
However, the Bill is much wider ranging than a simple protection against coercion due to its broad definition of conversion therapy, low threshold of harm, removal of consent as a defence, and insistence that sexual orientation and gender identity is self-chosen.
The following scenarios, all of which describe actions that could be judged to be criminal under this Bill, may help to illustrate its implications should it become law:
1. A child expresses feelings of same-sex attraction to a parent and says “I think I’m gay” but I really don’t want to have these feelings.
The parent encourages them not to follow their feelings as a guide to what to do or how to identify because they are not in line with how God has made us and could lead to sin and judgement. The child feels a little scared by this.
2. A boy tells a parent “I am in the wrong body and I want to dress as a girl”. The parent tells them not to change anything because feelings can change and don’t tell you who you are but the one thing that is clear is that he has a boy’s body, so he is a boy.
The boy is angry about being told not to do anything and says he is really upset.
3. A pastor preaches from a passage that refers to homosexual activity (e.g., Romans 1) and says that it results from “dishonourable passions” which any Christian experiencing them should resist.
Someone the pastor doesn’t know in the congregation identifies as “lesbian” and feels upset.
4. A speaker says that within a Christian worldview desires do not define identity, which means that sexual orientation labels are not true, and that Christians should submit all their desires to God, following only those that Scripture describes as good.
An audience member who, unbeknown to the speaker, identifies as “pansexual” and as a Christian believes this implies that she should resist her sexual desires and is distressed at the thought that she cannot be both a Christian and pansexual.
The four scenarios above are clearly within the sponsor’s intention in this Bill. However, the Bill does not limit its application only to sexual orientations or gender identities that are widely accepted in present day society.
To illustrate the extreme breadth of the bill, I include the following fifth scenario:
5. A man tells his counsellor that he is a paedophile – calling this his sexual orientation – and he does not want to have these feelings. The counsellor advises some techniques to reduce his unwanted desires.
On reflection, the man feels like he is being pushed into renouncing his identity and is alarmed at that.
My intention here is not to scaremonger, but I genuinely believe that a law based on this Bill as currently worded could criminalise normal parental and pastoral conversations and faithful preaching of God’s Word as well as counselling practices aimed at reducing harm to others.
Someone may argue that the Bill explicitly excludes the expression of beliefs so long as there is no intention to change a person’s orientation. This is an attempt to show that the Bill does not conflict with the protection of expression of religious and philosophical beliefs under human rights law.
However, if the religious beliefs say that same sex desires and transgender thinking are wrong or sinful, that implicitly means that they should be renounced or resisted, which could be argued to mean intent to change them.
As such, despite the sponsor’s stated intention to protect freedom of expression, the Bill does not protect the expression of perfectly mainstream religious convictions.
First, we must pray for our elected politicians in Stormont to scrutinise this Bill carefully and recognise the issues with it. They must decide whether a Bill specifically about these issues is necessary and, if so, whether the wording of the Bill as presented to the Assembly is too broad.
Second, we need to be clear what we believe about these matters. The Bill rests on assumptions about identity that derive from a particular worldview.
A Christian worldview leads to different conclusions. If you would like training on these issues in your church or organisation, please contact us.
Third, we can make our voice heard.
Paul Coulter, author, executive director of the Centre for Christianity in Society in Northern Ireland. This article was first published on the author's blog, Connected Christianity. If you would like to be informed when the Christian Leadership Integrity Commitments are released, please subscribe to this blog.
1. See the Bill and accompanying Memorandum here
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