Demonstrators outside Downing Street demanding transgender people are included in the proposed conversion therapy ban.
(Picture: Getty Images)Hundreds of people have joined a demonstration outside Downing Street demanding transgender people are included in the proposed conversion therapy ban.
They shouted “keep trans in the ban” and “LGB with the T”, while many waved the pink, white and blue transgender pride flag.
Campaigner, Peter Tatchell, told the crowd: “We were promised a total ban.
“(Prime Minister Boris Johnson) has given us a half-baked ban, which we will never ever accept.
“The only ban worth having is a ban for everyone, including trans people.”
Jess, 23, from Nottingham, told the PA news agency transgender people’s lives were at risk because of Government policy.
“The reason that I am here at the protest today is because Government policy and the transphobic rhetoric we’re seeing around excluding trans people from the conversion therapy ban is a massive threat to trans lives, particularly trans youth, within the UK,” they said.
The Prime Minister’s LGBT advisor Nick Herbert said he is “dismayed” by the decision not to include transgender people in a ban on conversion therapy and called for a royal commission to “detoxify” and take the politics out of the trans debate.
It comes after the Government has faced fierce criticism over a series of U-turns last week on promised legislation to outlaw conversion therapy, and its backtracking on commitments to include transgender people in the ban.
Lord Herbert, 59, said it was wrong to brand Mr Johnson as “transphobic” for saying last week that “biological males” should not compete in women’s sports and that women should have access to single-sex spaces in places such as hospitals and prisons.
Calling for a royal commission, Lord Herbert said: “We must not allow a descent into a political mire which is dominated by extremes and which suffocates the reasonable middle ground”.
Led by a senior judge and with “truly neutral” members, the inquiry would “examine these issues dispassionately”, he said.
“Weighing the evidence on contested areas such as sport, safe spaces for women, and gender identity services for children and young people … would be a better way to detoxify the debate, protect trans people from being caught in the political crossfire, and find the common ground we need.
“No-one will win from a culture war on these issues, and those most harmed will be trans people who already feel stigmatised, people who are different yet just like us, human beings who deserve greater kindness than today’s politics will permit”.
