England’s Proposed ‘Conversion Practices’ Ban Is a Mess

A bill that criminalizes conversation is not really a bill about "practices." It's a bill about speech, and the fact that it's coming out of England, the birthplace of the very free expression tradition America built its First Amendment on, makes it sting a little more. When a parent talking to their confused teenager, or a pastor counseling a congregant who comes to him voluntarily, can be treated the same as someone running electroshock therapy in a basement, the word "conversion" has stopped doing any real work. It's just a label slapped on anything the government wants to make illegal to say.

The problem isn't that abusive practices shouldn't be banned. Nobody's defending that. The problem is a law so broad that it can't tell the difference between coercion and a conversation someone didn't like. That vagueness isn't an accident. Vague laws are the ones that get stretched, quietly, case by case, until people stop bringing up certain topics at all rather than risk finding out where the line actually was.

We've watched this pattern before: a sympathetic goal, a sloppy bill, and a government that ends up policing belief under the cover of protecting people. England can do better than legislation that reads like it was drafted to make Orwell's point for him.