“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…”
Ephesians 2:1-2A
Introduction
Recently, Australian news sources have been abuzz with plans for a bill outlawing conversion therapy to be passed in New South Wales. Though I do not think that we have any direct access to what the Australian bill contains, looking at our (New Zealand’s) conversion therapy act passed in 2022 will surely do some good.1 I will briefly provide an overview of the bill in this section, list two objections against our bill in the second section, and then address a deeper issue, namely the fundamental conflict of the Christian Gospel and conversion therapy bills.2
The explicit aim of the New Zealand conversion therapy bill is twofold: to “recognise and prevent harm caused by conversion practices” and to “promote respectful and open discussions regarding sexuality and gender.” A conversion practice is defined as a “practice, sustained effort, or treatment” that “is directed towards an individual because of the individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression” and which is performed “with the intention of changing or suppressing the individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
However, it is denied that a conversion practice involves the “expression only of a belief or a religious principle made to an individual that is not intended to change or suppress the individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression”, among other things. Examples of conversion practices are given: using “shame or coercion”, saying that someone’s “sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression needs changing because it is a defect or disorder”, and “carrying out a prayer-based practice, a deliverance practice, or an exorcism intending to change or suppress an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression”. The rest of the act states associated penalties (five years imprisonment being the maximum) and stipulates that it amends the Human Rights Act of 1993.
Two Objections
One objection to our act is its proneness to subjectivity. I will provide a few examples. Our act defines a conversion practice by cause (“because of the individual’s sexual orientation…”) and intention (“changing or suppressing the individual’s sexual orientation…”). If someone writes a manifesto advocating for physical violence against homosexuals, then he should be punished and his intention is clearly hateful. But if a pastor were to sit down with a confused individual and counsel them, how may the cause or intention be discerned? How do we know if he is motivated by malicious prejudice or care for the individual? I am not denying that causes or intentions can be discerned in actions. Malice aforethought is a legitimate category. But, there are still many cases in which things are not straightforward.
My second objection against this bill is its standard for measuring harm. Our act stipulates that one primary purpose is preventing “harm”, especially “serious harm”. It defines the latter as “mean[ing] any physical, psychological, or emotional harm that seriously affects the health, safety, or welfare of the individual.” But what does it mean to define “serious harms” as “harm that seriously affects”? What are the criteria of seriousness? Indeed, this criteria is clear regarding physical health, but what does it mean regarding “emotional harm”? It seems complex to base guilt on emotional harm rendered because there are many examples of legal activities, like breaking up with someone, that may inflict serious emotional harm. Again, these questions (and they are genuine) are not denials that trauma, PTSD, and other conditions exist but more of a caution against arbitrary judgements.
The Gospel and Conversion Therapy
But the heart of the issue goes further than potential questions about the legislation’s subjectivity or arbitrariness. Let us take something that is supported by our culture and rejected by the Bible and name it x. The principle behind our bill is the following: we cannot address people because they believe in x with the express intention of making them change x. This principle is the intolerance of tolerance or the clanking of chains mistaken for the rattling of keys. x is hallowed ground, and we must take off our dialogical sandals lest we commit sacrilege by muttering in the secularist’s holy place.
But it may be objected that x is not just an incidental, intellectual belief like evolutionism, socialism, atheism, or so on. x is someone’s fundamental identity, and to strike at x, whether x relates to sexual orientation, a woman’s fundamental right to choose, or something else, is to strike at someone’s identity or the core of their being. Let us take sexual orientation as a particular example. Three things must be noted. Firstly, Christians do not view sexual orientation as any person’s core. Therefore, when we discuss sexual orientation, we are not intending in malice to destroy the person and eviscerate his very essence. If anyone intends this damage, then he is likely not a Christian. Secondly, this assumption that sexual orientation is fundamental needs to be justified. I find no reason in the secularist framework to justify this assumption. Good and warm feelings resulting from this identity are not a reason, for plenty of clearly wrong identities may generate pleasant feelings. Thirdly, this assumption is absolutely foreign to Christianity. Let me explain this third point further.
Authenticity is the hallmark of our age. We are told to be ourselves and confident in our skin. In other words, though this wording may be peculiar, the norm is to be in ourselves. We pursue our dreams in a lifelong odyssey for personal satisfaction, perpetually visiting different destinations. Our destinations involve a plethora of vices that do not only include sexual sin. This odyssey is what the Bible calls idolatry. Every man’s heart naturally curves inwards to himself, and out of it flow damnable and polluted streams. The counterintuitive result is that when he is in himself, he is both master and slave, both the taskmaster and the labourer.
Meanwhile, the Biblical view of identity is that man is made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), though we are shattered reflectors of His glory, and that moreover Christians are those who are “in Christ”. Traditional Christianity has taken “in Christ” to signify that we are really unified with the living Christ. In Christ is “every spiritual blessing” (Ephesians 1:3). Identity for the Christian is not found in sexual orientation, networks of friends, academic excellence, or the pained remembrance of past follies. Identity is this pulsating reality of being in Christ. This Christ is the one through Whom all things were made (John 1:3), the cosmic star-flinging and galaxy-breathing God who lived so that He might die, and who died so that we might live through receiving Him with an empty hand or an open mouth.
The upshot of this overview is that the Bible aims to change identities, both sexual and non-sexual. This aim is not because Christians have an arbitrary dislike of homosexuals but because homosexuality is a mere symptom of a greater disease. These symptoms are not restricted to homosexual vices, for one can very much sin as a heterosexual. This greater disease is being in ourselves and curved inwards rather than being in Christ. It is to voyage on a hedonistic odyssey and to indulge in Dionysian sophistication rather than holding with empty hands the old and rugged cross. As we look to the cross and Him who died on it, just like an adopted child comes to realise that the man and woman who do not look quite like her are her parents and that she really is in the family, so we will come to realise by the Spirit that we are in Christ and that God is our Father.
Footnotes
- All quotations referencing from this bill are from Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act, 2022. The text is available at this link: https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2022/0001/latest/whole.html#, accessed March 15 2024.
- I have no legal training and thus my assessment should be taken with a grain of salt.