Morrigan Johnson is an independent journalist based in Calgary. At the Conservative Party of Canada's national convention in Calgary, the proposal to remove the ban on conversion therapy was defeated despite receiving a narrow majority of popular support from delegates. The proposal failed because it did not meet the party's "double majority" requirement for constitutional and policy changes. Delegates were 52% in favour of opposing the ban. They also debated hot button issues such as DEI, abortion, and immigration. With polarization at an all time high, the issue risks crashing out with alienated grassroots, and not enough competency to discern the subject from atrocious woke policies. The resolution, primarily sponsored by members of the Kitchener Centre riding association and supported by groups like the Campaign Life Coalition, sought to define the party's stance as favouring a parent's right to arrange "body-affirming talk therapy" for "gender-confused" children. It sounds innocent, but they inherit woke liberal gender conflations, while proposing conversion therapy as the solution. Canada is currently witnessing a regressive, post-modern collapse of rights — potentially the worst kind of division in the world due to growing confusion — especially if stalled legislation like the Orwellian Bill C-9 ever passes, people will start going to jail if they offend the emotions of certain people. This extremist woke identitarianism enshrined in policy harms everyone: children, families, gay people, and even those individuals who genuinely believe they are in the wrong body. The civil rights movement was grounded in Enlightenment values like equality, objective reality, standards of evidence, defined or reasonable limits of rights, and the presumption of innocence. Today, these are being replaced by 'special rights' for ill-defined groups who are treated as immune to reality or being questioned. This neo-feudal approach creates a dangerous legal standard based on who you are rather than reason, balance, or evidence. Consequently, post-modern ideology is wreaking havoc across the whole society parading the most confused individuals anyone can find. Bringing back conversion therapy based on falsehoods won’t fix that. .Many people are upset to see that the party voted against removing the ban on conversion therapy, because they see it as protecting the gender ideology problem. The truth is that neither, “pro 2SLGBTQ2I+” alphabet mafia nor “anti 2SLGBTQ2I+” regression will resolve the falsehoods or the backlash..And in fact, the policy proposal reveals a serious inability for the party to grasp the most basic problems at all. Gay people are not transgender, and gender ideology is not the same thing as restoring modern rights before things went off the rails. .As Shannon Douglas pointed out after voting against the proposal, becoming regressive and homophobic just sabotages any hope of restoring the conceptions of modern rights for everyone, while giving ammunition to the “woke left” and further weakening unity or practical opposition to gender ideology and bad policy. He described his own frustrations with a gender confused child without any civil liberties balance, but actual bigotry isn’t going to help. You can read the policy paper by LGB Alliance Canada provided for Bill-C6 (the predecessor to Bill-C4). The plea was not to encourage dangerous and bigoted conversion therapies, but rather to strongly amend bills in a modern conception that does not entertain conflations and falsehoods about special rights or special kinds of people on the basis of things that don’t exist such as “gender identity.” It hurts everyone, including those individuals. Those who overly-believe they are born in the wrong body, they too would have better outcomes than what gender ideology is doing if rights and people could be defined in any kind of common sense way. Modern rights should allow mentally ill adults to consent to therapies with protections on old grounds, which would automatically rule out the old era of harmful conversion therapy. But therapy can be good, and it can redress almost anything. Trying to correct people on the new basis, where special rights and special people aren’t well defined, seems worse than decades ago. .For example sexual orientation and gender ideology are not the same thing, therapy does not change anybody’s sexual orientation and risks causing harm to gay people. Sex and sexual orientation are factual, objective realities which need equal protection — protection not based upon emotions. And minors really cannot consent to conversion therapies, gender ideologies, or anything. Considering the incompetent convention proposal they still have no idea what they are doing, peddling old bigotry despite years of efforts to correct dangerous woke falsehoods in awful liberal policy disasters. Arguably, inheriting the liberal conflations makes the new revival of conversion therapy more of a confusing Chimera than decades ago when we could define rights and people correctly. What is to be corrected? Considering how many gay people are alienated by woke policy disasters, a whole generation has come into the present day not realizing that there aren’t many actual gay people left wherever you see a rainbow. The gender ideology is different, and excommunicates anyone who questions it, leaving only Queer and Trans identifications in the legacy woke left. In 2022, LGB Alliance (UK) co-founder Kate Harris broke down when asked to define a lesbian in court, because nobody could recall the modern conceptions the civil rights movement had fought so hard for. She said, “A lesbian is attracted to another biological woman, full stop.”The problem is defining the kinds of persons by their emotions, which is not a safe basis for rights or protections, and ultimately ends up hurting everyone. Many mentally ill people do require therapy on the basis of the mind, and many mentally ill people are endangered when they have “special rights” making them immune to consequences and normal social realities. For minors, allow therapists to explore, challenge, and wait, rather than affirming extreme woke ideologies. For adults, keep a ban on coercive practices, but allow consenting adults to access therapy to detransition if they choose. If you conflate rights and the kinds of persons with falsehoods, it is no wonder things keep getting worse, alienating everyone in the back and forth. Morrigan Johnson is an independent journalist in Calgary. He is also a researcher for LGB Alliance Canada.
