When Ed Shaw, a pastor at an evangelical church in Bristol, England, met a man at a conference several years ago who was struggling with questions about his sexuality, he wanted to help. The man had feelings of attraction for other males but wanted to adhere to historic Christian teaching about sexual relationships.
It was a familiar situation for Shaw. After growing up in a Christian household and professing faith in Jesus at an early age, he noticed his same-sex attraction in his teens. By his 20s, he had concluded it wasn’t a phase and began to grapple with what it meant to be committed to a biblically orthodox definition of marriage while being sexually attracted to other men.
Shaw would go on to a career in ministry and eventually help launch Living Out, a ministry that aims to “encourage our Christian sisters and brothers—especially those who experience same-sex attraction—to flourish through faithfulness to biblical teaching on sexuality and identity.”
So when Simon Burrows approached him, Shaw was willing to listen. After the conference, Shaw began meeting with Burrows for conversation on how church teaching impacted the mental health of Christians with same-sex attraction. At the time, Shaw said, Burrows was “entirely appreciative” of the conversation and grateful that Shaw could understand what he was going through.
When people seek Shaw out for discussions on same-sex attraction, he says they are often interested in hearing about his own journey.
“They’re wanting me to share my experience and … my views,” Shaw said. “That’s a wonderfully straightforward human conversation, that somebody comes to somebody else and says, ‘What’s life been like for you? What are the principles you’ve used, the beliefs that you’ve got that have shaped what you think about your body and what you think about your attractions?’”
Burrows later became critical of Living Out’s approach, arguing that the framework it promotes within churches was harmful to him. He now supports efforts in the UK to codify a ban on conversion practices that could include the support offered to same-sex-attracted Christians by ministries like Living Out.
Many Christians in the UK worry that a recent proposal by their government could lead to the criminalization of consensual conversations about sexuality due to a vague definition of what constitutes conversion practices.
Beginning in 2018, successive governments in the United Kingdom have promised to ban conversion therapy, a term that broadly refers to efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation or identity. The latest proposal was unveiled last month when the current Labour government released its Draft Conversion Practices Bill.
According to the BBC, previous attempts at a legislative ban faltered over disagreements over whether to include conversion practices directed at transgender people and concerns about the unintended consequences for parents and those who work with children in a professional setting, such as teachers or therapists.
If adopted, the new draft bill would apply only to England and Wales, as the legislative bodies of Northern Ireland and Scotland have their own authority to legislate on this issue.
According to the bill, conversion practice is any conduct that intends to cause another person “to have or not to have” or “to believe that they have or do not have” a sexual orientation or transgender identity.
The draft bill further defines abusive conversion practices as potentially including the use of economic, psychological, emotional pressure. A person convicted of carrying out an abusive conversion practice could be fined and/or sentenced to up to five years in prison.
Explanatory notes published by the government alongside the draft bill state that physical violence committed with the goal of changing a person’s sexual orientation or identity is already illegal, and that the new proposed legislation would seek to cover conversion practices consisting of “verbal or non-violent physical acts” that could not currently be prosecuted.
The notes also state that the proposal is “not intended to interfere with people’s right to religious belief and expression.” Shaw, however, worries that the subjective measures put forward in the draft bill for defining abuse could do just that. Living Out denounces conversion therapy due to the harm it has caused presenting “the false promise of a complete and permanent change in your sexual orientation.” Yet he believes this new bill will create a culture of fear that could result in fewer people being willing to support those wrestling with questions about their gender or sexuality.
“I worry that if this legislation was passed, that would be a conversation that I might be reluctant to join in … [because it] could be interpreted by the other person, in the moment or in the future, as conversion therapy,” Shaw said. “People like me, who are pastors trying to help others … will be held back from providing help [or] even from sharing our own stories.”
The Evangelical Alliance (EA), the UK’s largest evangelical unity movement, shares these concerns.
“Abuse, in whatever context, can be prosecuted [under the current law], and it should be,” said Danny Webster, the group’s director of advocacy. “We are open to where there might be holes in the law, and where the government might need to close those up, but we think those would have to be very tightly drafted. … [Otherwise,] the consequence would be to shut down a lot of speech, and it would potentially threaten activities both in church contexts, but also in the home and in other settings as well.”
Webster believes the potential implications for parents could be especially worrisome, “particularly for children who might be asking questions about their sex and their gender [or are] voicing a view that they might be transgender,” Webster said. “If a parent disagrees with that, we think very quickly that could be viewed as emotional pressure in a home setting.”
While not specifically addressing actions carried out by counselors, pastors, or parents, the draft bill text does directly exempt conduct “carried out in the course of providing health care services” from being considered a conversion practice, “unless the person acts in a way that falls far below the standards reasonably expected of a person in their position.”
This stipulation, however, does little to assure leaders at the Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF), said Richard Eves, the group’s public policy coordinator. The Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK, a document signed by more than two dozen counseling and health care organizations, already view any practice seeking to change unwanted sexual orientation as harmful.
“For anyone employed by a public health service in the UK … acting in the way the bill says they are free to act would nonetheless trigger the ‘falling far below reasonably expected standards clause of the exception’ and as such the protections provided by the bill are largely empty,” Eves told CT in an email.
The Association of Christians in Counselling and Linked Professions (ACC), an ecumenical professional organization whose membership includes evangelicals, helped draft the anti-conversion therapy memorandum in 2024. Sue Monchton-Rickett, board chair for the ACC, believes the draft bill aligns with the existing ethical standards for counselors.
“As a counselor, it shouldn’t be your intent to make someone believe or become something else,” Monchton-Rickett said. “The whole concept of client autonomy is probably the most important thing for any counselors.”
As in the UK, the US does not currently have a nationwide law that addresses conversion therapy. However, more than 20 states have adopted legislation banning the practice for people under 18. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that a Colorado law could not prohibit “talk therapy” for minors offered by a Christian counselor.
The UK government says the next stop for its draft bill is a joint committee made up of members of both houses of Parliament that will evaluate the proposal and provide feedback. Webster said the EA will engage with the committee, with a focus on highlighting how the proposal could affect the work of churches and pastors.
Meanwhile, Shaw believes this latest attempt to ban conversion practices would return society to a time when conversations about sexuality were much more guarded.
“This is seen as a progressive move,” Shaw said. “But it seems to be a weirdly regressive move to go back into a culture where some things can’t be talked about safely between consenting adults, like talking about sex and gender.”
