Michael Davidson, the head of the Core Issues Trust, said his group would seek legal advice if an attempt was made to ban gay conversion therapy. He stated, “People have the right to decide the direction the want to go in… and mandatory gay just won’t work.”

Davidson himself underwent counselling for homosexuality and is now a father of two who has been married for 38 years. He continued, “You cannot force people to be gay just because they have the feelings. I will seek legal advice and we will do the right thing, but we’ll certainly be there and available for people who’ve had enough of having a gay ideology pushed down their throat.”

The Trust describes itself as “a space for individuals to safely explore their sexual attraction fluidity issues.” and works by using  “standard psycho-therapeutic practice”.

As part of his argument, Davidson described how the European convention on Human Rights “made the way open for people to choose the direction they want to go in [so] the government will have to do something about that fact before they ban things.” He continued, “Ex-gay is a protected category under the equality act of 2010. So now the government is discriminating openly against ex-gays – this is a huge problem.”

Backing the conversion therapy ban is Dr Louise Theodosiou of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who said “There’s no evidence base to support this therapy. Your sexuality and your gender ID are inherent and there’s no evidence base and no therapeutic treatment to change what is simply part of someone’s nature.”

Same Sex Marriage

In other Northern Irish news, the UK Minister for Women and Equalities, Penny Mordaunt, said in response to a query from a member of the DUP on the issue of same-sex marriage: “This is an issue in my in tray, I have a huge number of letters written to me every week, but I am not bringing forward any legislation on this matter and other issues that are for Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland people to decide.”  

She added, “We must do everything we can to ensure that those political representatives are able to do that. This House has said that it wishes to resolve those matters, if Northern Ireland doesn’t, that is the position.”