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They were dotted throughout the London Pride march. On all different types of banners and placards, some very professionally produced and others homemade but often more pithy. All of them demanding the same thing: BAN CONVERSION THERAPY! Every time I saw one, I would smile, partly to show my support and gratitude to the person carrying the banner, and partly to myself. To see the dangerous threat of conversion therapy so openly denounced by the LGBTQ community was so reassuring. It was on the tube ride home, that the thought struck me, why the hell hasn’t it already been banned? Weren’t we promised that it would be? Conversion therapy is described as “an attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity”. It has been deeply discredited and shown to be extremely dangerous and damaging to those who have experienced it. Back in July 2018, Theresa May promised to ban it. In July 2020, Boris Johnson said it was "absolutely abhorrent" and "[had] no place in this country". In May 2021, it was announced in the Queen’s Speech that the government planned to ban it, but only after consultation with “key stakeholders”. Then in March 2022, Johnson dropped any plans for a ban. But the next month, April 2022, plans for a ban were back on. In June this year, we were told that all it needed was for Rishi Sunak to sign the bill and the ban would be law, but it is now July and he still hasn’t signed it. What is happening? Why is the government dragging its feet? Is it that difficult to ban conversion therapy? Sasha Misra, associate director of communications at Stonewall, said: “Five years and four prime ministers later and we are still waiting for this ban to come to fruition. In the meantime, lives have continued to be ruined while these damaging attempts to ‘cure’ LGBTQ+ of being themselves remain legal.” But the ban would only be a partial ban and a very weak one, under the government’s proposals. It wouldn’t cover trans people and wouldn’t apply to anyone who “consented” to it. These is such huge loopholes and render the ban useless. The person only has to agree to it and/or say they are confused about their gender and the conversion therapy is legal. Conversion therapy preys on people who are vulnerable, confused about their sexuality and/or their gender, and this ban will do nothing to protect them. I survived conversion therapy, as a late teenager, but it left me very damaged. My twenties were marred by PTSD, depression, suicide attempts and an inability to form relationships. I lost ten years of my life to the harm it caused me. Yet this ban would not have protected me because I contacted the ex-gay organisation and agreed to be “cured” by them, because I was so afraid of my sexuality back then. Therefore, it could be argued I consented to it. But my opinion alone, of the harm it does, should not be what policy is based on. It should be based on the evidence and the evidence against conversion therapy is huge. D Haldeman identified that it causes poor self-esteem, depression, social withdrawal, and sexual dysfunction. Anna Forsythe’s research found that survivors of conversion therapy experienced 50% more mental health problems, twice as much depression, 25% more substance use, 50% higher rate of attempted suicide and 67% more experienced moderate to severe injury from those attempts, than someone who hasn’t been through it. But these are not the only, scientific evidence of the harm it does, and how useless it is. Here is a list of scientific and healthcare professional articles that identify the harm conversion therapy causes. References that conversion therapy is harmful: Beckstead & Morrow (2004) Haldeman (2002) Shidlo & Schroeder (2002) Forsythe, Pick, Tremblay, et al (2022) Human Rights Campaign (2021) American Psychological Association (2009) American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2018) American Medical Association (2019) American Psychiatric Association (2018) Committee On Adolescence (2013) American Counselling Association (2017) United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (2019) Independent Forensic Expert Group (2020) Higbee, Wright & Roemerman (2022) Wolf & Platt (2022) Campbell & Rodgers (2023) References that conversion therapy doesn’t work: Beckstead (2012) Adelson (2012) American Psychological Association (2009) American Psychiatric Association (2000) American Psychological Association (2013) Jacob (2015) Drescher, Schwartz, Casoy et al (2016) Haldeman (1994) Conine, Campau & Petronelli et al (2021) Kinitz, Salway, Dromer E, et al (2021) This is by no way a comprehensive list of the evidence. It is the result of only a brief literature search, of only a few databases, carried out on a Sunday afternoon, on my laptop. A much more in-depth literature search would produce a much more comprehensive and much longer list of evidence. All the above references are from peer reviewed publications or professional bodies. Countries that have banned conversion therapy Brazil in 1999, Samoa in 2007, Fiji in 2010, Argentina in 2010, Ecuador in 2014 Malta in 2016. Uruguay in 2017, Spain in 2017 Taiwan in 2018 Germany in 2020, Queensland State in Australia 2020, followed by Victoria State, Chile, India and Canada in 2021, Since 2013, 20 states, two territories, and multiple local counties or municipalities in the United States. If we have so much evidence and so many other countries before us have banned it, why hasn’t the British government already done so? I am sure someone will make the argument that legislating to ban conversion therapy isn’t easy. My reply would always be, it’s the government’s job to write and implement difficult legislation, and to do it well. They have all the resources to do it. But this government is now deliberately dragging their feet over this. I wonder if this is part of their “war on woke” attitude? This government’s strategy to blame and attack unpopular minorities, such as trans people, immigrants, and anyone else the Daily Mail newspaper doesn’t like, to try and appeal to their right-wing base voters. Whatever the reason, the government’s reluctance/refusal to ban conversion therapy speaks volumes about how little they value LGBTQ people. I do know that if there was a quack therapy that tried to “cure” Evangelical Christians of their believes, but failed to do so and left its victims very damaged, or dead from suicide, then Evangelical Christians would be screaming for it to be banned. Would this government be so slow to ban it? Drew. PS. I do not like the term “conversion therapy”. It gives this dangerous and completely unethical bullying a veneer of respectability, implying that it is somehow medical/clinical. I prefer to call it “ex-gay”, which tells us how impossible it is.

It was London Pride last weekend and again we attended it. It has been a tradition in my life ever since I first moved to London. It is “our day” when LGBTQ people can celebrate out and openly on London’s streets. This year again I noticed a trend that I first saw at last year’s London Pride, the teenager attending their first Pride, but they aren’t alone. I saw fourteen, fifteen and sixteen year olds so obviously on their first Pride and accompanied by their mothers. The mother was dressed up for the day, wearing rainbow flags in her hair, or a rainbow garland around her neck, or a rainbow t-shirt, or a rainbow waistcoat, or a rainbow skirt, or a rainbow flag draped around her shoulders, or all of the above. And she’s having so much fun. She hasn’t had so much fun since her uncle married his boyfriend. And walking a few paces behind her is her child, who wanted to go to their first Pride, wearing that very familiar teenage expression, “Mum! You’re such an embarrassment! You’re so uncool!” I went to my first Pride March when I was twenty-two. I’d moved to London just under a year before. I’d made the move so I could finally be gay, something I’d never felt I could fully do back home in Liverpool. There I was at my first Pride March and I almost couldn’t believe what I saw. Everywhere I looked were LGBTQ people, so many of them, all looking so different and looking so happy. It was one thing to be surrounded by gay man in a club, but this was different because it was out on London’s streets and I was surrounded by LGBTQ people. That was back in 1988 and the London Pride March was a very different thing. London, and Britain, was a very homophobic place. Homosexuality had only been partly decriminalised, but only partly, and there were no protections against homophobia in law. Politicians, religious leaders and tabloid newspaper editors were using AIDS to attack and punish the LGBTQ community. And the march was much more of a protest march, there were a lot of campaign banners and many of us chanted as we marched. The route was lined by police offices, as if they were protecting the “normal” people from us. And the only people wearing drag were men, the women were almost uniformly dressed in jeans and t-shirts. With all that, I loved every moment of it. It was our day, I could be openly gay on the streets of London without fear, without having to look over my shoulder, without worrying about being too gay and drawing attention to myself. I was also surrounded by “my people”, or so it felt. As much as I enjoyed that day, it never occurred to me to invite my parents to it, I didn’t even tell them I had been to it. They were the last people I would have imagined there. We had such an awkward relationship with my sexuality, I’d come out to them, but after their initial shock, they had ignored it. I’ve been to almost all London Pride Marches since then, but never with my parents. The first change I noticed, somewhere in the mid-1990s, was that more and more women were dressing up in costumes and even drag, and with that slowly came a change in the atmosphere there too. Slowly, by degrees, it changed from a protest March, us being defiantly out on the streets, into a celebration parade, a joyous celebration of our difference. The slogans on the banners changed from cries of protest into ones of celebration, and the humour there increased. Now London Pride is such a celebration of the diversity of LGBTQ life, this year there was a group of LGBTQ farmers on the march, and people are there to have a good time. I love it. I love the spirit of celebration. I still hear people complaining about the change in London Pride, looking back to the protest march it was. To me, I welcome this change, it is a sign of the change that has happened in society at large. Since my first Pride March we have seen such changes in Britain. LGBT couples can now adopt, we have equal marriage, the Equality Act has given us so many protections, Combination Therapy has changed the landscape of HIV & AIDS, and the tabloids are now pillared if they use blunt homophobia the way they did. But we don’t live in a LGBTQ utopia. We are experiencing an almost tsunami of Transphobia, nasty and many of it old and illogical, this Government still hasn’t banned Conversion Therapy, five years after they said they would, and internationally we are seeing so many countries enacting homophobic laws. We still have a long way to go, and London Pride reflected that too, this year. There were many banners and signs supporting Trans Rights, the float for Diva magazine brightly proclaimed their support for Trans Rights. Many marchers supported Black Lives Matter too. There was a sit-down protest outside the Ugandan High Commission in Trafalgar Square, against Uganda’s obscene anti-gay laws. And so many banners demanded that Conversion Therapy is banned now. Those first years I attended London Pride, the only parents I saw there were a small group marching as parents of lesbian and gay children (that’s what they called themselves) and the very occasional couple of same-sex parents. This year I saw so many parents attending with their LGBTQ children, and not just teenagers but adult children too. London Pride has evolved and changed over the years and that is only a good thing because it keeps it relevant, unlike the small number of homophobes who tried to protest against it. Drew

Something New Every Year (July 2019) The other Saturday, I did something I’d never done before. At my age, it isn’t often I get to do something as new as this, but the other Saturday I marched in the London Pride March openly as a nurse. I’ve marched in the Pride March many times before, with friends, with LGBT organisations, but never before openly as a nurse. This year, a group of staff in my Trust’s LGBT Network organised to take part in the London Pride March and we had the blessing of our Trust. On Pride Saturday, all of us in bright yellow tee-shirts (with our Trust’s name and logo emblazoned across them) and all wearing our security bracelets, we took our place in the march. We were LGBT staff and our straight allies gathered around our placard that announced who we were, Whittington Health Staff Inclusion Network. Marching in Pride openly as NHS staff was one thing, but the reaction we received from the crowds along the route was amazing. People smiled and waved at us, they clapped and cheered us, people were so happy to see us. All we were doing was marching. The NHS is still not an inclusion or safe place for many LGBT patients. A recent Stonewall report found one in four LGBT people have witnessed homophobia from NHS staff and one in seven of them have avoided treatment because of fear of discrimination from NHS staff (1). Yet how much has the NHS done to reverse this situation? Very little. This isn’t the first report by Stonewall, there have been many over the years, all reading the same, and yet the NHS does so little to change this. In the four years between 2014 and 2018, LGBT hate crime rose by 144% (2) and yet the NHS is still not a safe place for LGBT patients. What my colleagues and I did at Pride was not a great step forward and for most of us did not require a large amount of effort, yet the reaction of the crowd was almost breath-taking. Those people cheered us on because they were happy and grateful for us being there, and our presence told them that our Trust was working towards providing care in a safe place. Taking part in London Pride fired all of us up, our WhatsApp group has gone crazy, and we are already making plans for next year’s Pride and getting off the ground an LGBT Staff Network. We need to work hard at making our Trust an inclusive organisation, a safe place for all, but we are starting. We talk a lot about person-centred care but are we just paying lip service to it when so many LGBT people do not feel able to be open with us about themselves for fear of discrimination? Every long journey starts with a single step, but who would have thought that step would be marching at Pride? So why aren’t more NHS Trusts taking part in the different Pride celebrations around the country? Our presence would say so much to the LGBT people there. (This was originally published as a comment piece in Nursing Standard magazine) Drew Payne Find out more about this short blog series here

Marching with Pride (July 2008) On Saturday (5th July 2008) it was London LGBT Pride and, with bright sunny weather, my partner and I had a wonderful day there. The highlight, as always, was the Pride March. People were laughing and smiling, enjoying walking through central London together and openly. The march was headed by groups representing many of our uniformed and emergency services. First came lesbian, gay and bisexual members of the navy, army and RAF, all in their uniforms. Next followed the police and British transport police, again in uniform. Members of the fire service, complete with a bright red fire engine, followed them. Finally came members of the ambulance service and St John’s Ambulance service. It was a very impressive sight and the crowds cheered and clapped as they passed. But I was left with one thought, where are the nurses? True, there was an NHS float, much later in the march, but it was a general float. It didn’t have the impact of a group of nurses or healthcare professionals marching with the others at the head of the march. But why do nurses need to march at Pride? Still so many lesbians and gay men have little trust in healthcare. A recently published survey, from Stonewall, on lesbians’ experiences of healthcare, found that half of the women taking part had had negative experiences of healthcare in the last year (1). An earlier study found that 50% of gay men were too uncomfortable to come out to their GPs (2). We have a long way to go, but nurses marching at Pride will help along that path. Previously the police had a very poor relationship with the lesbian and gay community, there was no love lost on either side. Now, while still far from perfect, there has been a great improvement in police attitudes and an increased trust in the police in recent years. This has been achieved through a lot of different activities but not least of these has been the presence of police officers marching at Pride (not just “policing” it). The presence of those police officers has given confidence in the police. Nurses marching at pride could give so many lesbians and gay men far more confidence in healthcare and nursing as a profession. Nurses may not be able to march in uniform, with the duty of care that a nurse’s uniform carries, but the presence of nurses marching at Pride, even not in uniform, will go towards building up lesbians’ and gay men’s confidence in healthcare. Who will march though? Well, people like me. (This was originally published as a comment piece in Nursing Standard magazine) Drew Payne Find out more about this short blog series here

The next six blogs form a short series, which I have called “With Pride” because they were all originally comments pieces, on LGBT rights and healthcare, published in the Nursing Standard magazine, and I am proud of having written them. For nearly fifteen years, on and off, I have written comment pieces for Nursing Standard and a lot of them were on LGBT healthcare. These pieces chart changes in attitudes, but they also had recurring themes and one was responding to a very disturbing piece of research, reading which just left me frustrated and angry, I felt nothing had changed. The first and last pieces here almost become companion pieces though they were written eleven years apart. The first one asks a question and the last answers it. I am posting here the original versions, with their original titles and all the links to their source material; they were edited for publication but mostly this involved reducing their word count. The last one was written in 2019, we had every intension of following that one up the next year, but history had other ideas. There were no London Pride marches in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID pandemic. This year was the first one since then and fate has intervened again for me. I want to say “happy reading”, but some of these pieces are on uncomfortable subjects. I am very grateful to the Nursing Standard for giving me the opportunity to write these pieces and to be able to shout above the crowd. Find out more about London Pride here. Drew Links to the other With Pride blogs: With Pride July 2008 With Pride January 2015 With Pride August 2015 With Pride January 2017 With Pride July 2019