Exercising caution over Stonewall’s exorcism claims
Nearly one in three people in Britain who identify as LGBTQ+ say they’ve been exorcised, assaulted, prayed over, or excluded from social events – according to research commissioned by Stonewall. The poll, carried out by Opinium, apparently uncovered widespread experiences of “conversion practices”, with findings released as the government prepares to unveil new draft legislation on a conversion therapy ban.
The survey of 2,000 “members of the LGBTQ+ community” found that 31% claimed to have experienced efforts to change or suppress their sexual orientation or gender identity. Another 10% said they had undergone an exorcism – a figure faithfully reported by the BBC’s LGBT & Identity reporter, Josh Parry.
Some of the most striking figures relate to trans-identifying people. Among this group, 31% said they had been told to ingest purifying substances, 30% claimed to have experienced an exorcism, and 38% reported exclusion from family or community as a form of conversion practice.
The generational skew is also striking. Among 18–34-year-olds, 23% claimed they had been physically assaulted in an attempt to change their sexual orientation or gender identity, compared to 8% of people aged over 65. Nearly one in five (18%) of the youngest groups say they’ve suffered “‘corrective rape’ or sexual assault”. Yet no-one in the oldest category reported such experiences.
The sheer scale of the claims also raises questions. Are we really to believe that nearly a third of trans-identifying people in the UK – a country where official policy and public messaging have leaned heavily towards affirmation – have been exorcised in the last five years? Either society has become drastically more violent and bigoted in a single generation, or something else is going on.
A closer look at the methodology gives us a clue. While the survey breaks down responses by “trans man”, “trans woman”, and “non-binary”, it does not record respondents’ actual sex. That’s not a trivial omission. For example, the data suggest that 3% of gay men and 5% of bisexual men were subjected to sexual assault in the past year. If taken at face value, this would suggest a hidden epidemic of women preying on men to make them straight – something that defies both statistics and common sense.
Much of this hinges on the amorphous category LGBTQ+.This framing is not only potentially alienating to those who are same-sex attracted but reject gender ideology, leading to self-exclusion, but is also so broad as to be meaningless. For example, people who identify as “asexual” are included. Stonewall currently has a campaign to raise awareness of what it calls “acephobia”, defining “ace” as “an umbrella term used specifically to describe a lack of, varying, or occasional experiences of sexual attraction.” Stonewall cited the experience of an ace-identifying woman whose husband “raised the lack of intimacy” in their marriage. After seeking advice from her pastor and attending therapy, she gave up, concluding: “Being ace is not a medical problem”. Examples like this likely fall into the alarming-sounding 12% who have attended “pseudo-scientific counselling sessions“ and the 17% who claim to have been “prayed over” in an attempt to change their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Whether one views not wanting sex as an identity, a preference, or potentially a symptom of a medical or psychiatric issue, is not the point. What such examples demonstrate is that the data are muddled and unreliable – the product of vague questions, opaque definitions, and a heavy dose of activist framing. “Conversion practices” is a capacious term that lumps together very different things: physical assault (already illegal), sexual violence (also illegal), prayer, and even feelings of social exclusion.
This isn’t robust social science; it’s a push poll designed to produce headlines and political momentum. Stonewall has used the findings to renew its call for a “fully inclusive” ban on conversion practices – one that covers gender identity and includes children.
Simon Blake, Stonewall’s CEO, described the findings as evidence of “untold suffering” and warned that “each day conversion practices remain legal, they continue to cause harm”. But the picture painted by the data is less of real-world violence than of narrative capture – a redefinition of “harm” so expansive it could cover anything from being prayed for to not being invited to brunch.
What’s more, the data seem to invert historical reality. Older generations – people who actually lived through Section 28, persecution from the police and “queer-bashing”– report far fewer instances of abuse than the generation raised on pronouns and Pride flags. Either we’re meant to believe that we are living in times of unprecedented bigotry, or we need to start asking serious questions about how these experiences are being defined, reported and weaponised.
None of this is to deny that coercive or abusive practices have existed, or that they should be addressed. But when we are talking about new laws that will affect therapists, teachers, doctors, and parents – laws that could make it criminal not to affirm a child’s belief that they are trans – we need evidence, not ideology.