On 21st April The Seventh Day Adventist Church plans to bring three speakers from the US to London to run a 5-day conference‘for people that have struggled with same-sex attraction’. This conference will promote the dangerous view that homosexuality is something to be cured. It should not be allowed to take place in the UK.
Speakers include Mike Carducci, Wayne Blakely and Danielle Harrison, who all claim to have been cured of their gay lifestyles and work to encourage others to reject homosexuality. Online videos show Mike Carducci describing gay people as‘sexually defiled’.
Now UKIP candidate Alan Craig has also signed up to speak – he recently claimed same-sex marriage is a ‘democratic disgrace’. The US speakers will use the conference to promote the dangerous idea that being gay is something that can be cured, through so-called ‘conversion’ therapy.
The UK Council for Psychotherapy has described conversion theory as abuse. Just last week President Obama called for an end to ‘gay conversion therapies’, acknowledging the potentially devastating effects on the lives of transgender as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer youth.
And Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: ‘If anything needs curing, it is the outdated belief that being gay is wrong or something to be ashamed of. Sexuality is not an illness but an inherent part of who you are.’ The Government has refused visas for preachers promoting discrimination in the past. Last year the Home Office denied a visa for so-called pick-up artist Julien Blanc to stop him hosting sexist seminars that promoted violence against women.
The Government should give the same protection to gay men and women, and deny the organisers of this conference visas. There should be no place in the UK for people to teach that being gay is something that is wrong and should be cured. Please sign & share this petition to stop this ‘gay cure’ conference.
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Editorial:
NIGRA has written before about the dangers that being gay is something to be cured. President Obama has called for an end to gay ‘conversion’ therapies. We are looking for similar leads from our own local politicians ad indeed other politicians within the UK – we don’t need to be cured, we just need to have equality!
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