Ms ROSOL – Thank you, honourable Speaker.
I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.
These words are attributed to Jesus, and they sit behind my contribution to today’s debate on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026. Because what we are talking about today is people who are LGBTQIA+ being able to live full lives as their full selves without anyone else being allowed to force them to change or give up who they really are.
I am someone who attempts to follow Jesus in the way I live. I don’t usually use parliament to platform my faith. That’s not my role in this place and it’s not what I was elected for. But my faith is a central part of who I am. Today, I am speaking about it because the voice of conservative Christianity is loud. At times it is loud in this Chamber, and in this debate and online it has been particularly loud. But that conservatism is not the only voice of Christianity. So, while Christian members of this House are misrepresenting the bill and stoking fear and division about it, it’s important to hear a different Christian perspective that counters the false narrative of fear and judgement. There are many progressive Christians who recognise the importance of this bill and are entirely comfortable with it. That’s because it is possible to hold a Christian faith and accept and value different and diverse people just as they are, without the need to change them or make them conform to one’s own version of ‘rightness’.
Jesus did it. Jesus embodied radical acceptance. I would argue that the whole biblical story is one of radical acceptance. Jesus hung out on the fringes of society with people who were marginalised at that time: lepers, the poor, children, women – women who bled even – people with disabilities and what we would probably consider today to be mental illnesses, people from other countries and ethnic groups. Jesus never shied away from people who were looked down on or shunned. Quite the opposite; he reached out to them, touched them, included them. Jesus was scandalous, particularly in the eyes of the religious leaders of the time. He saw his purpose as upsetting the order of things, turning that order upside down even, and people loved him for it. They flocked to him. The religious leaders, not so much. They plotted to kill him instead.
These stories of Jesus’ radicalness have become so familiar they’re no longer shocking and their significance has been lost. The scandal of what Jesus did has been sanitised over the years and even co-opted to maintain order. Many Christians have forgotten just how radical Jesus’ actions were, and we’re seeing the result of that in the debate here today.
I apologise to those who don’t follow the Christian faith, it’s not my intention to convert any of you. But it’s important to put on the record that many of the Christian views being espoused here today aren’t shared by all Christians, and I would argue they aren’t an accurate reflection of the real message of Christianity. That message has always been about love and inclusion, and a god who wants people to live their lives to the full.
Sadly, for too many LGBTQIA+ people, that is not their experience. Instead, they often suffer high levels of mental ill-health and suicidality. A 2024 La Trobe University report found that close to 80 per cent of LGBTQIA+ adults have had suicidal ideation during their lifetime, with the figure a terribly high 90 per cent for LGBTQIA+ young people. Almost 50 per cent of adults and 63 per cent of young people reported recent suicidal ideation. For comparison, only 3.3 per cent of general community members in Australia report recent suicidal ideation. A total 74 per cent of LGBTQIA+ young people have self-harmed at some point in their lives.
Trans and gender-diverse people have poorer mental health and social wellbeing. The risk factors for this include experiencing verbal, physical or sexual harassment, among other things. LGBTQIA+ people are suffering as a result of how other people treat them, and we know that suffering is made even worse when they go through formal conversion practices. Then they are three to four times more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder, and three to four times more likely to attempt suicide than those who have not been through conversion practices.
Let’s be clear, conversion practices are not some net positive or even neutral, innocuous intervention. They are actively harmful to LGBTQIA+ people, and of course they are. Conversion practices are rooted in conservative evangelicalism that sees its main purpose in the world as converting people. They come from a place of judging LGBTQIA+ people for who they are, viewing them as sinful and defective and in need of change or conversion.
There’s no sugarcoating this. During the lead-up to this debate, I have had people tell me homosexuality is a sin. It’s a common conservative Christian belief I am well familiar with from growing up in the church. Essentially, opposition to conversion practices is because some people believe it is a sin to be homosexual or lesbian, or trans or any one of the other variations in gender and sexuality.
It’s based on a handful of Bible verses that conservatives interpret a particular way. But their interpretation doesn’t take into account the cultural and religious practices of the time the Bible was written, and it isn’t the only way to understand these passages. It certainly isn’t something that is agreed upon within the church. It doesn’t take much digging to find theology that deeply examines the key Bible passages used by conservative Christians to condemn homosexuality, and helps contextualise them and understand the meaning they had when written.
Words written thousands of years ago in a different language and in a different culture held a different meaning to the words they’ve been directly, and sometimes poorly, translated into in this time and culture. Many now recognise that the Bible passages repeatedly used to condemn homosexuality originally had more to do with condemning sexual exploitation, abuse and idolatry, and little to do with who slept with who in loving relationships.
Too many Christians are obsessed with what other people do with their genitals, and a lot of it stems from bad theology. Seriously, what does it matter what other people do? Are other people harmed by it? No. Are they responsible for it? No. Will they catch it if they don’t eradicate it? Definitely not. It’s lazy, simplistic and, frankly, faulty by biblical interpretation to selectively pick out words from ancient texts, plonk them down in today’s world and think they can be directly applied to our lives without any attempt to understand their original meaning or contextualise that meaning for the here and now.
It’s not just lazy theology, it’s downright destructive, and countless LGBTQIA+ people have been harmed in the conservative Christian crusade to convert them from who they really are. Being gay or lesbian, or trans, or anyone of the other sexual orientations and gender identities, is not a sin and it is not a choice. LGBTQIA+ people are not broken. They are not sick and they are not dysfunctional. They do not need to be fixed. They are who they are – beautifully, naturally, wonderfully made, and worthy of acceptance and inclusion, just as they are. Attempting to change, suppress or eradicate the sexual identity or gender of someone who is LGBTQIA+ is an attack on who they are. It’s an assault on the core of their being and a threat to their identity. Conversion practices are toxic and harmful. They hack away at LGBTQIA+ people’s sense of self and result in shame, and they have to stop.
You might think I’m exaggerating about Christianity or being excessively harsh and judgmental of it, but I grew up in the church, experienced the judgment and shame, and carry the scars today. I was repeatedly prayed over by my father, not because I was LGBTQI+ but because I didn’t meet up to his version of perfection based on his interpretation of the Bible. I went to church and tried desperately to be good enough and please the pastors. I confessed every Sunday to whatever sin was being highlighted in the pulpit that week that was quite honestly just normal human behaviour. I went up the front for prayer, hoped to fall under the power of the Holy Spirit and constantly worried about whether I was really saved. I know the power of the church to shame people, control them and crush them.
My experiences took years to work through, but they are nowhere near as harmful as what LGBTQIA+ people suffer in conversion practices. I’ve received emails, some of which have already been mentioned here today, outlining what people endured in conversion therapy conducted by churches and parachurch organisations. The impact has been damaging and long-lasting.
Bronwyn described being forced to undergo hypnotherapy as a 17-year-old when her parents attempted to change her sexuality. She felt sick, drained and exhausted after every session and was left feeling what she called ‘less than’. At 48, she is still undergoing therapy to help her recover from the damage conversion practices did to her. Reenie was sent to what she was described as a ‘Jesus boot camp’, and as we’ve heard already:
For nine months I was completely isolated in a place where same-sex attraction was treated as though it were an illness and my treatment was to get God in and get gay out.
They made us march around the perimeter of the property every morning, confessing out loud all of our sins, and made us believe that we had actually chosen to be gay.
I can’t remember exactly how many times they attempted exorcisms on me, but they prayed for my soul like I was headed straight to hell, all because I loved a woman. [tbc]
The impact on Reenie was devastating:
I became really unwell. I went to sleep praying that I would never wake up. I would wake up and sob because God hadn’t taken me through the night. I lost my joy, my peace, my will to live. Everything became pointless. The hard truth is that conversion practices very nearly killed me, and I know it’s the same for most of the other survivors out there. [tbc]
Glenn described going through decades of conversion practices in Christian organisations. He said:
There is a core power difference being exercised where the person who struggles with their sexual identity in this environment feels their sin is ever before them, change is elusive, that they are powerless, helpless, hopeless, despairing as time goes on, and an abomination, a failure, wicked, and all the labels that are associated with pursuing what I now believe is a futile exercise. [tbc]
The common thread through these stories is that each grew up in a Christian family. Churches or Christian ‘ministry’ was the vehicle for conversion practices and each tried desperately hard to fit, conform, convert. Instead, they were still who they were, they still loved who they loved, and they were all crushed by the judgment, lack of acceptance and practices they went through.
I’ve spoken with Christian parents in Launceston who have made the hard decision to leave their church because of the stance taken on trans people. Their child was trans. They saw the damage being inflicted on them by the teachings and actions of the church and I won’t forget what they said to me. ‘It was either leave the church or lose our child’, and by ‘lose’ they meant they feared their child would suicide. I know how damaging practices in the church can be and that is why, as a Christian, I’m compelled to speak in support of the banning of conversion practices. The church should be a place of love, care and healing. Too often it is not, and that needs to change.
Speaker, I want to comment on submissions made by the Archdiocese of Hobart over the last two to three years because they highlight the real reason conservative Christians want this bill to fail. Their submission this year said this:
The Archdiocese of Hobart does not support coercive, abusive or degrading practices directed towards people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is open to engage in constructively where there are genuine gaps in Tasmanian law which leave people vulnerable to harmful practices, and about how those gaps should be addressed. The broad concern is that this proposed bill goes considerably further by creating serious uncertainty about conduct which ought to remain lawful. Religious institutions and their agencies must be able to profess, teach and practise their beliefs. Parents should not feel the threat of prosecution if their conversations with their children are done in good faith and from a place of conscientious belief and conviction.
This is quite different from a media release issued by the archdiocese in response to the government’s draft bill to ban conversion practises in early 2024. There, the Archdiocese of Hobart said:
\… although the Government’s draft bill includes exemptions for religious beliefs and the right of parents to guide their children, the basic view underpinning the legislation is opposed to biological reality and to Catholic teaching on human sexuality.
“We cannot support this kind of legislation which is based on a lie about the human person and human sexuality,”
They go on to say:
\… it is also unjust for the Government to seek to impose restrictions on public expression with regard to topics like the morality of human sexuality of which reasonable individuals acting in good faith can disagree.
and:
same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria ‘can only be regarded as involving a disordering or a discongruence between the reality of the body and one’s experienced desire’.
Clearly, the Catholic Church consider LGBTIQA+ a sin, a moral failing against the created order. They helpfully named this up for us in their 2024 media release, and their position is reflective of conservative Christian beliefs about gender identity and sexual orientation more broadly.
When we hear members of this House speaking against banning conversion practices, this is the belief they are channelling – only they know they can’t really say that because it’s anathema in the times that we live in, so they zoom out from the nub of their opposition to the bill and mask it by making it all about their fear of unintended consequences. They can’t say they support conversion practices and want them to continue, so they mislead and sow doubt to gather support from people who would not support them if they were honest about their true beliefs and intentions.
We know from the statistics in Victoria that in five years of operation there have been zero prosecutions, zero investigations and 16 reports – an average of just three per year under their conversion banning legislation. Targeted education has been provided twice. Fears of unintended consequences have proven to be unfounded. Every email I received claiming this bill would criminalise prayer, normal parenting, conversations discussing religious beliefs and values and doctrines, or pastoral care told me its author hadn’t read the bill, because it clearly does none of these things.
This bill will not mandate gender affirming care. Healthcare is explicitly identified as a matter to be handled within existing frameworks. It will not prevent exploration. It only captures attempts to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity, not help them explore it. When it comes to prayer, there is no way that it is prohibited by this bill -unless the prayer involves sitting someone down, telling them their sexual orientation or agenda identity is morally flawed or a mental illness, and attempting to pray away the gay. Then it’s a conversion practice and the difference is pretty clear.
Parents can still have a conversation with their child and tell them what they think about sexual orientation and gender identity. None of that changes with this bill, because the bill prohibits conversion practices, plain and simple. It defines a conversion practice as targeting a person based on their sexual orientation or gender identity for the purpose of changing, suppressing or eradicating their sexual orientation or gender identity. The Pride Circle of the Uniting Church in Australia say this:
It’s time we learnt there is no substance to these fear campaigns. Religious freedom is as strong as ever in Australia even though we have marriage equality. Parental rights are no different even though we have school inclusion programs. The sky has not fallen in. Our God is a God of love, not fear. Our Christ is a Christ of the outcast, not the already safe and comfortable. That is why we strongly support conversion practice legislation and urge you to do the same.
The bottom line is this: being LGBTIQA+ is not a sin. Sexual orientation and gender identity do not need converting. Conversion practices are harmful and LGBTIQA+ people are living with the terrible impacts of these practices on their health and mental health. This bill seeks to protect LGBTIQA+ people from harm by banning conversion practices. It does not stop people holding a belief, sharing their belief, suggesting other people should agree with their belief, praying, parenting or teaching a doctrine. It simply makes it illegal to engage in conversion practices.
It is time – time to respect, value and accept people in the LGBTIQA+ community for who they are; time to prevent harm; time to ban conversion practices. I urge my fellow colleagues in this place to vote for this bill and pave the way for LGBTIQA+ people to live their lives to the full.
