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Gay rights groups are set to hold a demonstration this weekend when a controversial ‘gay cure’ conference comes to the UK.

The three-day Setting Love In Order conference, which is being held in County Down, Northern Ireland, from 19-21 February, will feature three evangelicals who claim that lesbians and gays can be saved from their homosexuality via religion.

This includes Canadian-born ‘ex-gay’ Reverend Mario Bergner, who heads up the US-based Christian group Redeemed Lives.

Also due to take part is Christine Sneeringer, a ‘cured’ ex-lesbian and director of Worthy Creations, which describes itself as “an interdenominational Christian ministry dedicated to helping men and women find freedom from homosexuality and sexual brokenness”.

It claims to be able to communicate the “message of liberation from homosexuality”.

The final guest to speak at the event will be Anglican cleric Reverend Thomas Yap, a chaplain at Essex University.

However, protestors from the UK’s Queer Youth Network (QYN), along with members of the Stop Conversion Therapy Taskforce (SCOTT), plan to hold a demonstration at the conference’s venue, Ballynahinch Baptist Church, on Friday (19 February).

SCOTT, which was set up only a week ago by gay journalist Patrick Strudwick on Facebook, claimed the aim of the protest was to give out the message that “love needs no cure”.

“We want to remind the young LGBT people in the conference who are in midst of so-called treatment that they are healthy, normal, valuable people; that they are perfect how they are; that they don’t need to try to change something that is unchangeable and that they can be happy being who they really are,” he said.

“We also want to bring awareness to the hate-fuelled agenda of these homophobic conversion therapists who ruin lives and make money while doing so.”

QYN spokesman Jack Holroyde said: “Queer Youth Network opposes reparative therapy, as it opposes all intolerance. Trying to change someone’s sexuality or gender identity is both immoral and impossible.”

He added that the purpose of the protest was not to change the minds of those holding the conference, but those ‘undergoing treatment’.

“We must try to show them, through peaceful and respectful means, that being LGBT is acceptable,” he said.

The controversial technique of ‘gay-to-straight’ therapy has been widely condemned by the gay community, as well as science experts.

Groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, have concluded that it is potentially harmful and could result in social harm by spreading inaccurate views about sexual orientation.

Despite this, research in March last year by University College Hospital, London, found that around 17% of psychotherapists and counsellors in the UK had been willing to help lesbian and gay clients try to eliminate their homosexuality.

The United Kingdom for Psychotherapy said it had “deep concern” at this figure.

A spokesman at the time said: “Homosexuality is not an illness and therefore is not curable.”

Five years ago, US-based religious group Love In Action was officially investigated following outcry over the forced ‘conversion therapy’ of a teenager who blogged about the process on MySpace.

It was found to have provided counselling and mental health care without a license.

Posted in: Campaigns & Politics |