Parent Prison

Our neighbor to the north has introduced a bill that could put parents in jail if they disagree with the government on the care and well-being of their child. This story is a wake-up call to parents who think something like that could never happen in America.

A bill introduced in the Canadian House of Commons called “Bill C-8” would make it a crime punishable up to five years in prison to “knowingly” cause “a person who is under the age of 18 years to undergo conversion therapy.” The bill applies not just to therapists but “everyone.” That “everyone” includes parents. The bill has the backing of the Canadian Prime Minister.

The language of the bill also states that ‘conversion therapy’ is defined as a “practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behavior.” 

I know of no Christian organization who ministers to those with same-sex attraction that uses ‘conversion therapy’. That’s a secular term harkening back to days when some psychiatrists and psychologists would use radical means of forcing changes in sexual behavior. Christian ministries don’t use conversion therapy because they rely on the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

Christians understand you can’t force change—only God can bring real change, including our sexual desires. This bill would threaten not only parents but churches who preach real redemption.

A Canadian group called Campaign Life Coalition has pointed out what will happen if the bill becomes a law:

If you’re a doctor or counselor, you will no longer be permitted to publicly offer help and healing to struggling homosexuals and transgenders. If you do, it will be considered “advertising conversion therapy”, and you will face up to two years in jail. If you privately offer help, but accept a fee for your help, you will face up to two years in jail for receiving a “material benefit from conversion therapy”.

If you’re a parent with a gender-confused child, you will not be permitted to help that child conform to his/her biological gender. If you seek outside help, or if you counsel that child yourself to find peace with his/her bodily reality, you will be guilty of “causing [a] child to undergo conversion therapy”, and you will go to jail for up to five years. You can do nothing but offer affirmation, artificial hormones, and/or mutilating sex-change surgeries to your child.

If you’re a pastor or church leader who publicly proclaims the power of Christ to transform homosexuals and transgenders, you may be arrested for “advertising conversion therapy”.. If an ex-gay or ex-trans is converted at your church and drops some money in the offering plate, you could be arrested for receiving an indirect “material benefit for conversion therapy”.

This broad legislation, backed by LGBT activists, would literally criminalize what parents may tell their children and, even more importantly, would make illegal the truth we find in Scripture – that God can and does make all things news.

Watch carefully because if this bill is made law in Canada, it’s only a matter of time before this toxic threat spills over our border, eroding away religious liberty and free speech.

Those are my thoughts. I’m Janet Parshall.