The Pathways puberty suppression trial … and why it should be cancelled

Dear Wes

As you are aware LabourLGB is the only group within the Labour party representing the interests of lesbians, gay men and bisexual people.

We know that you will have received many letters demanding that the Pathways puberty suppressing trial should not go ahead. We wish to add our voice to that demand.

Our primary reason can be very simply put:

The Pathways puberty suppression trial = conversion practice of young LGB people.

The Cass Report cited a 2016 study, conducted by the Tavistock GIDS clinic itself, which calculated that of their gender incongruent patients: 89% of birth-registered girls were lesbian or bisexual and 82% of birth registered boys were gay or bisexual. For reasons of caution, we will use the lower of these two figures, 82%.

It is known that approximately 3% of the UK population is lesbian, gay or bisexual.

Extrapolating these figures, it means that an LGB young person in the UK is over 147 times more likely to be prescribed puberty blockers in the Pathways study than their heterosexual counterpart. [See table at the bottom of this letter.]

This is not surprising. Most same-sex attracted people are gender non-conforming by definition and it is during our adolescence that we start to realise that we are sexually different from our peers.

This government perversely wishes to proceed with a trial which will disproportionately transition young gay men, lesbians and bisexuals into a sex which they are not. This is surely the very worst form of conversion practice – and yet in a different breath the government states that it wishes to instate a ban on all conversion practices. This trial is precisely that.

Puberty suppressants are promoted as giving the young person ‘time to think’ whilst they work through their gender incongruence. Cass refutes this as almost every young person who takes puberty blockers goes on to take cross sex hormones. They are a stepping stone, not a pause.

The medical impact of the puberty blockers themselves is known to include a loss of bone density and likely impact on brain maturation and development. The inevitable next stage of taking cross sex hormones has multiple medical consequences including sterility, loss of sexual function, the removal of healthy human organs and lifelong medical interventions.

An LGB young person is 147+ times more likely to be subject to these irreversible medical consequences than a straight young person.

This is not just gay conversion therapy, it is also gay sterilisation. A more homophobic medical pathway could not have been designed if one tried.

The last point we wish to make, although we could make many more, is our firm belief that in pursuing this trial the government is proactively generating the next big medical scandal. In a decade or so, maybe much sooner, we are quite clear that the medical and social transition of children will be a major scandal resulting in large claims for compensation. There will be a public enquiry and ministers in power today, yourself included, will be questioned as to why you did such terrible irreversible harm to same-sex attracted gender non-conforming young people. Is this the political legacy you want for yourself?

Adults can choose whatever they wish to do with their lives and bodies as long as they don’t infringe on the rights of others. However, with respect to children, the state has a duty of care and your actions in initiating the Pathways trial is a failure of that duty of care. For LGB children in particular it is a homophobic travesty.

Yours sincerely