British-Nigerian minister, Kemi Badenoch has told
MPs in the UK that there is 'strong evidence' young people who are gay are
being convinced they are transgender instead.
The UK Equalities Minister said that children may act
in a 'gender non-conforming' way at an early age, long before they realise
they are attracted to people of the same sex.
But this can be 'misinterpreted' as a sign they want to
identify as the opposite sex and lead to them receiving irreversible medical
treatment.
In a letter to the Women and Equalities Committee, she cited
a string of studies backing up the claim she made last year that gender
treatment is 'a new form of conversion therapy', and there is 'almost an
epidemic' of young gay people 'being told they are trans'.
She told MPs: 'I committed to providing further
details on the evidence that children likely to grow up to be gay might be
subjected to conversion practices on the basis of gender identity rather than
their sexual orientation.
'Both prospective and retrospective studies have found a
link between gender non-conformity in childhood and someone later coming out as
gay.'
Mrs Badenoch said the 'strong link' has been known about for
'many years', including in a Dutch study from 1999 which stated: 'Not
all children with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) turn out to be transsexuals
after puberty... prospective studies of GID boys show that this phenomenon is
more strongly related to later homosexuality than to later transsexualism.'
A 'clear pattern' was found in a 2012 report, she said,
showing that in follow-up studies a 'much larger proportion' of gender
dysphoric children were found to 'have a homosexual sexual orientation'.
German clinicians also noted in 2008 that 'early hormone
therapy may interfere with the patient's development as a homosexual'.
They cautioned: 'This may not be in the interest of patients
who, as a result of hormone therapy, can no longer have the decisive
experiences that enable them to establish a homosexual identity.'
Mrs Badenoch also quoted data from the NHS's
controversial Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), showing older patients
were 'overwhelmingly not heterosexual'.
Analysis of 218 people referred to the gender clinic in one
year found that 67.7 per cent of female patients were 'recorded as being
attracted to other females only' while 21.1 percent were bisexual and only 8.5
per cent heterosexual.
She also quoted interviews by former GIDS staff who said
they feared the clinic was performing 'conversion therapy for gay kids' and
'making them straight'.
She also highlighted overall figures for GIDS showing its
referrals soared from just 50 a year in 2009 to 5,000 in 2021-22.
'As I said in my evidence session, this trend
represents an explosion in the numbers of referrals.' Her remarks will be seen
as a riposte to a Labour MP on the select committee who accused her of likening
'young people coming out as trans to the spread of a disease'.
