The Catholic Church in Scotland is taking a position not at all surprising given the global church's history of actually and intentionally practicing conversion therapy, right up until today.

In the United States, for example, people often claim the Roman Catholic Church does not support or endorse conversion therapy, and while that might have been true in the past, it is not true today.

The Archdiocese of Denver is just one prominent Catholic archdiocese that partners with Desert Streams / Living Waters Ministries to train clergy and lay people in a combination of spiritual and psychological techniques to "reduce or eliminate unwanted same-sex attraction."

It is very significant to note that Catholic leaders insist that Desert Streams's practices do not amount to conversion therapy. It's difficult to pin down why church leaders make that claim (because they issue only vague statements), but it seems like the voluntary nature of the counseling is their main argument.

The harm is indisputable. I've written before about Alana Chen, a young woman in Denver who wanted to become a nun and who attended years of Desert Stream style counseling sessions to try to stop feeling sexually attracted to other women — which she had learned would disqualify her from taking religious vows.

She attempted suicide twice, succeeding the second time, after years of counseling failed to turn her straight.

The nuns, priests, and lay counselors who worked with her insist to this day that their attempts to suppress or eliminate her same-sex attraction cannot be characterized as conversion therapy.

Chen's mother has been campaigning to raise public awarenesses, especially angry that her daughter was subjected to this conversion therapy (because let's call it what it plainly is) while she was still in Catholic high school, and without the mother's knowledge, let alone consent.

Here's where things get interesting. Conversion therapy is against the law in Colorado. Conversion therapy was against the law in Colorado when Alana was attending conversion therapy sessions, sometimes multiple times a week.

Colorado's law, however, explicitly exempts religious practitioners of conversion therapy. The Denver archdiocese openly advertises its partnership with Desert Streams, which is an Evangelical Christian organization by the way.

So do several other archdioceses in the US.

From my reading of Scotland's proposed law, if it were in force in Colorado, Desert Streams' practices and similar practices would become illegal, like they already would be if Colorado's existing law did not have such a big loophole for religious practitioners.

So Church opposition to the Scotland law boils down to, 'even though we try to change people's sexual orientation through prayer and counseling, that is not conversion therapy, and even if you think it is, we should still have the right to practice it.'

I have only one comment to their opposition. If they are truly not attempting to change people's sexual orientations or gender identities through counseling, they have nothing to fear from the proposed law. Perhaps Catholic leaders should sit down with Alana Chen's mother and try to come to grips with a harmfulness of conversion therapy even when it's called by another name.