CONVERSION practices – and the intended law against them – keep making headlines. The expert advisory group on the matter (of which I was a member) recently issued its report, the Scottish Parliament has taken evidence on it, and in Holyrood, all parties support a law against these practices.

But the matter remains divisive: The Spectator, for one, was less than complimentary about our recommendations – our plans, they said, could lead to “authoritarian enforcement of state values… in ways never before seen by our society”. Strong words. But what is it all about?

Conversion practices are, for the most part, attempts to turn gay people straight or make transgender people cisgender. They are often called conversion therapy. But therapy they are not: they have absolutely no scientific basis (numerous medical organisations have condemned them) and they can cause severe harm.

The methods can include electric shocks, exorcisms and other humiliating acts. They can inflict physical and psychological damage, from feelings of shame to post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts. Their victims are often children.

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So it is not surprising that several states have banned these practices – France, Germany, Malta among them. Scotland is planning a law too (our advisory report is only the first step in this process; there is no bill on the matter yet).

Given the severe harm that these practices can cause, criminalisation did of course play an important part in our recommendations. A criminal law is necessary, because alternatives have not proven effective – there have been warnings against these methods for years, but they still continue.

And they often violate essential human rights: the right to a life free from discrimination, to your own identity, to physical integrity, to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment and torture. Where children are concerned, additional rights come into play, such as every child's right to protection against abuse.

Against that, some critics have claimed a law against conversion practices infringes their own rights – for instance, their freedom of religion (many conversion practices are carried out in faith communities). That seems a strange reversal of victim and perpetrator roles.

It is not LGBT people who cause a problem – they just want to exist. It is not children that cause a problem – they just want the right to their own development, a right we take for granted where their heterosexual and cisgender friends are concerned. It is the providers of conversion practices who try to interfere with the human rights of the victims.

In fact, quite a few religious organisations accept that and have strongly come out against conversion practices. In our own expert group, no fewer than four of the 15 members were representatives of faith groups, including the Church of Scotland.

Nor is freedom of religion absolute. You can believe whatever you want, but that does not give you the right to inflict harm on other people, to endanger their health or to send out messages of hate. David Walker, the Bishop of Manchester, had it right when he said: “If I was to stand up on a soapbox and start spewing out hate speech, the fact that I might begin by saying ‘dear God’ and end by saying ‘Amen’ wouldn’t protect me from the full force of the law.” Nor should it.

And yes, our recommendations seek to protect transgender people too. From a legal perspective it is strange that this question arises at all. In human rights law, it has been accepted for decades that gender identity enjoys the same protection as sexual orientation. The vast majority of existing laws against conversion practices protect transgender people as well as gays and lesbians. Those who seek to split the first three letters of LGBT from the last are rather in the minority and, one should hope, on the wrong side of history.

In criminal law, consent can sometimes be a defence, but that is precisely not the path taken by the report. A defence of consent would open the doors to abuse – there is always the possibility that victims appear to consent when in fact psychological pressure was brought to bear on them.

All the same, what became clear by listening to survivors is that criminal sanctions are not always the most efficient way to deal with the problem. It is for that reason that we include a range of functions as alternatives to prosecution.

Our recommendations suggest the creation of a commission that can bring perpetrators and victims together to try, in an arbitration-like style, to reach an outcome. The commission can also offer targeted education to the providers of conversion practices, an option that seems appropriate where the victims still want to live in a relationship with the providers.

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Another task of the commission is the offer of education and outreach programmes. That is important: very often, conversion practices flourish only because of widespread prejudices and stereotypical views about LGBT matters.

Scotland cannot claim to protect sexual orientation and gender identity while at the same time allowing practices that can cause considerable harm to young LGBT people. The only appropriate way of dealing with that problem is by adopting a comprehensive law that protects potential victims and sends the clear message that conversion practices have no place in this society.

Dr Paul Behrens is reader in law at Edinburgh University and a member of the Expert Advisory Group on Ending Conversion Practices, but is writing in a private capacity.