Barclays has closed the bank account of the Core Issues Trust, who provide LGBTQ+ conversion therapy. The move was instigated after activists on social media noticed that whilst Barclays participates in many Pride events in the UK, it was also being the bank to a charity providing conversion therapy. “This came up, because I noticed they had a Barclays sort code,” said Mike Buonaiuto, founder and chairman of Shape History, a social impact communications agency. “So I looked up their returns with the charity commission, which shows over 100K of donations. These were being facilitated by the Barclays account, which is funding, LGBT Conversion therapy.” Offering more compassion than the provider of conversion therapy does, Mike added “Core Issues Trust does believe they are helping people, and doing God’s work. I don’t think they are coming at it from a hateful place. Ultimately we just want them to know, the work they are doing, is hurting people.”
Core Issues Trust, a Christian charity based in Northern Ireland, rejects the name conversion therapy for its services that offer “one-to-one support for individuals voluntarily seeking to leave homosexual behaviours and feelings.” Mike Davidson, the founder of Core Issues Trust, told a Christian news site, “ I received two letters from Barclays Bank saying that they would be closing our accounts on September 14 in accordance with their customer agreement I then wrote to them and asked them for an explanation. And they pointed me to a clause in their customer agreement statement, which simply says that either party can terminate the account. So they are giving us no reason.”
Barclays issued the following statement: “We do not comment on individual cases. Our terms and conditions – like other banks – allow us to end a relationship with any customer, provided we give two months’ notice.” As well as being involved with Pride events throughout the UK, Barclays is rated a Star Performer that sits above the Stonewall Top !00 Employers list. The bank actively supports the Barclays Spectrum LGBT workers forum.
Conversion therapy has been widely discredited as a practise that has included shock treatments and physical techniques that have left lasting emotional scars on the participants. Despite this, conversion therapy is currently still legal in the UK. “Gay conversion therapy is absolutely abhorrent, and it has no place in a civilised society and has no place in this country,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. The government has promised to ban it, but not before a study has been undertaken about its prevalence.
In other conversion therapy news, Randy Thomas, a former provider of the barbaric practise in the US, has announced his engagement to his male partner. In an interview he gave to Truth Wins Our, an organisation that campaigns against attempts to turn LGBTQ+ away from their identities, he apologised to people he tired to convert. “To the people who are harmed by the toxic theology and stigmatizing views that I once proposed and promoted, that made you feel alienated or disenfranchised from not only public policy but your own family, I’m very sorry” he said.
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