What Canada’s Bill C-4 Can & Can’t Do

By Eric Davis - Posted at The Cripplegate:

Much attention has been given to Canada’s recently passed, “Bill C-4.” Reportedly, some 4000 pastors expressed their willingness to protest the bill from pulpits last Sunday. If you are not familiar, among other things, it criminalizes “conversion therapy” of people in homosexuality and transgenderism. I spoke with a long-time Canadian citizen last week who said that the Bill is intended to forbid things like actual physical harm, torture, kidnapping, and assault on children under the guise of “conversion therapy.” Obviously forbidding those things is necessary.

However, the wording of the Bill is not only ominously broad, but seems to target God’s definition of gender and sexuality. For example, the Bill’s Preamble declares that it is a “myth” to believe that “heterosexuality, cisgender gender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions.” Thus, according to Canadian law, God’s good and loving design for marriage sexuality, and gender (Gen 1:26-27, 2:24), is a myth. The Bill goes on to define conversion therapy as, “a practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual; change a person’s gender identity to cisgender; change a person’s gender expression so that it conforms to the sex assigned to the person at birth.”

With the passing of Bill C-4, Canada has criminalized the evangelism, counseling, and shepherding of people in homosexuality and transgenderism. According to the Bill, it is a criminal offense, punishable with up to five years in prison, to be used of God in bringing the incredibly loving news of Christ crucified in our place and risen from the dead to such individuals. Let’s be clear what Canada has done. In passing this Bill, Canada announced, and sanctioned, its hatred for people involved in homosexuality and transgenderism. Conversion to faith in Jesus Christ meets the greatest need of the human race; it is the zenith of God’s love extended to a person. So, to forbid this from individuals is to hate them.

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