Bridges, the former National Party leader and current spokesperson for justice, told The AM Show on Friday banning the often harmful practice of trying to change, suppress, or eliminate someone's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression would pander to what he says is a growing cancel culture. He believes forcing anyone to do something against their will is wrong - including conversion therapy - but he had concerns about making it illegal.

"I personally do have a wider concern. That is freedom of speech. That is in a liberal society, in a tolerant society, we have been very tolerant of different views," he said.

Source: newshub

Conversion therapy is based on a belief that people with diverse sexual orientations or gender identities are abnormal and should be changed so they fit within hetero-normative standards.

The treatment, which has been linked to severe mental health issues, uses psychological or physical interventions in an effort to convert sexual orientation or gender identity. 

San Francisco State University found that "compared with LGBTQ young people who were not rejected or were only a little rejected by their parents and caregivers because of their gay or transgender identity, highly rejected LGBTQ young people were:

8.4x more likely to report having attempted suicide
5.9x more likely report high levels of depression
3.4x more likely to use illegal drugs
3.4x more likely to be at high risk of HIV and STDs

Since Simon Bridges considers laws around preventing these statistics to be in breech of "freedom of speech," we propose that Simon Bridges be subjected to conversation therapy and turned gay. 

We feel it would be best to employ 3-4 members of the LGBT community with the requisite psychological training to develop the rigorous conversion therapy, and then half a dozen other instructors to see it's deployment 24/7.

We propose that the Tauranga taxpayers fund this therapy as a result of consistently putting him in a position voice his barborous brain farts and obviously, Simon himself would have no choice in any of the matters because... freedom of speech.