When the SNP government tried to impose state-appointed ‘nannies’ on children across Scotland, the backlash was swift and fierce.

The Named Person scheme was a flawed initiative that – whatever its motivation –invaded privacy and undermined the dignity of families. Rightly, parents believed that raising their children was a matter for them, not bureaucrats or politicians.

In 2016, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling the scheme breached the human right to a private and family life.

Even normally loyal SNP voters had rejected the wildly illiberal intervention – and following the Supreme Court’s decision, then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon finally abandoned it.

You might have thought the government would have taken some lessons from this debacle but you’d be wrong.

At the top of the Scottish Government’s agenda for this new session is another horrifying plan to intrude on how ordinary folk communicate with their children.

What the SNP now proposes is criminalising normal conversations between loving parents and their kids about personality, sex and relationships – because of its obsession with fighting a ‘culture war’.

The pledge – included in the SNP election manifesto – to criminalise so-called conversion practices might sound precisely the sort of thing any live-and-let-live liberal should support.

The phrase suggests images of lesbians and gay men forced, through pressure and coercion, even physical abuse, to renounce their sexuality.

The truth is that conversion practices have already been illegal in the UK, including Scotland, for a long time.

Yet because of years of relentless trans-activism – that almost succeeded in stripping words like ‘woman’ of their ordinary meaning – you might be considered guilty of conversion practices, in SNP-speak, just for failing to affirm someone else’s belief that they have changed or can change their sex.

Parents could be guilty of a crime just for querying the feeling of a daughter or son that they were ‘born in the wrong body’.

A gently-framed question to your trans-identifying child – ‘Why do you think that, pet?’, for example – would be outlawed as dangerous hate speech.

The Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Equality Act 2010 and rules on consent to medical treatment already prohibit attempts to influence someone’s sexual orientation by coercion, insult or degradation.

Why, then, do we need more conversion practices legislation, and why is it such a pressing priority?

Rewind to March, to First Minister’s Questions. In a rare intervention, Joe FitzPatrick MSP sought a promise to legislate a fast-track conversion practices ban in the next parliament.

This was notable because, after he assumed the SNP leadership, Mr Swinney had initially dropped Sturgeon-era plans for a ban.

Yet – perhaps because of pressure from ‘Out for Independence’, an SNP activist group – in answering, Mr Swinney U-turned and gave an ‘absolute commitment’ to introduce a ‘fully inclusive’ ban as part of his first programme for government.

But if conversion practices are already effectively outlawed in Scotland, you might ask, was this not just a pre-election gimmick?

No. What Mr FitzPatrick wanted – and obtained – was a guarantee of rules embracing the full ‘LGBTQIA+’ spectrum, including self-professed ‘queer’ and ‘gender identity’.

On the surface, this might appear a harmless extension of existing rules that have seemingly operated without too much trouble until now. Would such a ‘tweak’ entail any real danger?

Here it is crucial to remember that when activists talk about ‘gender identity’ today, they are no longer referring to a medical condition (gender dysphoria) affecting a handful of people who ‘transition’ via surgery or other clinical interventions.

Rather, they are demanding acceptance of the idea that being ‘male’ or ‘female’ – or both, at the same time – is just a feeling that anyone can choose, which can change and which bears no relation to sex at birth.

As the debacle of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Act laid bare – and Nicola Sturgeon learned to her cost – such a nebulous and counter-intuitive notion has scant support in wider society and, crucially, no proper place in any coherent system of law.

Its practical implications run counter to advances in equality and safeguarding that are crucial, especially for women and girls, and threaten transparency, good governance and public administration – corrupting, for instance, the reliability of identity documents and crime data.

Yet with total disregard for this as well as jaw-dropping civil liberties consequences, gender self-identity – along with equally elusive ideas like ‘asexuality’ – would not just be resurrected but made the basis for new criminal offences under the SNP-Green conversion practices agenda.

Activists and politicians demanding a ban will almost certainly insist that it covers not just organisations like hospitals or religious bodies, but family members.

For now, the Government may wish to deny this. A 2025 consultation claimed a ban would exclude ‘non-coercive parental guidance’, public debate, or neutral medical or psychological support. But who is to decide what is ‘non-coercive’ and ‘neutral’ – a ‘named person’ appointed for every child, perhaps?

In the chamber, John Swinney curiously didn’t touch on this aspect of a ban. But a motion tabled last month supported by Green, SNP and Labour MSPs clearly – and chillingly – demands a ban that extends to ‘all settings’ – which includes home and family, without a doubt.

Twenty years ago, the idea that just talking to your own child might land you in jail would still have been unthinkable to most.

Today, you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to worry it could happen. Under Keir Starmer, after all, dozens have been jailed and thousands arrested for ‘offensive’ tweets.

Public bodies – health trusts, universities, prisons, leisure centres and schools – have thought nothing of requiring women and girls to share intimate spaces with males, and sacking those who dared to object.

Despite a crystal-clear judgment from the Supreme Court last year, many still refuse to change their ways.

UK Government minister Bridget Phillipson procrastinated for almost a year before finally releasing guidance backing up the court on single-sex spaces.

Even now, Labour MPs like Stella Creasy and union leaders are waging campaigns to undermine the ruling.

This hubristic attitude in part explains the seismic backlash at the last elections.

What defies explanation is why progressive politicians would put their remaining electoral credibility on the line for yet another gender dogma-fuelled diversion that is almost certainly doomed to end in legal defeat.

SNP plans to outlaw conversion practices would turn Scotland into a 21st century Stasi state, and they must be dropped.

■ Claire Methven O’Brien is an academic at the University of Dundee. She writes here in a personal capacity.