So they tell us, and expect us to ignore our lying eyes:

Lesley Pilkington, the Christian psychotherapist who was the subject of a “sting” operation by a homosexualist activist, has lost her appeal to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

The BACP has informed her that she will lose her senior accredited status, after she was tricked into providing counseling for unwanted homosexuality at the request of a fake client who was secretly an undercover gay activist.

Pilkington was told that she should not have assumed that her client, Patrick Strudwick, wanted to proceed under a Christian therapeutic approach, despite the fact they had both agreed to do so. She was also told that she should not have taken his claim that he was depressed because of his homosexuality at face value.

The BACP also ruled that Strudwick had been a real client, despite his having admitted that he sought Pilkington’s help only as a pretense to entrap her.

The BACP ruling admitted that “in significant ways [Strudwick] deliberately misled her into believing that he was comfortable and accepting of her approach, such as saying Amen at the end of prayers and making statements such as, ‘I’ve become more religious again recently,’ lulling Mrs. Pilkington into a false sense of security.

“In his persistent questioning he manipulated the content of the sessions to a considerable extent in order to meet his own agenda.”

Strudwick told the homosexualist news service Pink News, “We want to root out therapists and psychiatrists who are practising these techniques and ultimately bring an end to them through exposing them, as well as disrupting their meetings. The ultimate aim was to prevent religious groups from offering ‘counselling’ which aims to change sexual orientation.”

Don’t listen to what gay activists and their establishment fellow travelers say. Watch what they do. More from the Telegraph:

“It will definitely close people down, it will definitely engender a climate of fear [says Pilkington].

“There is a wider agenda that diversity and equality, which is supposed to be what our society upholds, is upheld for everyone except for those who have traditional Judeo-Christian values, I think that is very disturbing.

“People need to understand what is happening and think about what sort of society we want.”

And:

The case is the latest in a series which have led those who maintain traditional views on sexuality to claim they are being pushed out of the public sphere.

Last week the Law Society banned a conference on marriage, due to be addressed by a senior High Court judge, from taking place in its London headquarters because it promoted opposition to the Government’s same-sex marriage plans.

Yesterday the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London also cancelled a provisional booking for the same conference saying that it was “not appropriate”.

In Britain, you may advise a man who believes that he is really a woman that he should remove his genitalia, take chemicals to grow breasts, and henceforth live as a woman — and you will be licensed psychotherapist. But if you tell a person who says he is a homosexual and wants your help to change, you will be drummed out of your profession.

We are just starting to learn the cost of discipleship.

UPDATE: Via reader Niall Gooch, here is the conservative Anglican writer Peter Ould’s post on the BACP ruling. He says that there is less here than both liberals and conservatives think. Excerpts:

• BACP dismissed Strudwick’s initial intention of having LP banned for conducting Reparative Therapy. They weren’t really interested in arguments from either side on the validity or otherwise of this kind of counselling approach.
• The real issue was, from BACP’s perspective, the way that LP exhibited very poor counselling practice by not keeping clear personal boundaries, letting sessions over-run and imposing interpretations on her client even when the client denied the events that the counsellor claimed had happened in the client’s life.
• Neither side is willing to accept the above – the liberals seem to think that BACP ruled that Reparative Therapy was wrong (it didn’t) and the conservatives seem to think that LP was victimised for practising Reparative Therapy (she wasn’t).

If Ould is right, then Pilkington was not a good therapist, regardless of her position on homosexuality. It seems that I overreacted, and I appreciate Niall sending me the information to allow me to revise my opinion. Having said that, the actions of the Law Society and the QE2 Conference Center appear to underscore my general point: that traditional Christians are being pushed by liberals out of society not because of the way they treat homosexuals, but because of their opinions.