In a case with long-term ramifications for the United States, Maltese Christian Matthew Grech has been charged with violating the Mediterranean country’s so-called “conversion therapy” ban for simply sharing his personal testimony of Christian conversion from an LGBT lifestyle in a broadcast interview. After three years of litigious persecution, the verdict in Grech’s case was postponed on Thursday at the last minute, and for the second time.
Grech was accused in 2022 of “advertising conversion practices” under a ban on so-called “conversion therapy” the Maltese legislature passed in 2016. The sweeping law targets not only discredited treatments like shock therapy, but “any treatment, practice or sustained effort that aims to change, repress and, or eliminate a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and, or gender expression.” Such language would prohibit even talk therapy between a counselor and a willing client; indeed, “counseling ban” would be a more accurate and relevant description.
In this case, a prohibition in the law against advertising for “conversion therapy” has been used to target Grech for simply sharing his personal testimony of Christian conversion, in an interview on the free-speech platform PMnews Malta. Grech formerly lived a homosexual lifestyle, but he left that lifestyle behind (without therapy) after becoming a born-again Christian. In the interview, Grech rejected the very term “conversion therapy” as a misclassification of the true nature of homosexuality.
“I understood that in the Bible, homosexuality is not an identity as we make it nowadays. And neither is it a feeling, but a practice,” he explained. “This means that, no matter what sexual feelings a man or a woman is experiencing, if they have sexual relations with a person of the same sex, they commit the homosexual act in God’s eyes, and that is a sin. Just like every other sin, one can repent from it and ask God for forgiveness and ask Him for strength to overcome.”
For this testimony, Grech faces a potential fine of 5,000 euros (over $5,700) and up to five months in prison.
However, as is often the case with politicized prosecutions, the process here is the punishment. Grech has endured a three-year-long legal battle involving 12 court hearings, and still the verdict is delayed.
The complaint against Grech was initiated by Silvan Agius, an LGBT activist who played a role in establishing Malta’s counseling ban. Now a cabinet advisor for European Union Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli, Agius filed a complaint along with other LGBT activists.
In a court hearing, Agius argued that Grech’s interview “offends me deeply and it puts me down and many others — whether they know it or not.”
Whether he knows it or not, Agius embodies the oppressive phase of homosexuality’s public acceptance. Not content with a live-and-let live approach, Agius demands that dissent be silenced, to the point of preventing others from sharing their own lived experiences, if those experiences are at odds with the homosexual agenda.
It is noteworthy that Agius was also instrumental in Malta’s adoption of a counseling ban. If anyone understands the original intention of the law, he does. And he is using it to try to punish a Christian convert for describing how he left a gay lifestyle.
Indeed, taking offense at Grech sharing his personal testimony is not neutral liberalism but active hatred of what is good. This opposition is spiritually motivated, and Peter described it long ago. After warning believers against continuing to live lives characterized by sensual excess, he forewarns his readers, “with respect to this they [non-Christians] are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you” (1 Peter 4:4).
In fact, despite three years and at least a dozen hearings, Grech’s legal team contends that prosecutors have failed to even build a plausible case against him. “The Prosecution in this case has categorically failed to define what the term ‘conversion therapy’ even means. It’s an imposed term with no real meaning, in fact,” argued Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, which aided Christian Concern in preparing Grech’s defense. “No credible evidence has been presented to justify a ban. Instead, aggressive campaigning has been aimed at criminalising Matthew and others who share his Christian beliefs on human sexuality, marriage, and what it means to be male and female. The aim is to silence dissent.”
In fact, Grech’s lawyers contend that the prosecution violates his right to free expression under the Constitution of Malta and the European Convention on Human Rights. “The freedoms of speech, conscience, and religion are being attacked,” pleaded Dr. Mike Davidson, founder of Christian counseling group Core Issues Trust. “The fact is that therapeutic and counseling choice is a fundamental right. Governments promoting monocultural viewpoints — this idea that sexual orientation is inborn and unchangeable, and that gender is unrelated to biological sex — are denying those unwilling to identify as LGBT the right to leave identities and practices no longer relevant to them.”
Grech’s case has ramifications for the rest of Europe and beyond. Malta was the first European country to pass a so-called counseling ban, and other nations such as the U.K. and Australia have used Malta’s law as a blueprint for their own counseling bans. The right to express biblical positions on human sexuality is already under attack in other European countries, such as Finland, where senior politician Päivi Räsänen now faces her third trial for quoting Scripture.
Such laws have even made their way into the United States. Despite the First Amendment’s robust protection for free speech, multiple states and dozens of localities have enacted counseling bans, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld such bans in California and Washington.
Following the delayed verdict, Grech reaffirmed his confidence in his Lord Jesus’s sovereignty over his trials. “Jesus said, ‘Rejoice when you’re being persecuted for my name’ [Matthew 5:12],” he said. “So I stay joyful. I stay patient in trials. I’m not surprised when trials come, because we were warned that they would come. So I feel at peace.”
For Christians around the world who face official persecution like Grech, the promises of Jesus provide comfort. For Christians in America who enjoy relatively more freedom, the perseverance of faithful brothers like Grech is an example. It is also a harbinger of what may come if the LGBT movement succeeds in advancing counseling bans in our nation.
