The rite of baptism in the Catholic Church states that parents are the first educators of their child and that, as such, they bear all the responsibilities that accompany this task. It reinforces what’s also generally recognised in wider secular society.

These include using their own instincts and multi-generational wisdom to protect children from influences they deem to be harmful and to guide them through any troubles or crises that they may encounter. This applies especially in their formative years as they seek to understand and to accept themselves as individuals with their own suite of charisms and characteristics: physical, emotional and spiritual.

In the new, digital metaverse of artificial intelligence and unregulated social media the role of parents in ensuring their children don’t fall prey to bad actors and manipulators has never been more crucial. These characters who seek to harvest impressionable and vulnerable minds have always existed. At this point in history though, social media has become a virtual Klondyke for those who would seek to harm children or to enlist them in harmful activity.

What they learn from their “first educators” will also help inform their future life choices as they seek to discover their role and purpose.

The state recognises the unique and critical role of parents in their children’s development as human beings and will only seek to intervene when it’s clear that the domestic environment risks them being harmed physically or psychologically. At all times, the potential damage to a child of removing them from parental care is taken into consideration.

These principles are reinforced and protected by several articles in the European Declaration of Human Rights. Part of Article 16 states: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”

Under Article 18, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

This provides a gateway to Article 19 which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

It's within the overall framework of the declaration as it relates to family life, freedom of religion and freedom of expression that we must consider several concerns about the Scottish Government’s proposals to ban “conversion therapy” in the consultation paper it published last week. Conversion therapy is the process that’s generally understood to coerce gay or trans people into suppressing their authentic identities by telling them that they will be miserable if they fail to do so.

Yet, the consultation document acknowledges that much of what are understood to be coercive or manipulative practices in this area are already covered by existing legislation. Nor is there any indication that there has been a sudden spike in incidents, and of such an egregious nature, that a significant and far-reaching change in the law is required.

Emma Roddick, the Equalities Minister responsible for bringing these proposals to the statute book, seems to be doing so in good faith and for the best of intentions.

We are entitled to know then just what has occurred in the life of the nation that’s compelled the Scottish Government to make these proposals. Are there bands of religious extremists and ultramontanes roaming the country with fiery crosses forcing anxious gay and trans people to recant? If so, this would be very serious and you’d expect Police Scotland to have flagged this up over several years with the relevant, accompanying incident reports.

It’s when you get to the sections governing the disputed concept of ‘gender identity’ that concerns begin to emerge about the role of parents in some emotionally delicate conversations with their children. Experience and their own instincts tell them what’s best for their children. Protecting them during vulnerable and emotionally fragile periods in their life from people and organisations they deem not to be acting in their best interests are paramount.

The accounts of families and medical practitioners about the customs and practices of the Tavistock Clinic in London should cause the Scottish Government to think very carefully about what it’s proposing.

This facility was forced to close after widespread and corroborated accounts indicating it had compelled young people – many with complex neuro-diverse challenges; many others who were gay – to follow a medical pathway involving invasive surgery.

Several prominent gay rights activists and campaigners have expressed anger that what the clinic (and those who endorsed it) was doing was tantamount to the conversion therapy the Scottish Government wants to outlaw. In particular, they had concerns that young gay people wrestling with their sexual identity were being encouraged to believe they were in the “wrong body”. This is a physical and psychological fiction deployed by some adult trans activists to direct vulnerable young people down a route towards extensive and irreversible surgery.

And what of the role of parents in seeking to guide their children through these challenges? It’s to these ‘first educators’ that the state entrusts the care, protection and formation of its youngest citizens, reinforced by the European Declaration of Human Rights. Is the Scottish Government now suggesting that only a state-approved advice manual is appropriate in these circumstances?

Will you now be risking prosecution if, using your unique insight into the complexities of your own child’s psychological challenges, you try to resist clinicians prescribing them puberty blockers and hormone therapies?

It’s here that the opaque and inexact nature of what’s being proposed in Scotland gives cause for alarm. It leaves open the potential for criminal prosecution of parents if a child has suffered “psychological harm” as a result of receiving the wrong sort of advice: which is anything that doesn’t reinforce the contested concept of gender identity as opposed to sexual identity. On what medical basis will “psychological harm” be found to have occurred?

Not for the first time in the Sturgeon/Yousaf era, the SNP risks being accused of imposing on parents a dogma which holds that the state knows better than a child’s parents.

Worse is an underlying assumption that certain types of parents are so ignorant and so slow-witted that they pose a danger to their children. This isn’t liberal, progressive or enlightened. It’s punitive, regressive and totalitarian.