London - From electric
shocks to 'praying away the gay', global momentum is growing to
ban so-called "conversion therapy", with bills drawn up in nine
countries, a rights group said on Wednesday.
The United States, Canada, Chile, Mexico and Germany are
among countries seeking to outlaw the treatment, based on the
belief that being gay or transgender is a mental illness that
can be 'cured', LGBT+ advocacy group ILGA said.
Worldwide, only Brazil, Ecuador and Malta have national bans
on conversion therapy, condemned as ineffective and harmful to
mental health by more than 60 associations of doctors,
psychologists or counsellors globally, the ILGA study said.
"The main driving force (for reform) is survivors with their
testimonies coming forwards," Lucas Ramon Mendos, author of the
ILGA report, which said 2020 could be a turning point in the
fight against 'therapies' that have ruined many lives.
"A lot of awareness is being created through their
testimony," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
LGBT+ people - some children - have undergone abuses like
lobotomies, castration and masturbatory reconditioning in the
past, under the "legitimising cloak of medicine" in a bid to
change their sexual orientation or gender identity, ILGA said.
Global moves against attempts to 'cure' LGBT+ people are
gathering pace, with the state of Queensland considering
Australia's first conversion therapy ban, with jail sentences of
up to 18 months for doctors and social workers.
Data on the global extent of conversion therapy is scarce,
but people in 80 countries told advocacy group OutRight Action
International in 2019 that it took place in their country.
In the United States, some 700,000 people have been forced
to undergo conversion therapy, according to the University of
California's Williams Institute.
US suicide-prevention group The Trevor Project said 42% of
LGBT+ 13- to 24-year-olds who underwent conversion therapy
reported a suicide attempt in the last year - more than twice
the rate of those who did not have the treatment.
Existing bans in 19 US states are limited - for example to
outlawing doctors carrying out conversion therapy on children -
because of stringent federal constitutional protections on
freedom of expression and religion, said Ramon Mendos.
Britain and Ireland have drawn up bills to outlaw conversion
therapy but they have stalled, he said, while Taiwan's
government responded to a proposed ban by saying that
practitioners could be punished under existing laws.
Other proposals will struggle to win political support, such
as a US bill which was introduced the House of Representatives
in 2019 and if passed would face a vote in the
Republican-controlled Senate.