Australian Senate Pledges to Tackle Conversion Therapy

The Australian Senate has passed a motion to address the rise in LGBT+ conversion therapies across the country, reports Attitude.

The motion encourages the states and territories of Australia to outright ban the practice, so far only the state of Victoria has made it illegal.

The motion comes after a series of anti-LGBT+ remarks made by the country’s new Prime Minister, Scott Morrison.

Last week, Morrison said conversion therapy was “not an issue for me and I’m not planning to get engaged in the issue.”

“For the Prime Minister to dismiss this as an issue that’s ‘not for him’ is an absolute disregard of duty,” saidJanet Rice, the Australian Green Party’s LGBT+ spokesperson. “This is an issue for him and the Senate has just confirmed it.”

Morrison has also received backlash from other anti-LGBT+ comments, including a transphobic tweet he wrotein response to a Daily Telegraph article. “We do not ‘gender whisperers’ in our schools. Let kids be kids,” he wrote. The article outlined new training Australian teachers are undergoing to identify and help transgender children.

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