MEPs Condemn LGBT+ ‘Conversion’ Therapy In Appeal To European Commission
October 15, 2020More than 60 Members of the European Parliament have signed a letter to Three European Commissioners demanding a Europe-wide ban on so-called ‘conversion’ therapy.
According to a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council earlier this year, ‘conversion’ therapy is an umbrella term to describe interventions of a wide-ranging nature, all of which have in common the belief that a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity (SOGI) can and should be changed.
Such practices aim at changing people from being gay, lesbian or bisexual to heterosexual and from trans or gender diverse to cisgender.
According to ‘The Parliament Magazine’, the report says that young people are disproportionally subjected to practices of ‘conversion’ therapy, with a recent global survey suggesting that 4 out of 5 persons subjected to them were 24 years of age or younger at the time and, of those, roughly half were under 18 years of age.
In the letter to commissioners Jourová, Dalli and Kyriakides, penned by Parliament’s Intergroup on LGBT+ Rights, the MEPs explain that there is no way to classify the practice of conversion therapy other than “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that seeks to correct something that warrants no fixing – a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression.”
“They constitute a highly discriminatory practice that violates the human rights of LGBT persons and which causes severe physical and psychological suffering to its victims.”
The MEPs note that the practice is used in over 69 countries worldwide, including EU Member States, where the use of medication has been reported in France, psychotherapy is reported to have been used in Austria, Italy and Poland, and even exorcisms/ritual cleansing are said to have taken place in France and Spain.
“Notably, LGBT youth is at severe risk of torture due to these practices, given the role that family and caretakers often play in coercing victims to undergo them.”
The deputies point out that their call is all the more urgent when - as recognised by the recent European Parliament resolution on Article 7 concerning Poland – the Polish Episcopate recently endorsed the idea of “conversation camps” in Poland for LGBT+ persons.
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