It’s like the rite of passage into the LGBTQ+ experience, conversion therapy. According to the Human Rights Commission, conversion therapy, sometimes known as “reparative therapy,” is a range of dangerous and discredited practices that falsely claim to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.
On Wednesday 8th July 2020, A United Nations rights expert called for a global ban on every form of conversion therapy. He referred to those kinds of practices as “degrading and discriminatory”. According to the statement on the United Nations website, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, collected data on “conversion therapy” practices and testimonies of victims to inform his latest report to the Human Rights Council.
The report submitted by Madrigal-Borloz included submissions from States, civil society organisations, faith-based organisations, medical practitioners, and individuals who had been subjected to such practices, conversions attempted through beatings, rape, electrocution, forced medication, isolation and confinement, forced nudity, verbal offence and humiliation and other acts of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse”.
“These interventions exclusively target LGBT persons with the specific aim of interfering in their personal integrity and autonomy because their sexual orientation or gender identity do not fall under what is perceived by certain persons as a desirable norm,” Madrigal-Borloz said. “They are inherently degrading and discriminatory and rooted in the belief that LGBT persons are somehow inferior, and that they must at any cost modify their orientation or identity to remedy that supposed inferiority.”
According to a report by GLAAD, 20,000 LGBTQ youth (ages 13-17) will receive conversion therapy from a licensed healthcare professional before they reach the age of 18 in the 41 states that currently do not ban the practice.
As shown in the GLAAD report, credible organisations have denounced conversion therapy. Once, The American Psychological Association reported, The potential risks of “reparative therapy” are great and include depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient. Many patients who have undergone “reparative therapy” relate that they were inaccurately told that homosexuals are lonely, unhappy individuals who never achieve acceptance or satisfaction. The possibility that the person might achieve happiness and satisfying interpersonal relationships as a gay man or lesbian are not presented, nor are alternative approaches to dealing with the effects of societal stigmatization discussed… Therefore, APA opposes any psychiatric treatment, such as “reparative” or “conversion” therapy, that is based on the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or is based on the a priori assumption that the patient should change his or her homosexual orientation.
“Such practices constitute an egregious violation of rights to bodily autonomy, health, and free expression of one’s sexual orientation and gender identity. Ultimately, when conducted forcibly, they also represent a breach to the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment,” Madrigal-Borloz said
