These practices which claim to transform a person's gender identity or sexual orientation are called "conversion therapies". LREM MP Laurence Vanceunebrock wants to ban them and announced this Wednesday the tabling of a bill to this effect, to allow prosecution against their organizers.
The text has not yet at this stage of "date of inclusion on the agenda of the National Assembly," she said. "The only problem is the parliamentary calendar", upset by the coronavirus, "but I'm going to put the pressure," she said, hoping for a review in early 2021. The member for Allier had already conducted a fact-finding mission on the subject with his colleague LFI Bastien Lachaud.
The bill for the prohibition of #therapiesdeconversion, following the fact-finding mission carried out with @LaurenceVanceu is tabled.
I hope that the agenda will soon be added to @ AssembleeNat. #LGBT pic.twitter.com/sHyAiskO8x
Complaints and prosecutions
His bill aims to create a "specific offense to prohibit these practices and provides aggravating factors to take into account the situation of minors, the public who are particularly victims of these" therapies "". This will allow complaints and prosecutions on this "very specific theme", and establish "statistics" that do not exist today in France, she said.
Homosexuality, excluded in France since 1992 from the list of psychiatric pathologies, is still considered a disease by the promoters of these conversion "therapies", which cover "a very broad spectrum of often insidious practices", indicated Laurence Vanceunebrock and Bastien Lachaud in December, presenting the conclusions of their parliamentary information mission.
Electroshock, rape and exorcism
These "therapies" are often backed by religious organizations that hope to convince participants that it is possible to convert to heterosexuality or encourage abstinence from sex. The fact-finding mission had heard "testimonies from people who had been victims or witnesses of exorcisms", and had "learned of acts of rape or excision".
Medical "therapies" subject the victims, sometimes stuffed with drugs, to hypnosis or electroshock sessions, said the two parliamentarians, also evoking societal "therapies", with recourse to "forced marriages".
Heard by the deputies, the association Le Refuge, which hosts homosexual people rejected by their families, had explained having received on its listening line "on average ten calls each month in 2019, up sharply compared to previous years ”. In France, there is no "objective measure" of the phenomenon, regretted the parliamentarians, recalling the reluctance of many victims, sometimes under the influence of relatives, to file complaints for fear of reprisals.
Society
"Sex conversion therapies": "These unworthy practices have no medical or therapeutic basis"
Television
Homophobia “Exclusive Investigation”: How A Journalist Infiltrated “Conversion Therapy” For M6
- Society
- National Assembly
- LREM
- Transgender
- Homosexuality