Will the Senate approve, challenge or reject a LREM bill to ban pseudo “conversion therapy”.

Adopted at first reading unanimously by the National Assembly in October, the text is in the hands of senators on Tuesday.

The day promises debates with the left on one side that would like to strengthen it, while LR senators oppose the mention of gender identity.

"It is a useful text, on a very underground phenomenon, but which awakens old demons", notes the centrist rapporteur in the Senate Dominique Vérien.

Supported by the government, MP Laurence Vanceunebrock's bill provides for a specific offense against so-called “therapists” or religious who claim to “cure” homosexuals.

Three years' imprisonment against the so-called "therapists"

According to the bill, "practices, behaviors or repeated comments aimed at modifying or repressing the sexual orientation or gender identity, true or supposed, of a person and having the effect of altering their health physical or mental are punished by two years imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros ”. The sanction is increased to three years' imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros in the event of aggravating circumstances, in particular when the victim is a minor, dependent or the perpetrator is in the ascendant.

The senators adopted the text in committee with a handful of amendments by the rapporteur.

In particular, this involves ensuring that people who make repeated comments aiming to encourage caution before initiating a gender reassignment medical course are not incriminated.

The government tabled amendments to remove this change, which was deemed “unnecessary”.

The term “gender identity” in question

But the debate risks crystallizing on gender identity. In committee, the senators rejected the amendments made by Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio (LR) aimed at removing from the text a concept considered poorly defined. The senator from Val-d'Oise will again defend in the hemicycle these amendments co-signed by more than thirty of her colleagues from the Les Républicains group, including their president Bruno Retailleau. "Obviously we are all defenders of freedom and tolerance, except that here everything is mixed up", explains Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio. “Gender identity, I don't know what it is, there is no definition. "

The left is standing up against this attempt to restrict the scope of the text, Socialist Senator Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie lambasting an "archaic and retrograde vision of society".

The centrist rapporteur argues that the concept is established and already present in the Criminal Code.

“Not naming transgender people would mean leaving them victims of a barbaric practice,” she emphasizes.

Ban hormone therapy before 18 years old

Another amendment by Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio, which was not adopted in committee either, is also likely to provoke a debate: it proposes to ban puberty-blocking treatments, hormone therapy and surgical operations before the age of 18.

The left, for its part, will propose to broaden the scope of the prejudice retained to characterize the offense, by including acts “likely to infringe the rights or dignity” of a person.

The demonstration of the deterioration of physical or mental health would thus no longer be necessary to characterize the offense.

These "therapies" can take different forms

There is no national survey in France to assess the extent of the phenomenon of "conversion therapy", which can take a wide variety of forms.

During a parliamentary mission in 2019, Laurence Vanceunebrock and the Insoumis Bastien Lachaud referred to "a hundred recent cases", being alarmed at "the increase in reports".

They describe treatments by “hypnosis”, “hormones” or even “electroshock”, “religious” drifts between “calls for abstinence” and “exorcism” sessions, or the use of heterosexual “forced marriages”.

Other countries have explicitly banned them: in Europe, Malta and Germany, and several provinces in Spain.

In 2019, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on EU member states to ban them.

In Canada, a bill banning "conversion therapy" was passed unanimously on December 1 in the Commons, the lower house of Parliament.

It must now be approved by the Canadian Senate.

World

United Kingdom: Conversion therapy soon to be punished by law

Society

"Conversion therapies": the bill to ban them arrives in the Senate

  • Law Project

  • LGBT movement

  • Homophobia

  • Lesbian

  • Religion

  • Homosexuality

  • Senate

  • Society

  • Transgender

  • 0 comment

  • 0 share

    • Share on Messenger

    • Share on Facebook

    • Share on twitter

    • Share on Flipboard

    • Share on Pinterest

    • Share on Linkedin

    • Send by Mail

  • To safeguard

  • A fault ?

  • To print