The LREM bill to ban "conversion therapies", practices aimed at imposing heterosexuality on lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) people, received the final green light from the Senate, this Thursday, before its adoption. final scheduled for Tuesday in the National Assembly.
Deputies and senators had reached an agreement in a joint committee on this text carried by the presidential majority, in the wake of LREM deputy Laurence Vanceunebrock.
The compromise text was adopted by a show of hands, unanimously by the senators present in the hemicycle.
"No, being yourself is not a crime"
It creates a new specific offense punishing these practices with two years' imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros. The penalties may increase to three years' imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros in the event of aggravating circumstances. "Conversion therapies" are already punishable via a large number of offenses, "but we had to go further", underlined Elisabeth Moreno, Minister in charge of Equality between women and men, Diversity and l 'Equal opportunities.
"No, being yourself is not a crime," she insisted, stressing that "conversion therapy is the antithesis of our republican values."
If the text had been the subject of a unanimous vote in the National Assembly on October 6 in first reading, it had not been the same in the Senate, in spite of a largely favorable vote: 305 senators had pronounced themselves in in favor of the bill, 28 against, all from the Les Républicains group, including their leader Bruno Retailleau.
"Torture"
Bruno Retailleau had subsequently assured that he was "obviously against conversion therapies which aim to force homosexual people to change their orientation". But he had justified his vote by the fact that the text "also evokes gender identity, in the name of which people ask to change sex, which goes far beyond the question of the protection of homosexual people". On behalf of the LR group, Laurent Burgoa welcomed Thursday “a text of balance”, specifying that “a majority” of the group would vote in its favor. "If these practices fortunately seem to be uncommon in our country, it seems important to me that the national representation imposes a clear prohibition in the Penal Code", underlined the centrist rapporteur Dominique Vérien.
“These are tortures”, affirmed the ecologist Mélanie Vogel, calling for “a European start”, while the socialist Marie-Pierre de la Gontrie denounced “a barbaric practice which destroys children and adolescents”.
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 rebellious Bastien Lachaud mentioned a "hundred recent cases", being alarmed by "the increase in reports".
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The Republic on the March (LREM)
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