BAN CONVERSION THERAPY
LGBT Ireland in partnership with regional activists and support groups will ensure that supports are available for anyone willing to share their experiences with the researchers. Working in partnership with The Rainbow Project NI, we have also set up a steering group on which regional LGBTI+ activists and support groups from throughout the island of Ireland are represented, including Gay Project Cork, to ensure that we have a consistent approach and that the legislation to which the present government is committed is comprehensive, inclusive and leaves no-one behind. Our campaign involves building upon the work of others, including Senator Fintan Warfield and the grassroots Anti-Conversion Therapy Coalition who have been instrumental in bringing these abhorrent practices into the public consciousness. As part of the work of our steering group, we are reaching out to various mental health professional bodies with the aim of producing a Memorandum of Understanding for mental health professionals which acknowledges the harm caused by conversion practices and sets out best practices guidelines. We are also working to raise awareness among the LGBTI+ community and the public at large about this problem which is not yet sufficiently understood. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many people who have been subjected to treatment falling within the term ‘conversion practices’ may not be fully aware what it is that has happened to them. We need to ensure that people are educated about the real dangers posed by these interventions, how to recognise them for what they are and how and where to seek support if they are threatened with or subjected to them. What next? The good news is that Ireland is poised to join 14 other nations including France, Canada and New Zealand, as well as many other states provinces, cities and local authorities worldwide as momentum gathers globally behind the movement to ban conversion practices, thanks to the work of activists like Jayne Ozanne and others in terms of shining a light into these dark places. Governments have acted and continue to act to protect their LGBTI+ citizens from these appalling interventions. We know, however, that in some jurisdictions, the bans introduced fall far wide of the mark in terms of affording real protection to everyone against conversion practices. Greater engagement with survivors, activist groups and global experts are needed in order to ensure that the pitfalls encountered in other jurisdictions are avoided, with the Tory government’s outrageous decision being a recent cautionary tale. In that regard, we are delighted to see the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly ignoring the myopic and frankly discriminatory approach favoured in Westminster and forging their own path towards genuinely inclusive and effective legislation that includes all citizens. It’s with that in mind that we are calling for a total ban on conversion practices that protects people of all ages and in all contexts, whether religious, cultural or clinical. In legislating against such degrading and inhumane acts, we as a State will be affording much needed protection to the rights of our LGBTI+ citizens and sending out a clear message that as a society will not stand for conduct which undermines the human dignity of its LGBTI+ citizens and that we value those same citizens equally and cherish and celebrate them for who they are.
“IT’S IMPERATIVE THAT WE SEE ACTION RIGHT NOW TO LEGISLATE AGAINST THESE CRUEL, INHUMAN AND OUTDATED PRACTICES” Who offers conversion practices? The perpetrators are often people in a position of power or authority or influence over the individual, be they a religious leader, a family member or a healthcare professional, someone in a position of trust. The law needs to cover each and every scenario. In addition, it’s really important that the legislation tackles the issue of advertising and promoting conversion interventions. It’s significant that in Northern Ireland, newly elected MLA Eoin Tennyson who is openly gay was handed literature offering conversion practices on the doorsteps while he canvassed in his constituency. Our campaign also recognises the prevalence of conversion practices in Northern Ireland and the particular challenges that presents for us. It’s for that reason that LGBT Ireland are working in partnership with The Rainbow Project NI to ensure insofar as possible a consistency of approach north and south and above all, to ensure that there is adequate protection in the legislation to stop people being removed from the jurisdiction for the purposes of conversion practices, whether to Northern Ireland or overseas. What if someone consents to conversion therapy? One of our main priorities is to guard against a religious consent exemption in the promised legislation. The reason for this is that free and informed consent to practices aimed at suppressing or fundamentally altering someone’s identity or sexuality is almost impossible. At our launch event, renowned global activist Jayne Ozanne spoke very powerfully about her own experience of conversion practices in a faith-setting. Having been conditioned over many years to believe that her attraction to members of her own sex was a manifestation of demonic possession, she is strongly of the view that no consent to having the ‘evil’ within her cast out could have been a valid consent. It is personal experiences such as this which need to inform our legislators in the work that lies ahead. Just as nations have determined that people cannot freely consent to real and lasting physical harm such as female genital mutilation, so too must we take action to prevent people being subjected to real and lasting psychological harm on the false and discredited premise that they are sick, or sinful or transgressive.
by Alan Edge
‘Surely that doesn’t go on here?’ That’s the first question that people often ask when they learn about the ban conversion practices campaign being spearheaded by LGBT Ireland. The short answer is: yes, it definitely does. We know it does. And what’s more, we know it often happens in dark places. Sometimes those dark places are within a closed religious setting or in the home. At other times, they exist within the privacy of a ‘counselling’ session. But wherever conversion practices occur, the potential for profound, traumatic and long-lasting psychological harm on those subjected to them is enormous. And we as a nation know to our great cost the danger of ignoring bad things that happen in dark places. That is why it’s imperative that we see action right now to legislate against these cruel, inhuman and outdated practices and this was the key message of our launch event at the Museum of Literature in Dublin on IDAHOBIT22. What are Conversion Practices? In this campaign, we are using the term ‘practices’ rather than ‘therapy’ because there is nothing therapeutic about seeking to ‘change’, ‘suppress’, ‘cure’ or ‘fix’ someone’s sexuality, gender identity or gender expression. What we are dealing with in such circumstances is not therapy, it’s torture, nothing more and nothing less. Conversion practices, put simply, are a broad range of interventions, whether religious, clinical or cultural, which have as a predetermined outcome the altering or suppressing of a person’s sexuality, gender identity or gender expression. At their core is an assumption that being LGBTI+ is somehow wrong, or sinful or pathological and therefore in need of changing. Interventions coming under the umbrella term ‘conversion practices’ range from pseudo-scientific counselling
What Conversion Practices are not One of the arguments often trotted out by proponents of conversion practices in clinical contexts is that legislation to ban them will have a chilling effect on mental health professionals trying to help clients who are navigating their own sexuality or gender identity or gender expression. This is an absolute myth. No counsellor or psychotherapist or psychiatrist would be inhibited in their job of helping and guiding someone exploring their identity provided the professional wasn’t acting in furtherance of a particular agenda of their own. Problems only arise when so-called professionals are leading people to an outcome which they themselves have pre-determined when in fact, mental health professionals should have no ‘skin in the game’ so far as the outcome is concerned. Legislation should be clear about what constitutes a ‘conversion practice’ in a clinical sitting and what does not. Who is subjected to them? Often the victims of these bogus practices are very vulnerable, such as children and young people in the midst of their emotional development, or LGBTI+ people from marginalised and minority groups who may not have access to the same supports many of us enjoy and who may feel pressurised to conform to conservative cultural norms according to which being LGBTI+ is not accepted. We know from research carried out in other jurisdictions that trans people are particularly vulnerable to these kinds of practices which makes the recent decision of the Tory government in Westminster to exclude them from any legislative protection even more shocking and which led us to arrange a demonstration at the British Embassy in Dublin in solidarity with our trans family in the UK, attended by allies and activists from all over Ireland. At the heart of our campaign is our determination that no-one should be left behind and in that regard, we really welcome the recent commitment of Minister Roderic O’Gorman at our campaign launch on IDAHOBIT22 that the legislation his government will bring forward will be inclusive.
sessions and ‘healing’ through prayer through to exorcisms, abduction, forced marriages and even incidents of ‘corrective’ rape.
What is being done here in Ireland to stop these practices?
The present government committed in its programme for government to legislating to ban conversion practices. Research into these interventions has been commissioned by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to get a clearer picture of conversion practices in Ireland and this will be underway shortly. As part of that research, it’s really important to hear from survivors of these practices who are willing and able to come forward to share their stories and help to better inform our legislators.
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