Conversion Therapy Bans

Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. As of December 2023, twenty-eight countries have bans on conversion therapy, fourteen of them ban the practice by any person: Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal and Spain; seven ban its practice by medical professionals only: Albania, Brazil, Chile, India, Israel, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Another seven, namely Argentina, Fiji, Nauru, Paraguay, Samoa, Switzerland and Uruguay, have indirect bans in that diagnoses based solely on sexual orientation or gender identity are banned without specifically banning conversion therapy, this effectively amounts to a ban on health professionals since they would not generally engage in therapy without a diagnosis. In addition, some jurisdictions within Australia and the United States also ban conversion therapy.

Bills banning conversion therapy are being considered in Austria, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom. Bills restricting conversion therapy are being considered in Denmark, Italy, Japan, Sweden and Thailand. At a supranational level, the European Union is considering banning conversion therapy across its Member States, while an ongoing citizens' initiative started collecting signatures in May 2024 also calling on the European Commission to outlaw such practices.

Legal status by country

Legal status by US state

Although no national ban exists, several US states and individual counties ban therapy attempting to change sexual orientation as shown in the map below.

Criminalization chronology

The table below lists, in chronological order, the United Nations member states that have explicitly prohibited and criminalized conversion therapy by law.

Legal cases

In 1993, the Superior Court of San Francisco's Family Court placed 15-year-old lesbian Lyn Duff under the guardianship of a foster couple after her mother committed her to Rivendell Psychiatric Center in West Jordan, Utah, where she allegedly endured physical abuse under the guise of conversion therapy. Lyn Duff's petition to leave her mother was granted without court opinion.

In 1997, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit addressed conversion therapy in the context of an asylum application. A Russian citizen "had been apprehended by the Russian militia, registered at a clinic as a 'suspected lesbian', and forced to undergo treatment for lesbianism, such as 'sedative drugs' and hypnosis. ... The Ninth Circuit held that the conversion treatments to which Pitcherskaia had been subjected constituted mental and physical torture." The court rejected the argument that the treatments to which Pitcherskaia had been subjected did not constitute persecution because they had been intended to help her, not harm her, and stated "human rights laws cannot be sidestepped by simply couching actions that torture mentally or physically in benevolent terms such as 'curing' or 'treating' the victims".

On 25 June 2015, a New Jersey jury found the Jewish conversion therapy organization JONAH guilty of consumer fraud in the case '' Ferguson v. JONAH'' for promising to be able to change its clients' sexual urges. The jury determined its commercial practices to be unconscionable.

References

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Further reading

*{{cite book , last1=Ashley , first1=Florence , title=Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis , date=2022 , publisher=UBC Press , isbn=978-0-7748-6695-8 , language=en

Legality of conversion therapy