From electric shocks to “praying away the gay,” global momentum is growing to ban so-called “conversion therapy,” with bills drawn up in nine countries, a rights group said yesterday.
The US, Canada, Chile, Mexico and Germany are among countries seeking to outlaw the treatment, based on the belief that being gay or transgender is a mental illness that can be “cured,” the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) said.
Worldwide, only Brazil, Ecuador and Malta have national bans on conversion therapy, condemned as ineffective and harmful to mental health by more than 60 associations of doctors, psychologists or counselors globally, an ILGA study said.
“The main driving force [for reform] is survivors with their testimonies coming forward,” said Lucas Ramon Mendos, author of the ILGA report, which said this year could be a turning point in the fight against “therapies” that have ruined many lives.
“A lot of awareness is being created through their testimony,” he said.
LGBT+ people — some children — have undergone abuses, such as lobotomies, castration and masturbatory reconditioning, in the past, under the “legitimizing cloak of medicine” in a bid to change their sexual orientation or gender identity, ILGA said.
Global moves against attempts to “cure” LGBT+ people are gathering pace, with the state of Queensland considering Australia’s first conversion therapy ban, with jail sentences of up to 18 months for doctors and social workers.
Data on the global extent of conversion therapy is scarce, but people in 80 countries last year told advocacy group OutRight Action International that it took place in their country.
In the US, about 700,000 people have been forced to undergo conversion therapy, University of California’s Williams Institute said.
US suicide-prevention group The Trevor Project said that 42 percent of 13 to 24-year-old LGBT+ people who underwent conversion therapy reported a suicide attempt in the past year — more than twice the rate of those who did not have the treatment.
Existing bans in 19 US states are limited — for example, outlawing doctors carrying out conversion therapy on children — because of stringent federal constitutional protections on freedom of expression and religion, Ramon Mendos said.
Britain and Ireland have drawn up bills to outlaw conversion therapy, but they have stalled, he said, while Taiwan’s government responded to a proposed ban by saying that practitioners could be punished under existing laws.
Other proposals will struggle to win political support, such as a bill that was introduced last year in the US House of Representatives and, if passed, would face a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS