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Legality of conversion therapy

Legality of sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Legality of conversion therapy
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Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.[1] As of December 2023, twenty-eight countries have bans on conversion therapy, fourteen of them ban the practice by any person: Belgium,[2] 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.

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Map of jurisdictions that have bans on sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts with minors as of January 2025:
  Criminal prohibition against conversion therapy on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity
  Only medical professionals are banned from performing conversion therapy
  Ban on conversion therapy pending or proposed
  No ban on conversion therapy

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.[a]

Bills banning conversion therapy are being considered in Austria, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom.[3] Bills restricting conversion therapy are being considered in Denmark, Italy, Japan, Sweden and Thailand.[citation needed] 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.[4][5]

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More information Country, Medical treatment banned ...

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

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Map of U.S. states and counties that have bans on sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts with minors as of May 2024:
  Ban on conversion therapy for minors on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (Washington, D.C. also bans such therapy for adults.)
  Ban on use of state or federal funds for conversion therapy for minors on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity
  State law prohibits local governments from banning conversion therapy
  Federal court has ruled that banning conversion therapy is unconstitutional; Dark red spots indicate cities/counties that had existing bans
  No ban on conversion therapy for minors
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Criminalization chronology

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

More information Year banned, Country ...
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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.[183][184][185][186]

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".[187]

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.[188]

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