25 Years: The Long Overdue Ban On Conversion Practices
Image: 1998 Archive. Photo by Peter Elfes
From Our Archives: 17 December 1998
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New South Wales Premier Chris Minns was a teenager when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) unanimously ruled against conversion therapy. So was the independent member for Sydney, Alex Greenwich. And in the 25 years since then, the devastating impulse to ‘cure’ LGBTQI people has been banned in 27 countries – but not yet across Australia.
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In 1998, American psychiatrists comprehensively rejected conversion therapy because they considered it destructive and dangerous. In doing so, they set a standard for Australian psychologists and psychiatrists endorsed by their national organisations several years later.
“The unanimous ruling last Friday by the APA’s 30-member Board of Trustees said the treatment, called reparative therapy, should be avoided,” the Sydney Star Observer reported on 17 December 1998 (World News, page 9).
APA board member Dr Nada Stotland said the ruling was in response to increased pressure from religious groups who promoted the idea that homosexuality was a curable disease.
More than two decades earlier, in 1973, the APA removed homosexuality as a mental disorder. However, Dr Stotland said the APA needed to take a stronger position against conversion therapy because of claims that homosexuality could be cured.
“All the evidence would indicate this is the way people are born. We treat disease, not the way people are,” Dr Stotland said.
Dr Stotland, who was then chair of psychiatry at Rush Medical College in Chicago, said there was no evidence that sexual orientation could be changed. She said the idea that sexuality could or should be changed legitimised violence and discrimination against LGBTQI people and could trigger depression and anxiety.
The very existence of therapy that is supposed to change people’s sexuality, even for people who don’t take it, is harmful because it implies that they have a disease and makes people feel “less inhibited about beating up gays or not giving them jobs,” Dr Stotland said.
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Until the NSW Parliament passes a recently-introduced bill to ban conversion therapy, the practice remains legal in a majority of Australian states and territories. Only Victoria, Queensland and the ACT have legislated against it.
Hormone treatments, chemical castration and hypnotherapy are among the ‘treatments’ offered to LGBTQI Australians under the guise of conversion therapy. Religious organisations and private rehabilitation facilities have told LGBTQI people they should pray the gay away. In some cases, faith-based practitioners have subjected residents to exorcism and other abuse.
The Australian Psychological Society noted in its submission to the Tasmania Law Reform Institute that conversion practices in Australia primarily occur in the context of religious organisations. The organisation, representing over 25,000 members across Australia, opposes any form of mental health practice that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity and has called for a unilateral ban on conversion therapy.
“Homosexuality was taken off the list of mental disorders half a century ago,” conversion therapy survivor Anthony Venn-Brown said in a recent Equality Australia statement responding to the NSW Government bill to ban conversion therapy.
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“This legislation to protect vulnerable LGBTQ people is long overdue. We are not ‘broken’ or need ‘fixing’. This bill will save lives and make NSW a safer place for LGBTIQ+ people.”
