Freedom to ‘cure’ or persecution?

Can you make a gay person straight? Should you even try? Most of us would find such thinking abhorrent. We understand that a sexual orientation is an innate, essential part of an individual. It’s more than 45 years since the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a disorder. Yet a small fringe persists in believing sexual orientations can and should be changed. The practices are grouped under the label ‘‘gay conversion therapy’’.

It often involves talk therapy and counselling, although a 2018 US study noted that aversion and electric shock treatments were still used relatively recently. The same study reported an estimated 698,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBTI) adults in the US have received conversion therapy, typically as teenagers. Numbers here are less certain, although the Living Wisdom School of Counselling claims to have ‘‘restored’’ the heterosexuality of 20 to 30 people and the organisation Rainbow Youth has said there are hundreds of therapy survivors in Auckland alone.

Eighteen US states and a handful of countries have banned conversion therapy, with Ireland soon to follow. More than 20,000 New Zealanders signed two petitions urging that we follow suit. They were considered by Parliament’s justice select committee, which released its report this week. It put the thinking behind the therapy in plain, direct language. ‘‘Conversion therapy is usually based on a belief that people with diverse sexual orientations or gender identities are abnormal and should be changed so they fit within hetero-normative standards.’’ It also said ‘‘we heard that it can be damaging to the mental and physical health of those subjected to it’’.

As well as those hazards, it is likely the culture

... a 2018 US study noted that aversion and electric shock treatments were still used relatively recently.

around the treatments also contributes to increased mental health risks. It has been established that LGBTI young people experience higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. A world view that tells them they are wrong and must be cured surely contributes.

‘‘Such therapy can be harmful because it perpetuates the idea that sexuality and gender identity are an individual’s choice rather than something they are born with,’’ the committee wrote. ‘‘We note that this idea is inconsistent with mainstream scientific consensus, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, and internationally recognised human rights.’’

So, should these therapies be banned here? In the end, the committee sat on the fence, citing competing human rights claims. The Bill of Rights Act allows New Zealanders to live free from discrimination, including on their sexual orientation. But it also promotes freedom of religion. Those who offer and seek out conversion therapy are typically religiously motivated.

But should that include freedom to coerce or persuade others into treatments found to be physically and mentally harmful? It’s a tricky question that left Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern struggling at her post-Cabinet press briefing on Monday. While she expressed concern about vulnerable young people and the LGBTI community more generally, her reference to ‘‘religious freedom’’ made headlines here and at influential UK site Pink News, where disappointment in our progressive PM was palpable.

Petition organiser Max Tweedie put it more clearly. Shouldn’t religious freedom be about freedom from persecution, not freedom to persecute others, he asked.