Gay man who can’t cope with sexuality wants right to die

A GAY Belgian man who says he cannot accept his sexuality has asked for the right to die using his country’s radical euthanasia laws.

The 39-year-old claims he is enduring extreme psychological suffering and that his sexuality has made him ‘a prisoner in my own body’.

The man – identified only as Sebastien – is now undergoing medical assessments to check whether his wish to die is in line with the country’s 14-year-old euthanasia laws.

If three doctors approve his request to die by lethal injection it will mark a new step towards routine euthanasia for people who see themselves as sexual misfits.

Three years ago Belgium allowed 44-year-old transsexual Nathan Verhelst, who was born Nancy, the right to die because of his suffering after a botched sex-change operation.

Sebastien said he is attracted to young men and adolescent boys, but that he is scarred from a difficult childhood, during which his mother was ill and he was brought up according to a strict Roman Catholic ethos.

He told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme that he had undergone 17 years of counselling, therapy and medication and that he believed he had no option but to ask for death.

‘My whole life has led me to this, really,’ he said. ‘My mother had dementia so I wasn’t right, mentally. All that was instilled in me, so I was extremely lonely, very inhibited physically – scared to go out, hugely shy. I didn’t want to be gay.

‘I have always thought about death. It is a permanent suffering, like being a prisoner in my own body. A constant sense of shame.’

The shift to allow death on request for those with sexual difficulties is controversial among doctors in Belgium, who last year saw the number of recorded euthanasia cases pass the 2,000 a year mark.