German health minister plans to ban gay therapies

BERLIN: German health minister Jens Spahn said on Friday that he will seek to ban conversion therapies that claim to change sexual orientation.

“Homosexuality is not an illness, which is why it does not need to be treated,” Spahn, who is gay himself, told the Berlin daily left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung.

He hoped that a German law banning such therapies could be adopted by the middle of the year.

Conversion therapies have spread in the US and have been used by parents of homosexual or transgender adolescents against their will.

Some techniques involve injections of large doses of testosterone, while others apply electric shocks to people as they view images of homosexual acts.

“I do not believe in these therapies, mainly owing to my own homosexuality,” said Spahn, who represents the right-wing of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU party.

The health minister is counting on support from his colleagues if and when a vote is taken. “I cannot imagine there is a partisan of conversion therapies in my Parliamentary group,” he said.