Looking to the future for LGBTQ2 Youth

Since I was a little girl I have viewed all people as equal and all love as love. Maybe that’s because I grew up dancing classical ballet, idolizing male dancers and teachers, a lot of which were openly gay. It might also be due to the fact that my parents have always been so open, accepting and loving of all humans. Either way, when I went to a high school for the Arts, I met my first male best friend who happens to identify as gay, and the current majority of my friends since have been either gay or lesbian. I have chosen to have all these friends in my circle not because of their sexuality, but rather because they are honest, loving, kind, supportive soul sisters, and good people are hard to find!

Since any career cannot exist without any passion, I naturally have gravitated my legal career towards cases supporting LGBTQ2 rights issues and have fought vigorously for their equal rights as parents. Right now, the majority of clientele identify as LGBTQ2. Since so much of my life involves pushing for change in this arena, I wanted to dedicate this section of my blog to the rights issues that some of us may not know exist.....

Conversion Therapy

I thought I would start with discussing a very real issue at the moment, which hasn’t gained much news coverage in light of Covid-19. In March, 2020, the Canadian federal government introduced new legislation which is seeking to ban conversion therapy and classify it as a criminal offence. This is promising as it seeks to fulfill what Trudeau’s liberal government promised Canadians in 2019 anyways. My question is “What took so long?”

For those of you who don’t know what conversion therapy is :

Conversion therapyis the pseudoscientific practice of trying to change an individual's sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual, or to one’s gender assigned at birth, using psychological or spiritual interventions.

According to the Trevor Project, The American Psychiatric Association has clarified that “the potential risks of reparative therapy are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient.” The Pan American Health Organization, a regional office of the World Health Organization, similarly concluded that conversion therapy, “lack[s] medical justification and represent[s] a serious threat to the health and well-being of affected people.”

Canada to Ban Conversion Therapy...Finally!

The proposed amendments by the government would change Canada’s Criminal Code and cause conversion therapy to be a criminal act. The changes would include a list of offenses related to conversion therapy including causing a person to undergo conversion therapy, advertising and profiting from conversion therapy and even removing a minor from Canada for this purpose (source: Reuter’s). “Conversion therapy has been discredited and denounced by professionals and health associations in Canada, the United States and around the world. It has no basis on science or facts,” said Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada David Lametti, who helped proposed this change in legislation. I am just glad that someone came to the table and put this on the forefront.

Ontario was the first Canadian province to ban the Conversion Therapy in 2015, but other provinces were close to follow. These include Vancouver and Calgary. Several U.S. states, including California, Colorado, New York and Washington, have also banned conversion therapy and the vast majority of professional organizations in both US and Canada fiercely denounce the practice.

So who is still engaging in conversion therapy??? I am personally very progressive so I naturally understood it as a product of the past, but this supposedly is not the case. Lametti insists that several Canadians are even continuing to engage in the practice, which is both shocking and disturbing. According to Global News, a recently-released 2020 report from the The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) suggests that conversion therapy is much more prevalent in Canada than would initially appear. The report, which was published in February, tracked 70 organizations in more than 20 countries.

Specifically, the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity (formerly known as NARTH) still exists in Canada and has offices in several provinces. Its mandate provides “Sexual Attraction Fluidity Exploration in Therapy,” ironically abbreviated “SAFE-T”.

Organizations such as NARTH or Journey Canada offer the practice under the shield of religious services, as they provide packages for religious counselling and advice to participants and their families. As a result, the lines become blurred and it becomes more difficult to pinpoint the culprits. According to a Global interview with CLC in particular , David Cooke, CLC national campaign manager, told Global News that even if the bill is enacted, they will continue to direct Canadians to what he prefers to describe as “reparative” therapy services.“We stand behind what we say. We believe in helping people who want help with their unwanted same-sex attraction or unwanted gender dysphoria,” he said, adding that conversion therapy was “not abuse.” Further evidence the government relied on included a report offering testimony of “deliverance sessions” administered by ministers of the Pentecostal Church in Montreal to exorcise the “demon of homosexuality,” published in the Alliance Arc-en-ciel de Québec in 2018.

This is beyond upsetting, as the Trevor Project, which is the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ2 youth, has research which links LGBTQ2 youth who have undergone conversion therapy to attempted suicide, at a twice as high rate as those who did not.

While I can’t say with certainty whether Bill C-8 can stop all conversion therapy in Canada, I hope it can prevent others from experiencing the same pain as those susceptible to it at present. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions and I will keep you updated in light of any changes!