Senators adopted this Tuesday, by amending it, the bill aimed at prohibiting "conversion therapy", practices aimed at modifying or repressing the sexual identity of a lesbian, gay, bi or trans (LGBT) person .
The text, adopted under the accelerated procedure, will then be the subject of a joint joint committee (CMP) and should be promulgated before the end of Emmanuel Macron's five-year term.
What is that ?
A phenomenon that is not well known to the general public, conversion therapies have existed in the territory for about thirty years, but the victims have started to talk about the traumas suffered only five or six years ago.
“These practices can take on very different faces,” explains Benoît Berthe, the founder of the militant collective Rien à curé.
Sometimes called “sexual reorientation therapy”, they designate a set of pseudoscientific treatments applied by religious communities or even people who claim to be “doctors” and aimed at changing the sexual orientation of lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT ).
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During a 2019 parliamentary mission, deputies Laurence Vanceunebrock (LREM) and Bastien Lachaud (LFI) referred to “a hundred recent cases”, being alarmed at “the increase in reports”.
They describe treatments by “hypnosis”, “hormones” or even “electroshock”, “religious” drifts between “calls for abstinence” and “exorcism” sessions, or the use of heterosexual “forced marriages”.
Why ban them?
Until now, no specific offense existed to punish this type of practice "having the effect of altering the physical or mental health" of the people who suffer it, to use the terms of article 1 of the law adopted this year. Tuesday in the Senate.
“It was only possible to lodge a complaint on the potential collateral consequences, when the victim was injured, for example.
However, there are many therapies which do not leave traces, which are psychospiritual and therefore very difficult to prove.
The victims do not use their Vitale card before a session ”, also explains Benoît Berthe.
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Other countries have explicitly banned them recently: in Europe, Malta and Germany are concerned, as well as several provinces of Spain.
In 2019, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on EU member states to ban them.
What tools?
Led by majority MP Laurence Vanceunebrock, the text provides for the creation of a specific offense of two years' imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros.
The penalty would go up to three years and a fine of 45,000 euros in the case of a minor.
According to associations, the phenomenon mainly affects vulnerable adolescents, pushed by their parents or those around them.
