"What does the law really say about 'conversion therapy'?"

Christian Flavigny is a child psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, member of the Work-Family group of the Thomas More Institute.

He wrote

The Confiscated Debate: PMA, GPA, bioethics, "genre", #metoo

A joint committee bringing together deputies and senators met on December 14 to reach a compromise between the two assemblies on the provisions of the bill relating to the prohibition of "conversion therapy" still under debate.

This text, registered under the accelerated parliamentary procedure - thus out of the public debate - intends to prohibit influencing the sexual orientation or identity of a person (major or minor) by resorting to degrading practices. Namely,

And also "

which evoke the sinister memory of "chemical castration".

We know that until 1967 in England, and only in Anglo-Saxon societies, male homosexuals were subjected to it, condemned to choose between imprisonment and the prescription of female hormones.

And we remember the tragic end to which Alan Turing was thus led in 1954.

It is a question of prohibiting by law practices which, fortunately, never existed in France.

On the other hand, this catalog of horrors aims to hide the real motivation of the promoters of the text.

Insidiously, it is a question of prohibiting any reflection of the wish expressed by young people who feel they are of the other sex, as well as that of parents who would object to the prescription of hormones to young people claiming to engage their " transition ”, than that of professionals who would have recourse to“ psychotherapies ”.

Christian Flavigny

Insidiously, the ban covers an entirely different subject;

it is a question of prohibiting any reflection of the wish expressed by young people who feel they are of the other sex, as well the reflection of parents who object to the prescription of hormones to young people claiming to initiate their "transition" , than that of professionals who would have recourse to "psychotherapies";

which amounts to disqualifying parents and insulting professionals.

According to the supporters of the bill, being “transgender” would be a proven situation that does not call for questioning; the public authorities would have the task of protecting children and adolescents from prejudices considered backward from their parents and shrinks. In short, without even having heard from professionals in the French psychology world (who had nevertheless requested it), they subscribe to the thesis of American activists.

However, French culture shows that the very term "transidentity" reflects the American utopia, the effect of its psychological incomprehension of the confusion expressed by the invocation of these young people to feel of the other sex: the American approach relates it to a highly improbable "error of nature" devoid of any scientific relevance, but arousing a mirage to which many young people cling in their dismay, diverting them towards the "transhumanist" lure of a hormone-surgical "transition" which sparkles shards of a magic solution.

Read also "Conversion therapy" for homosexuals, between myth and reality

French culture is characterized by a deep psychological understanding of the deep discomfort of these young people, taking it very seriously but addressing it at the root of the suffering and not according to fictitious and tacky protocols. Sexual identity involves the sometimes difficult affective reconciliation between sexual bodily reality and the filial bond inscribing the destiny of a boy or a girl; French psychology knows how to approach these intimate issues specific to the parent-child relationship, with justified tact, it knows how to work to untie the emotional obstacle that has been able to constitute itself, without making the parents or the young person at fault. Rule out the parents of a “transition” decision which engages for their child the very foundation of its existence, since it is a question of its sex and its first name,they are suspected a priori of violence from which society would have to protect the young person concerned; it is to disqualify them on a founding subject of the relationship to their child, and it is to deprive the child of the foundation offered by this relationship, even if he later contests certain data, which will only be possible for him since having previously relied on it.

This way is argued from the “theory of gender”, which is an ideology since, true premise of its reflection on the genesis of the sexual identity, it eludes bodily reality;

this is only one component of this identity, but it is nonetheless a founding one.

Christian Flavigny

The text of the law disqualifies parents from their role of child protection, on the model of the American self-disqualification of parents, illustrated by such a star claiming to wait until the child they are carrying has reached his tenth birthday. eight years to let him "choose" the sex to which he considers himself to belong. This American way of not getting involved in the most intimate part of the relationship with the child, on the pretext of respecting him, is in fact the fear of a future challenge which, on the grounds of an attribution error which would be more later denounced by the young person before the courts, would lead to the trial according to the customary manner across the Atlantic. This way is argued from the "theory of gender", which is an ideology since, true premise of its reflection on the genesis of sexual identity,it eludes bodily reality; this is only one component of this identity, but it is nonetheless a founding one. It is as if the initial designation of the body sex carried the risk of an "assignment error", and that the sexual body was not, at the dawn of all existence, the effect of natural chance. which owes nothing to a construction loaded with arbitrariness, and which it is then a question for each one of appropriating in order to found the evidence of oneself there.effect of a natural chance which owes nothing to a construction charged with arbitrariness, and which it is then for each one to appropriate to found there the evidence of oneself.effect of a natural chance which owes nothing to a construction charged with arbitrariness, and which it is then for each one to appropriate to found there the evidence of oneself.

Thus the French legislators betray the French culture, testifying to a claim to the Americanization of the French society which they plead in the name of a "progress" to which they would have the mission to convert it: all the laws on the family and bioethics (marriage, adoption, assisted reproduction, etc.), for several decades, translate this forced deculturation, in the blind idealization of the "elites", true zealots in the Anglo-Saxon way.