Gay-to-straight Conversion Therapy
Debate between Simon Kirby and Sandra Osborne(11 years ago)
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Sandra Osborne
I agree, and I will go into that further. Conversion or reparative therapy is the attempt by individuals, often posing as professionals, to alter the sexuality of lesbian, gay or bisexual patients. Virtually every major national and international professional organisation has condemned the practice as ineffective and potentially extremely harmful to patients.
Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)
I want to place on the record the fact that I am proud to represent some 6,000 gay men in my constituency, and that conversion of any sort is unacceptable in this day and age.
Sandra Osborne
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.
The prevalence of conversion therapy in Britain has been the subject of recent interest in Parliament. Hon. Members will have received a recent communiqué from the pro-conversion group, Core Issues, calling on us not to support the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West on the regulation of counsellors and psychotherapists. The people in Core Issues are the very same who tried and, fortunately, failed to put up posters on London buses advertising conversion therapy. On 30 January, alongside Christian Concern, they hosted a debate on conversion therapy in a Committee Room of this House. One of the speakers at that debate, Canadian psychiatrist Dr Joseph Berger, is on the record as advocating the bullying of cross-dressing children in schools.