These practices to impose heterosexuality may be punished by two years imprisonment and € 30,000. The text must now be transmitted to the Senate.
Le Monde with AFP
The National Assembly unanimously adopted Tuesday, October 5, a proposal for the Republic in the March (LRM) reaffirming the prohibition of “conversion therapies”, these practices aimed at imposing the Heterosexuality to Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans (LGBT).
Voted at first reading and transmitted to the Senate, the text provides for a specific offense against the so-called “therapists” or religious who claim “cure” homosexuals, an offense punished by two years’ imprisonment and 30,000 euros d ‘fine.
“There is nothing to heal. Being oneself is not a crime, one should not seek to cure gender identity or sexual orientation,” said the Minister delegate to equality , Elisabeth Moreno, opening debates, in a dedicated hemicycle.
practices difficult to quantifiable
From the United States, these practices that claim “to care” homosexuals are poorly known in France and difficult to quantifiable. During a parliamentary mission of 2019, Laurence Vanceunebrock, MP, the Republic (LRM), and Bastien Lachaud, Member of Parliament France Insouchaise (LFI), mentioned a “hundred recent cases”, laughed in “the increased reports “. They describe treatments by “hypnosis”, “hormones” or “electroshock”, “religious” drifts between “calls for abstinence” and sessions “exorcism”, or the use of “forced marriages” heterosexual.
Such acts can already fall under the law, via voluntary violence, the abuse of weakness, the illegal exercise of medicine, harassment or discrimination. But M me Vanceunebrock considers it necessary a specific crime to support the victims of the difficulty of lodging a complaint and better take the measurement of the phenomenon.
In recent years, journalistic surveys have learn more about these “therapies” in the religious framework. In France, the two main environments concerned are the evangelical Protestants and Charismatic Catholics, according to the parliamentary mission, which has noted some excesses within the Emmanuel community or that of the Beatitudes. But “these practices do not concern Christian obediences”, specify the deputies, who have also been aware of these abuses in Jewish and Muslim communities.