200,000 Psychiatrists Around the World Say We Should End LGBTQ Conversion Therapy

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Source: http://www.teenvogue.com/story/world-psychiatric-association-lgbtq-conversion-therapy

Sexual Health + Identity

200,000 Psychiatrists Around the World Say We Should End LGBTQ Conversion Therapy

Finally.

Brittney McNamaraMar 22, 2016 4:32PM EDT

Arun Nevader/WireImage

For the first time in history, the largest international organization for psychiatrists will denounce conversion therapy, calling the practice "unscientific, unethical, ineffective, and harmful," reports BuzzFeed News.

The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) will declare on Tuesday its opposition "to any attempts to turn LGBT people heterosexual." The practice, typically known as conversion therapy or reparative therapy, contributes to the poor mental health that many LGBTQ people experience.

Conversion therapy uses behavioral, cognitive, psychoanalytic, and other practices in an attempt to change or reduce homosexual attraction, and it is also used in an attempt to change a person’s gender identity. While many groups like the American Psychiatric Association have opposed the practice for years, the WPA coming out in opposition of conversion therapy is significant because it is a worldwide group. The WPA represents more than 200,000 psychiatrists in more than 118 countries. Some of the countries it represents criminalize homosexuality and believe it can be “cured."

“There is no sound scientific evidence that innate sexual orientation can be changed,” BuzzFeed reports the WPA’s statement says. “Furthermore, so-called treatments of homosexuality can create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish, and they can be potentially harmful. The provision of any intervention purporting to ‘treat’ something that is not a disorder is wholly unethical.”

The statement goes on to make clear that homosexuality is not a symptom of “psychological dysfunction or impairment in judgment, stability, or vocational capabilities.”

The WPA’s new position does more than just denounce conversion therapy, though. It calls on governments across the world to get rid of laws that prohibit homosexuality.

“WPA supports the need to de-criminalize same-sex sexual orientation and behavior and transgender gender identity, and to recognize LGBT rights to include human, civil, and political rights," says the WPA.

In the United States, where gay marriage is legal and civil rights laws are firmly on the books, LGBTQ people still face discrimination, abuse, and shame. As of December 2015, though, at least 75 countries still criminalize sexual activity by those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, and any other sexuality that isn't straight, along with anyone who identifies as transgender or gender-expansive. In those countries, not only are there no laws to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination, but the laws themselves are forms of discrimination.

Rather than criminalize LGBTQ gender identities and sexualities, the WPA advocates criminalizing the practice of discrimination that contributes to prejudice against and deteriorating mental health of people in the LGBTQ community.

“[The WPA also] supports anti-bullying legislation; anti-discrimination student, employment, and housing laws; immigration equality; equal age of consent laws; and hate crime laws providing enhanced criminal penalties for prejudice-motivated violence against LGBT people,” the statement says.

The WPA’s position confirms what we’ve known for a long time. All variants of human sexuality are “normal variants of human sexuality,” and nobody should try to change someone's identity. With international support, the WPA’s statement brings the world one step closer to fundamental fairness and equality for all.

Honestly, it’s about time.