Alberta’s NDP government is preparing a private member’s bill to ban conversion therapy in Alberta.
The bill will be purposed by Edmonton Castle-Downs MLA Nicole Goehring, who has a past of promoting mental health.
Conversion therapy, sometimes referred to as reparative therapy, is the controversial method of changing someone’s sexuality or gender identity.
Maria Fitzpatrick, Lethbridge East’s NDP MLA said it was upsetting when she learned conversion therapy was still happening.
“To be honest, I wasn’t aware of it until my constituents came and spoke to me about it. When they told me, it was like… okay, this is 2018, why would something like this still be happening? So, I was pretty shocked that it was something that’s going on.”
Fitzpatrick said she is in favour of the bill, but the specific details have yet to be announced.
“To me, it seems like something really archaic,” she said, “and I don’t understand why something like that would be happening in our country.”
Zachary Wigand, student co-chair of Lethbridge College’s LGBTQ+ counsel says it isn’t something that gets a lot of publicity.
“It’s not something that’s talked about in the wider community. It’s something that’s done behind closed doors. If you’re not part of the community, I don’t think you know that it still happens. Even for myself, I don’t hear much about those conversion therapies, but I know it does happen.”
Wigand also mentioned he feels the bill is overdue, but is glad it’s finally happening.
According to I Was Tortured in Gay Conversion Therapy. And It’s Still Legal in 41 States, written by Sam Brinton and published on nytimes.com, conversation therapy was a traumatic and scarring experience, that doesn’t work.
“The therapist ordered me bound to a table to have ice, heat and electricity applied to my body. I was forced to watch clips on a television of gay men holding hands, hugging and having sex. I was supposed to associate those images with the pain I was feeling to once and for all turn into a straight boy. In the end, it didn’t work. I would say that it did, just to make the pain go away. I have begun to repair the damage that conversion therapy caused me and my family. But the failed promise of change has very likely caused a permanent tear in our relationship.”
If passed, the bill will make such practices illegal, but will not be easy to enforce. According to NDP bill would ban ‘harmful and hateful’ gay conversion therapy written by Emma Graney, published on edmontonjournal.com, “[Kristopher] Wells lauded Goehring’s upcoming bill, but acknowledged it could be tough to police a ‘largely underground’ phenomenon often confined to faith-based communities.”
Currently, conversion therapy is banned only in Manitoba and Ontario. Nova Scotia is also working towards banning it.
It is still legal in the rest of Canada.
The bill is being drafted by Goehring and will be proposed later this fall.
