Belgium to criminalise conversion therapy

Belgium’s parliamentary Justice Committee on Tuesday approved a law proposal to criminalise conversion therapies for LGBTQIA+ people and give out prison sentences and fines for people who use conversion practices.

The proposal includes an eight-day to a two-year prison sentence and a fine of €208 to €2,400 for people who use conversion practices.

A judge could also impose a professional ban of up to five years if the crime was committed in a professional context.

Suggesting, inciting or advertising conversion therapy will also become punishable.

“Banning conversion therapies in Belgium: check! Good and important job [Former State Secretary for Equality] Sarah Schlitz and [current State Secretary for Equality] Marie-Colline Leroy,” Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Mobility Georges Gilkinet (French-speaking greens Ecolo/Greens/EFA) tweeted in the evening.

The Vlaams Belang party abstained from voting on the law proposal, which was unanimously approved by the other committee members.

While stressing the serious gravity of conversion therapies, Vlaams Belang member of parliament Marijke Dillen, asked why they were dealt with in a separate law proposal rather than in the current reform of the Criminal Code. As an example, she wondered why violence against police officers was not also the subject of a separate bill.

“I am convinced that, in practice, in our country, there are more cases of violence against police officers and emergency services than of conversion practices,” she said during the debate in committee.

She also underlined the few cases of conversions that were repatriated in Belgium, thus questioning the necessity of this proposal.

The proposal still needs to be approved by the rest of the Federal Parliament to enter into force.

Apart from being immoral and ineffective, conversion therapies can involve dangerous practices such as electric shocks, beatings or “corrective rape”, which can be harmful to the physical and mental health of the victims, on top of being stigmatising and discriminatory. These practices occur mainly in religious or sectarian settings and are usually carried out by family members or pseudo-professionals.

The scale of the phenomenon of conversion practices in Europe is unknown, as they are often carried out in secrecy. However, it is estimated that 2% of LGBTQIA+ people in the EU have undergone conversion, and 5% have been offered conversion, although the real figures could be much higher.

Gender identity and gender expression is not an illness and cannot be “cured” by conversion practices, and for the World Health Organisation (WHO), homosexuality ceased to be considered a pathology or an illness in 1990.

In 2020, the UN Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, called for a global ban on conversion practices without distinguishing between coercive and abusive practices and those that are “non-coercive” and “non-abusive”.

The same year, a group of Members of the European Parliament, building on a 2018 resolution, called on the EU Commission in a letter to propose an EU-wide ban.

In its strategy towards equal treatment of LGBTIQIA+ people, the executive considers that these practices harm the physical integrity and mental health of these communities.

Several EU member states, such as France, Germany, Greece and Malta, have banned these practices. An explicit ban does not exist yet in Belgium, and specific cases can be punished by other penal provisions (assault, battery, or rape). However, not all forms of abuse linked to conversion practices are covered, notably the “less extreme” forms, which are the most common in Belgium, Belga reports.

The proposal was submitted by State Secretary for Equality Marie-Colline Leroy (Ecolo) and Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open VLD/Renew Europe). Leroy said she is proud that Belgium is reaffirming its pioneering role in LGBTQIA+ rights. “We recently celebrated that 20 years ago, Belgium was the second country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage. Today, our country is once again a pioneer in the field of LGTBQI+ rights with the adoption of the law prohibiting conversion practices.”

(Anne-Sophie Gayet | EURACTIV.com)