SOCIAL JUSTICE WORKS
Clearing the Air on Conversion Therapy BY JODY-LEE FARRAH, MSW, RSW
CURRENTLY DESCRIBED AS A “hot topic”, conversion therapy has been the subject of headlines locally to internationally, capturing ongoing conversations and debate about the so-called therapeutic intervention. In Alberta, municipal governments are taking action to ban the practice by prohibiting business licenses for those that provide conversion therapy. The provincial government continues to examine their role by weighing their legislative powers to protect Canadians from harmful practices such as conversion therapy, while respecting human rights defined in the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Alberta Minister of Justice, Doug Schweitzer, has stated, “The province opposes and condemns conversion therapy, which is prohibited practice for all regulated health professionals in the province. The totality of these measures constitutes a complete legal ban on the practice of conversion therapy”. The federal government is looking at ways to reform the Criminal Code in order to combat conversion therapy. A Harmful Practice Conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, “involves an array of pseudo-scientific interventions that aim to alter same-sex attractions with 12
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the goal of promoting heterosexuality (George, 2017; Bright, 2004). Some interventions include the use of medication, religious rites, behavioural, cognitive, and cognitivebehavioural strategies, as well as individual and group counselling.” The term sexual orientation change efforts, or SOCE, includes any form of conversion or reparative therapy.
LGBTQ2S+: Commonly used acronym to mean lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and twospirit. The plus symbol is used to include all sexual and gender identities. SOCE refers to any practice seeking to change a person’s sexual orientation, including, but not limited to, efforts to change behaviours, gender identity, or gender expressions. According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), psychiatric
heteronormative perspectives that homosexuality is a mental disorder. However, as a result of advocacy to recognize LGBTQ2S+ civil rights and affirm that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, the APA condemned conversion therapy. The diagnosis of homosexuality was removed from the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973, and in 1990, the World Health Organization followed by removing homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). With historical roots in a framework of mental disorder, relentless oppression of the LGBTQ2S+ population has led to stigma, discrimination, human rights violations, criminalization, violence and death of LGBTQ2S+ people. Stigma and discrimination has had a tremendous impact on the physical and mental well-being of LGBTQ2S+ people, including but not limited to, family rejection, bullying, physical and sexual assault, and suicide. The marginalization and discrimination experienced by LGBTQ2S+ people continues to be a barrier in accessing appropriate health care. The Canadian Psychiatric Association states that “These barriers are compounded by health care providers often lacking the appropriate knowledge and skills around LGBT health.” Worse, LGBTQ2S+ clients reported, “the level of knowledge of health care professionals to be inadequate, the amount of homophobic reactions to their lives to be unethical, and the willingness of the health care system to adapt to their needs to be minimal.”
interventions described as conversion
A Social Work Perspective
therapy are based on long-time
The Alberta College of Social Workers
