Why Ban & Criminalisation Of Conversion Therapy For Homosexuals Is Need Of The Hour In India

At a time when many countries across the world are creating inclusive policies for people belonging to the LGBTQIA+ group, some societies are still finding it hard to provide a safe public sphere to the community. The prejudices against those who are not born heterosexual have actually made people believe in what they call the 'conversion therapy' for such people. In their own (un)scientific thought process, they are convinced that everyone is born with a 'straight' sexual orientation and expected to perform 'confirmed' gender roles.

Anyone who goes astray must be corrected, or, if required, converted to adjust to the norms created by - nobody knows whom.

In June 2021, Madras High Court consciously addressed conversion therapy for homosexual people.

In a historic order, the court gave guidelines to create a safe environment for LGBTQIA+ people, including a suggestion that action be taken against the problematic ¡®conversion therapy¡¯ ¡ª an illegal pseudoscience practice that claims to ¡®cure¡¯ queer persons.

Justice Anand Venkatesh, after taking time to learn and understand about the community, interacting with community members, and working with a psychologist, gave the order.

In his order, Justice Anand said, "It is unfortunate that such pseudoscience is peddled to worried and anxious parents of LGBTQIA+ children even today by quacks and self-serving doctors as false hope, many of whom continue to practice conversion therapy ¨C a group of therapies directed at ¡°correcting¡± nonheterosexual and non-cisgender people to their so-called ¡°normal¡± counterparts ¡ª with full impunity, often aided by law enforcement.¡±

Three years after the Supreme Court struck down a repressive law that criminalised homosexual relations, the Madras high court took significant steps to blunt the sharp edge of discrimination against the LGBTQIA+ community. In an expansive set of guidelines that build on the spirit of the 2018 Navtej Johar v Union of India and the 2014 Nalsa v Union of India judgments, Justice N Anand Venkatesh barred the dubious practice of ¡°conversion therapy."

The constitutional court message went out loud and clear against pathologising the life choices of homosexual and gender-nonconforming individuals and ¡°curing¡± them by procedures that have traumatic effects.

What is conversion therapy?

In May 2020, the tragic suicide of Anjana Harish, a 21-year-old bisexual woman in Goa, sparked online protests. Harish had posted a video online before her suicide describing how she had been subjected to conversion therapy by her family in her home state of Kerala.

Her death fortified efforts by activists to call for an outright ban on the practice.

In June 2021, a 23-year-old lesbian woman from Tamil Nadu, Pavithra, spoke with a German news publication about her family's attempts to force her to undergo conversion therapy. This included visits to a general physician followed by a consultation with a psychiatrist who advised Pavithra to watch porn videos depicting heterosexual intercourse. Pavithra's family also took her to a quack who "prescribed" rum as medication, and an unidentified tablet. She finally fled from her home and has been living with her partner Mary.

Human Rights Watch

In June 2020, the UN Human Rights Council received a report on conversion therapy by an independent expert on gender and sexuality, Victor Madrigal-Borloz. Based on research in over 100 countries that use conversion therapy, 8,000 respondents who had endured it were interviewed, with 98 per cent reporting that it had caused them psychological or physical damage.

"Reparative" or "conversion" therapy is a dangerous practice that targets LGBTQ youth and seeks to change their sexual or gender identities.

So-called ¡°conversion therapy,¡± is a range of dangerous and discredited practices that falsely claim to change a person¡¯s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.

Exorcisms by churches or healers, "corrective" rapes, obligation to undergo psychological treatment; "treatments" by Ayurvedic doctors, quack clinics; use of psychoactive substances, electrocution, are among some of the methods used for such therapy.

Women¡¯s perfumes are still being used today according to recent accounts of conversion therapy.

"Pray the gay away" in India

For centuries, homosexuality has been considered an anomaly in an individual, something that could be cured.

Like Harish, many members of the LGBTQIA+ community have claimed to be victims of conversion therapy.

Dr Aqsa Sheikh, a transwoman, queer rights activist, and a doctor based in Delhi, says she is "fortunate enough to have never been subjected to this cruel practice but knows several people personally who were forced by their family and relatives to undergo the trauma."

Despite an open global call to outlaw such practices, Aqsa says, she "is aware of conversion clinics being run the capital of the country and several other states in India."

She also has friends and acquaintances who have been subjected to "corrective therapies", pointing out that the word "corrective" is "itself wrong."

She adds that the practice of conversion therapy grew manifold during the pandemic, "especially when many young people left their safe spaces and went back homes where they were forced to undergo such therapy."

Such practices are now also available online, albeit inconspicuously.

In Singapore, a group called 3:16 Church, for example, advocates conversion therapy online. It promotes a ministry called TrueLove. Its website is ¡°drenched in rainbow colours and calming language,¡± encouraging visitors to ¡°come out and come home¡± and urging people to come to God and ¡°overcome¡± their sin.

Rahul (name changed), 32, based in Mumbai says that while coming out was a difficult phase of their life, they have never been subjected to such a torturous practice. ¡°Praying the gay away is a norm, and almost everyone that you come across from the community have seen it in their homes, but not everyone has experienced the horrors of conversion therapy.

Mouni (name changed), a 28-year-old student of architecture from Kolkata, identifies as a lesbian has a different story to narrate. ¡°When my parents found out about my sexuality, they were horrified. They thought I am not normal and that I needed help to get over it. They tried taking me to quacks for ¡°rectifying the anomaly¡± and blackmailed me,¡± she says.

She says her parents were more concerned about the society and the public humiliation that they have to go through since I was different and was not into men. ¡°That was not normal, since the country we live in, a hetesexual relationship and marriage to a man is directly proportional to respect that you earn in the society,¡± she adds.

A law that bans and criminalises conversion therapy

After an unprecedented order by the Madras high court, the National Medical Commission on February 22 said that conversion therapy performed by any doctor will be construed as professional misconduct and prosecuted accordingly.

Image credit: Carlos Latuff

Forbidding conversion therapy, the NMC made the submission in view of a recommendation made by a committee constituted to modify the syllabus of the MBBS course so that medical students could be sensitised about the sexual orientations of persons belonging to LGBTQIA+ community. The committee was appointed following a direction issued by N Anand Venkatesh.

Earlier in October 2021, the NMC took a landmark measure as it issued a directive asking all medical colleges/universities and establishments to remove remarks on the queer community from the syllabus.

The Madras High Court had issued orders to the NMC to clear up the medical syllabus under the Central Board of Medical Education (CBME) curriculum and remove any derogatory or unscientific remarks in regards to the LGBTQIA+ community.

The advisory also asks all authors of medical textbooks to amend the information about virginity and the LGBTQIA+ community in their books as per the available scientific literature and guidelines.

After Section 377 was repealed, the Indian Psychiatric Society stated unequivocally that homosexuality was not a mental disorder. However, divisions exist within the medical community.

The ease of access in finding professionals who practice conversion therapy on LGBTQ+ people has become a cause for concern. In early June, two apps that help people find medical clinics and treatments removed pages allowing users to look for ¡°sexual orientation counselling¡± after a viral Twitter campaign.

In India, the earliest documented medical use of aversion techniques was in the 1970s, following a renewed global interest in scientific cures for homosexuality, and was reported in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry.

In the same period, some Indian medical professionals noted that their subjects ¡°showed a desire to develop heterosexual behaviour¡±, as they were ¡°much concerned about their future marital life¡±.

In the west, the history of psychiatric understandings of homosexuality hinged on the notion that deviant sexuality was something that could, and should, be changed.

The idea of homosexuality as a disorder that could be ¡°treated¡± was then imported to various European colonies via medical, legal, and sociological institutions, India being one of the victims.

There is overwhelming evidence that conversion therapy does not work and some evidence also suggests that it is detrimental to LGBTQIA+ persons.

According to the WHO, the right to health includes freedom from torture or non-consensual medical treatment and experimentation.

Therefore, there is a need for courts in India to either treat the act of conversion therapy as an offence of ¡®hurt¡¯ or create specific provisions under criminal law that address this problem.

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