Preventing Harm, Promoting Justice: Responding to LGBT Conversion Therapy in Australia
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PREVENTING HARM, PROMOTING JUSTICE Responding to LGBT conversion therapy in Australia Timothy W. Jones • Anna Brown • Lee Carnie • Gillian Fletcher • William Leonard ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks to the survivors of conversion therapy who agreed to speak with us and share some of their experiences. Telling your stories often came at a personal cost and we hope that this report respects the complexities and richness of your experiences and contributes to greater understanding and improved practice in the area of pastoral care of LGBT people within and outside religious communities. Thank you to the members of project steering committee for your advice: • Ro Allen, Victorian Commissioner for Gender and Sexuality • Nathan Despott (Brave) • Luke Gahan • Jamie Gardiner • Matt Glover (MGA Counselling Services) • Emma Halliday, Sean Mulcahy and Dale Park (Victorian Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby) • Michelle Kolev and Linda Cropley (Freedom2b) • Angus McLeay (Equal Voices) • Nicole O’Connor • Shaun Staunton (Beyond Blue) • Jonathan Tandos, clinical psychologist We thank the Transforming Human Societies Research Focus Area at La Trobe University for providing funding for the project. We also thank Baker & McKenzie for generously hosting the steering committee meetings and providing pro bono research support, and thank Beau Paterson for his research support as a HRLC paralegal. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work. We pay respect to elders past, present and emerging. © GLHV@ARCSHS, La Trobe University & Human Rights Law Centre 2018 For more information contact: GLHV@ARCSHS La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, 3086 T: +61 3 9479 8760 E: [email protected] W: www.latrobe.edu.au/arcshs Human Rights Law Centre Level 17, 461 Bourke St, Melbourne, VIC, 3000 T: + 61 3 8636 4450 E: [email protected] W: www.hrlc.org.au ISBN: 978-0-9953969-1-3 Suggested citation: Jones, T, Brown, A, Carnie, L, Fletcher, G, & Leonard, W. Preventing Harm, Promoting Justice: Responding to LGBT Conversion Therapy in Australia. Melbourne: GLHV@ARCSHS and the Human Rights Law Centre, 2018. CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 2 6 INTERNATIONAL RESPONSES 1.1 Background .......................... 3 TO CONVERSION PRACTICES 43 1.2 Aims ................................ 6 6.1 Introduction ........................ 43 1.3 Summary ............................ 5 6.2 Australia’s obligations under international human rights law ....... 44 2 METHODOLOGY 7 6.3 Conversion practices violate international human rights law ....... 44 2.1 Project design ........................ 7 6.4 Balancing competing rights ........... 47 2.2 Historical review ...................... 7 6.5 Learnings from foreign jurisdictions 49 2.3 Social research ....................... 8 6.6 Conclusion ......................... 51 2.4 Human rights and legal analysis ........ 9 3 RELIGIOUS CONVERSION 7 LEGISLATIVE & REGULATORY THERAPY 11 LANDSCAPE IN AUSTRALIA 53 3.1 Pastoral approaches to 7.1 Overview of existing legal homosexuality (1950 – 1970) ........... 12 and regulatory frameworks ........... 53 3.2 The emergence of religious 7.2 Regulating different types conversion therapy (1970 – 1990) ....... 13 of conversion practices ............... 68 3.3 The globalisation of the ex-gay movement (1990 – 2012) ............... 14 8 GAPS IN PROTECTION 3.4 Religious conversion therapy & RECOMMENDATIONS in Australia today (2012 – present) ...... 15 3.5 Conclusion .......................... 19 FOR FUTURE ACTION 65 8.1 Recommendations 4 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 21 for the State Government ............ 66 8.2 Recommendations 4.1 Splitting the difference ............... 22 for the Federal Government .......... 70 4.2 The importance of faith 8.3 Recommendations and religious community ............. 24 for health associations ............... 71 4.3 The struggle for understanding and acceptance ...................... 25 4.4 Spreading the word .................. 26 APPENDIX: PSYCHIATRY & CONVERSION THERAPY 72 5 THE COSTS OF RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE 29 ENDNOTES 74 5.1 The slow-burning trauma of being in community ................. 30 5.2 Religious conversion therapy practices 31 5.3 Compounding complexity ............ 37 5.4 Damned if you do, damned if you don’t 38 1 INTRODUCTION This report addresses the vexed problem It is grounded in the belief that all people of the religious LGBT conversion therapy are born with the potential to develop into movement. Conversion therapy emerged heterosexual people whose gender identity in Australian conservative Christian accords with that assigned to them at communities in the early 1970s, and birth.1 It views lesbian, gay, bisexual and has been practised in these and other transgender people as suffering from communities ever since. ‘sexual brokenness’, which can be cured. Full membership of faith communities can depend on same-sex attracted and gender diverse people committing to live celibate lives and seeking ‘healing’ for their sexual brokenness. 2 PREVENTING HARM, PROMOTING JUSTICE 1.1 BACKGROUND 1.2 AIMS Psychological research has produced overwhelming clinical This report highlights the nature, extent and impact of LGBT evidence that practices aimed at the reorientation of LGBT conversion therapies in Australia. The report is designed to people do not work and are both harmful and unethical. help government, support services and faith communities to All Australian health authorities, including the Christian better respond to those experiencing conflict between their Counsellors Association of Australia, now ‘strongly gender identity or sexual orientation and their beliefs. oppose any form of mental health practice that treats The study aimed to: homosexuality as a disorder, or seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation’.2 In 2014, nine ex-leaders of the ‘Gay • illuminate the unique experiences and needs of LGBT Conversion Therapy Movement’ offered a public apology people of faith who have undergone some form of for the damage their movement had caused. ‘We now stand religion-based conversion therapy; united in our conviction,’ they said, ‘that conversion therapy • outline the history, prevalence and changing nature of is not “therapy” but is instead ineffectual and harmful’.3 services provided to LGBT people of faith in Australia Nonetheless, our research suggests that up to 10% of LGBT that pathologise same-sex attraction and gender Australians are still vulnerable to harmful conversion diverse identities; therapy practices. At least ten organisations in Australia and • provide assistance to religious organisations and New Zealand currently advertise the provision of conversion communities that promote and practise conversion therapies.4 Rather than receding, our research suggests that therapy to provide more appropriate support to their conversion practices and ideologies are being mainstreamed LGBT members as they reconcile their religious, gender within particular Christian churches. Ex-gay and ex-trans and sexual identities; ideology, counselling and pastoral activities are still being promoted in the messages and teachings of many churches, • canvas international legal models and conduct a mosques and synagogues, through print and digital media human rights based analysis of the issue and the and through some Christian radio programmes. competing rights and interests at play to inform the proposed legislative response; and In Australia, growing professional and government interest in minimising the harms of conversion therapy has not yet • survey the existing legal landscape in Australia (with a been matched by evidence and data. This report provides the particular focus on Victoria as an illustrative example) first academic research on the nature and extent of LGBT and consider legislative and regulatory options to conversion movements in Australia and the first detailed restrict the promotion and provision of conversion accounts of the impact of conversion therapy on the lives of therapies and similar practices, including by faith LGBT Australians of faith. Such data is vital in determining communities and organisations and both registered what types of legal and community interventions are and unregistered health practitioners. appropriate and most likely to be effective in addressing the harms associated with conversion therapy. The report makes recommendations for legal, policy and programmatic reform to respond to conversion practices in Australia. LGBT CONVERSION THERAPY IN AUSTRALIA 3 1.3 SUMMARY Understanding and responding to this complex In recent times, the conversion therapy movement has problem requires an interdisciplinary approach. In this presented itself in more ethically acceptable postures, report we have combined historical, social and legal disguising its anti-LGBT ideology and reorientation efforts research and analysis to enhance our understanding of in the language of spiritual healing, mental health and conversion therapy practices in Australia and to make religious liberty. recommendations for reforms to prevent harm and promote At the heart of this report, in Chapters Four and Five, are justice in this area. Our methodology is stepped out in the voices and lived experiences of 15 LGBT people with Chapter Two. experiences of conversion therapy, documented through The short but dynamic history of the Australian religious social research. The participants engaged with various LGBT conversion therapy movement is presented in Chapter conversion therapy practices between 1986 and 2016 as part Three. The historical