After years of promising to end LGBTQ conversion therapy in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced last week that therapy would be banned, but not for transgender people.
On Thursday, the UK Independent News Broadcasting (ITV) obtained a document released from Johnson’s office stating that its government should not continue to change legislation banning LGBTQ conversion therapy. But after several high-ranking members of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party pledged their support for the ban, Johnson announced that he was still calling for a ban on conversion therapy for gay, lesbian and bisexual people, but that the law would not apply to transgender people.
LGBTQ community advocates and victims of conversion therapy have condemned the change.
“As a person who has undergone almost 20 years of conversion therapy. Due to which I have been to the hospital twice, I consider it completely unforgivable. It creates a hostile environment for LGBTQ people, especially transgender people.”
– Said one of the victims of therapy in an interview with the Guardian.
Recall that in 2020, the UN Human Rights Council recognised conversion therapy as torture and called on countries around the world to take urgent measures to ban it.
