Why Victoria’s Conversion Practices Review Matters

We’ve made a submission to Victoria’s review of its conversion practices law.

We did this because lesbian, gay and bisexual people need laws that protect us from genuinely harmful practices without creating confusion for clinicians or making lawful therapy harder. Gay conversion practices are wrong and discredited. But that does not mean the law should blur the line between coercive practices and careful, evidence-based therapy.

We are calling for the law to be clarified and for gender identity to be removed from the Act’s scope. At the very least, the law should make clear that open-ended, exploratory therapy is lawful and is not the same thing as suppression.