The voted text creates a new offense in the Criminal Code punishing these practices with at least two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros.
The Parliament definitively adopted on Tuesday January 25, with a final unanimous vote of the deputies, a bill LREM which targets the “conversion therapies», practices aimed at imposing heterosexuality on lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) people.
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Adopted by the 142 deputies present, the text carried by the LREM deputy Laurence Vanceunebrock creates a new offense in the Penal Code punishing these practices with at least two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros. The penalties may increase to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros in the event of aggravating circumstances. The text had already received the unanimous support of the High Assembly, on January 20.
Send “a strong signal”
“We send a strong signal because we formally condemn all those who consider a change of sex or identity as an illness“Explained the deputy LREM Laurence Vanceunebrock, at the origin of this text carried by the majority. “These unworthy practices have no place in the Republic. Because being yourself is not a crime, because there is nothing to heal“, tweeted Emmanuel Macron. Formally, theconversion therapiesare already punishable via a large number of offences: moral harassment, violence or illegal practice of medicine, etc.
But for Elisabeth Moreno, Minister Delegate for Equality between Women and Men, the adoption of this text will send “a clear signalso that the victims of thesebarbaric practices“have the courage to”go through the door of a police station more easily“. The “conversion therapiescan take the form of exorcism sessions, internships or electroshocks, among a myriad of abuses that have lasting psychological or even physical repercussions on the people, often young, who are victims.
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According to a report by Laurence Vanceunebrock, co-authored with her colleague “rebellious“Bastien Lachaud, the expression”conversion therapieswas born in America in the 1950s. They have no scientific or medical basis. There is no national survey in France to assess the extent of the phenomenon. In 2019, parliamentarians mentioned around a hundred cases “recent“. They are not “fables” or some “chimeras“, However hammered Elisabeth Moreno.
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A milestone” for “to dispose of his body as of his heart”
Several reports or testimonies have recently been the subject of strong media coverage, and artists such as Eddy de Pretto or Hoshi have urged politicians to put the fight against these practices on the parliamentary agenda. French parliamentarians are following in the footsteps of a European movement since countries such as Germany, Malta and Spanish regions have already legislated on the subject, soon to be joined by Belgium, the Netherlands and Great Britain. . The text is a “milestone in the long march of human freedoms” for “dispose of one’s body as one’s heart“, underlined Bastien Lachaud. For the elected LFI, other steps are to come such as the “free choice of gender in civil status“.
LR Maxime Minot also welcomed this progress “useful and essential“, but judged that it would only be of a “limited scope: the most violent practices are already punishable by law“. He also briefly returned to the examination of the text at first reading in the Senate with a right-wing majority. If the vote had been largely favorable to the upper house (305 senators had voted in favor of the bill), 28 had opposed it, all of the group Les Républicains, including their leader Bruno Retailleau.
Read also“Conversion therapies”: final vote in Parliament to create a new offense
He later assured that he was “obviously against conversion therapies which aim to force homosexual people to change their orientation“. But he had justified his vote by the fact that the text “also refers to gender identity, in the name of which people ask to change sex, which goes far beyond the question of the protection of homosexual people“. “All tendencies have the right to express themselves“, affirmed the deputy Minot. On addition of the Senate, the final text provides that simple invitations to caution and reflection addressed to the person considering a sex change will not be punishable under this new offense.
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