Could conversion therapies, practices aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity banned since 2022, be reintroduced in France? This is the fear that haunts several associations and activists for the rights of LGBT+ people. In question, a bill tabled by Les Républicains in March, relating to the “care of minors with gender issues”.
On social networks, several accounts have relayed this assertion, such as that of the “LGBT+ Corner” which denounces the fact that the text would aim to “prohibit any medical transition to trans minors in France while making them undergo organized conversion therapy by the state “. This information account on LGBT+ themes also launched a petition, collecting to date more than 33,000 signatures: “for the rejection of anti-trans law proposals in the French parliament”. The petition indicates in particular that this bill “considers setting up conversion therapies organized by the State”.
Article 3 at the center of the debates
If the petition denounces “ [l’interdiction] of any medical transition to trans minors in France”, it is specifically in article 3 of bill 435 tabled in the Senate on March 19, 2024 by Senator LR Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio, which is accused of reintroducing conversion therapies. This provides for the establishment of a “national strategy for child psychiatry”, with “the objective that every child or adolescent benefits, as soon as possible, from the means enabling them to regain a state of psychological well-being contributing to the fulfillment of its development, and the necessary psychological care”.
Finally the text provides that, “she [cette stratégie] is available in a territorial network of child psychiatry structures so as to guarantee each child or adolescent suffering from mental illness to be treated within their place of life or place of care.
Psychological monitoring that questions
The element pointed out is the fact that the proposed law aims to ban puberty blockers and hormonal treatments (as recommended in article 1), in favor of psychological monitoring. “What could relate to conversion therapies is first of all that the time of psychotherapy would be a time dedicated to the limitation of what we will call transaffirmative therapies, that is to say the affirmation transidentity [comprenant par exemple les bloqueurs de puberté] », Explains Arnaud Alessandrin, gender sociologist specializing in transidentity issues.
“The idea would be to treat psychological or psychiatric disorders, which would take the form of a request for gender change, but which would not be a transidentity. It’s about taking time to distinguish the symptom: the request for gender change or non-binary, and the syndrome behind it, which does not relate to transidentity but to many other syndromes. This would consist of telling people ‘you are not trans, you are affected by a pathology’,” explains the researcher.
“The idea of an illness” vs “unfounded criticism”
Arnaud Alessandrin underlines the fact that the article in question describes the minors in question as people “in pain”, which induces, for the sociologist, “the idea of an illness”. “It slows down the emergence of identity, for the benefit of a long time, of a doubt which is placed on the solidity and the validity of the identity expressed by young people. The same thing was said for homosexuals. »
Senator Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio denounces “unfounded criticism”. Questioned about the term “care” used in the text, she argues “that it is not marked ‘care for transidentity'”: “the term ‘care’ means the fact of taking care of a child who is not doing well and is asking questions. It’s just making sure he gets better. » The senator adds: “We realize that it often takes time, because adolescence is a time of adult construction. Questions arise and it takes time to arrive at a definitive diagnosis. »
Béatrice Denaes, co-president of the Trans Santé France association, denounces an approach that amounts to “wait and see”. “We don’t take into account what they feel [les enfants] and their suffering, but they would benefit from psychotherapies which are conversion therapies. What they want is to put them back on the right path,” supports the latter, for whom it is “sure” that the proposed law represents a threat to the return of conversion therapies.
Béatrice Denaes also underlines the fact that the bill follows the report by Republican senators on the transidentity of minors, produced with the “Little Mermaid Observatory”. An association which “has campaigned for years against listening to trans children and helping them”, according to the co-president of Trans Santé France.
The parallel with homosexuality
Traditionally rather associated with homosexuality, conversion therapies have been prohibited in France since the law of January 31, 2022, “prohibiting practices aimed at modifying a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity”. Senator Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio had also tabled amendments (ultimately not accepted), to remove the occurrences of the terms “gender identity” in the bill. And this, on the grounds that this term covers “things which are not defined”.
The senator also recalls that “conversion therapies are ‘intellectual’ tools used by extreme religious people who think that homosexuality is an illness”, on which “a law has been made”. According to Béatrice Denaes, the recent Republican bill, because it would provide for a return to conversion therapy, would echo “what homosexuals have experienced for a very long time”: “we are in ideology, the same way as for homosexuality, saying that it was a fad, an illness, and a fashion for people who must be put back on the right path. »
To learn more about transidentity
If the law prohibiting conversion therapy therefore contains the notion of gender identity, “case law on the question of transidentity does not exist”, explains Arnaud Alessandrin, due to the fact that to date there is no judgment rendered in France on this issue. The sociologist further explains that the medical approach was not foreign to religious circles incriminated by conversion therapies concerning homosexuality: “very often doctors intervened who developed the idea that it was necessary to slow down or even prevent the homosexual affirmation of the desires or practices of young people. »
A desire to develop child psychiatry
“When I read article 3 I honestly don’t see what allows anyone to say that [le lien avec les thérapies de conversion] », Finally supports the senator, who denounces a desire “to scare”. Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio highlights a desire to develop child psychiatry, which today would be “the poor relation of psychiatry”, with insufficient means. “There is a real subject on the lack of structures […] to welcome children who are questioning gender like others, children who are not doing well, who are depressed, who have comorbidities, who are wondering about their sexual orientation…”, insists the senator.
The elected official defends herself from any pathologizing approach, indicating that the text aims to “call out to the State the need to have a health policy that is developed throughout the territory. »
The bill will be on the agenda in the chamber on May 28.