According to the chairman of the parliamentary group LREM Christophe Castaner, the proposal of MP La République en Marche (LREM) is aimed at strengthening the criminal response to “these actions of another era.”
A commission uniting deputies and senators has enacted a specific offense in order to more easily mislead the authors of conversion therapies.
This crime is punishable by imprisonment for a term of two years and a fine of EUR 30,000. The punishment can be three years in prison and a fine of 45 thousand euros with aggravated circumstances.
Conversion treatments are already punishable, but sometimes they are “difficult to confiscate,” the LREM said in a statement.
If the text was the subject of a unanimous vote in the French parliament on October 6, then this did not happen in the Senate, where the bill received negative votes.
All 28 senators from Les Républicains (Republicans in Portuguese) voted against with 305 votes in favor.
There is no study in France to evaluate the evolution of the conversion therapy phenomenon.
During a parliamentary mission in 2019, Laurence Vansenbrock and radical leftist Bastien Lacho named “a hundred cases”, alarmed by “an increase in denunciations.”
In Europe, this practice is already banned in Malta, Germany and several provinces of Spain.
In turn, the bill was passed on December 1 by the lower house of the Canadian parliament. And in the UK, the bill is currently under public discussion.
