(LifeSiteNews) — The Council of Europe has voted in favor of a resolution demanding a ban on so-called “conversion therapy,” including prayers regarding “gender identity or gender expression.”
On Thursday, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted in favor of the anti-conversion therapy resolution that was brought forward by U.K. Labour Party member and LGBT activist Katharine Helen Osborne.
According to the assembly’s website, the Socialist Group (SOC), the United European Left (UEL), and most of the liberal ALDE Group voted in favor of the motion, while the European People’s Party (EPP/CD) was divided on the issue. The European Conservatives (ECPA/ECR) almost unanimously rejected it.
The text of the resolution defines “conversion practices” or “conversion therapies” as “all measures or efforts aimed at changing, repressing, or suppressing a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, based on the false belief that such core aspects of a person’s identity are pathological or undesirable or somehow able to change.”
The ban of so-called “conversion practices” would include praying for a person, as the resolution states that “[t]hese practices, aimed at promoting heterosexual attraction or aligning a person’s gender identity with their sex assigned at birth, include psychological or behavioural counselling, spiritual and religious rituals, aversion methods, as well as verbal abuse, coercion, isolation, forced medication, electric shocks, physical and sexual abuse.”
While local laws against “conversion therapy” often have exceptions for “abnormal sexual preferences” like pedophilia, the motion does not include such a stipulation.
The resolution also calls for the indoctrination of school children with LGBT ideology, as it demands “mandatory comprehensive sexuality education,” including “teaching on the diversity of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and sex characteristics, with a view to preventing and countering social prejudice and misinformation.”
Children should learn to “identify and denounce” attempts of so-called “conversion practices.”
The Council of Europe is independent of the European Union, and its assembly comprises members of national parliaments from European countries. The resolution is non-binding, but governments, parliaments, and courts can use it as a basis for decision-making, and it applies pressure on local governments to pass laws that meet its demands.
Stefan Fuchs from the German Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost notes that the resolution “treats ‘religious practices’ such as prayer on the same level as abuse and torture methods.”
Parents, doctors, and pastors would be forced “to allow young people to undergo hormone therapy and so-called ‘gender reassignment’ surgery.”
“Criticism of this mutilation of young people is to be criminalized as an attack on the human rights of transgender people,” Fuchs wrote. “The resolution is a frontal attack on fundamental freedoms: the right of parents to educate their children, freedom of religion, the freedom of doctors and psychologists to choose their therapy, and, in general, the fundamental right to freedom of expression.”
Pro-family critics have denounced the resolution for violating the parents’ right to educate their children how they see fit.
ADF International lawyer Felix Böllman said, “Psychiatrists, parents, members of religious communities, and many others are being intimidated. The interference with freedom of expression, religion, and conscience is particularly serious: certain beliefs about sexuality and gender are being labeled as ‘wrong’ and are to be effectively suppressed, even though the ECHR also protects uncomfortable peaceful views.”
