Conversion practices survivor Jace Reh, SA Rainbow Advocacy Alliance call for ban in South Australia

A survivor-advocate of conversion practices has shared his story – and called for a ban to be progressed in South Australia.

There are moments from Jace Reh’s childhood that will remain with him forever.

At age 14, he worked up the courage to confide in a church leader: he kept thinking about women, and felt that he was not meant to be a girl.

“And I remember him turning around to me and saying ‘if you just stop thinking your gay thoughts, God will forgive you’,” he said.

Nearly a decade later, Jace – who uses the pronouns he, she and they – has become an advocate for banning conversion practices, which try to change or suppress a person’s sexuality or gender identity.

Now 23 years old, Jace is studying and works for LGBTIQA+ health and wellbeing service Thorne Harbour Health SA.

He is also a board member of the South Australian Rainbow Advocacy Alliance, which is leading the charge for a ban on conversion practices – also known as conversion “therapy” – in South Australia.

Jace Reh. Picture: Matt Loxton

Bans are already in place in Queensland, Victoria and the ACT, while last year governments in NSW and Tasmania announced their intention to follow suit.

Human Services Minister Nat Cook in 2020 flagged that she would draft a bill to legislate a ban in South Australia.

Prior to the 2022 state election, Premier Peter Malinauskas – then Opposition Leader – said in a letter to the alliance that Labor was “fundamentally opposed to the practice of conversion therapy” and, if elected, “will work to ensure this practice does not occur in South Australia”.

Advocates fear that internal politics within Labor have put the party’s pledge at risk of not coming to fruition.

Asked on Sunday, Mr Malinauskas said Labor remained committed to making sure conversion practices do not happen in South Australia – but he would not commit to a ban.

“We are committed to working through the issue and we will engage with all members of the community regarding it,” he said.

“We haven’t seen a huge amount of evidence of where it occurs. I’m not aware of any allegations of anyone actually doing it so that would naturally inform the speed at which we move on any particular proposition.”

Asked whether any work had been done toward fulfilling the election commitment, Mr Malinauskas said he thought some work had been looked at in the Attorney-General’s Department.

The ‘Preventing Harm, Promoting Justice’ report, published by La Trobe University in 2018, suggested up to 10 per cent of LGBTIQA+ Australians are “still vulnerable to harmful conversion therapy practices”.

Jace Reh in Adelaide. Picture: Matt Loxton

Jace said he first attended a public school in the regional area where he grew up, but he was moved to a local Christian school after he experienced severe bullying.

“I experienced bullying again but it was quite a different reaction from the adults in charge,” he said.

Jace was referred to the school counsellor and encouraged to attend the local church, as well as bible study and youth group. He also attended meetings with church leaders.

“They kept coming back to this idea that I needed to be a Godly woman,” he said.

Jace was eventually baptised and said, around that same time, he was becoming more aware of how he felt in himself.

“I knew that I liked boys and girls but more than anything else, I knew that I felt different,” he said.

“I felt like these ideas of womanhood and who I was meant to be didn’t make sense to me, they didn’t align with how I saw my future.

“And the more I tried to talk about that to my religious leaders, the more I was told to go back over these passages, to again and again read them and read them and read them.

“No matter how hard I tried and no matter how much I worked, it was reiterated to me that I was just not doing it right because I was still gay and I was still trans even though I didn’t have the words because I had no one telling me what that was – I just knew that what I was thinking was wrong.”

Jace experienced worsening suicidal ideation and spent stints in Adelaide receiving mental health treatment before he ultimately left the church and transferred back to a public school at age 15.