SA Conversion Practices Bill set to ban gay conversion therapy

South Australia will join Queensland, Victoria, the ACT and NSW in banning ‘gay conversion therapy’ if the laws pass. So what is it? And when will it happen?

South Australia is poised to become the latest state to pass laws banning sexuality and gender identity conversion practices later today, but what exactly are conversion practices and why have they been made illegal?

What is gay conversion therapy and when will SA ban it?

Conversion practices, also known as Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Change Efforts (SOGICE), are practices which target LGBTQA+ people with ideas and guidance on how to purportedly change sexual orientation, gender identity or gender and sexual expression.

For many years these conversion practices were conducted and promoted openly, with a focus on telling gay men and lesbians that they could become completely heterosexual through a combination of psychotherapy, support groups and self-help.

Conversion practices aiming to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity are set to be banned in SA.

The South Australian government will move to outlaw conversion practices which primarily target the LGBTIQ community.

Under proposed laws set to be introduced to the state parliament this week, perpetrators who cause serious harm to their victim face up to five years in jail.

Attorney-General Kyam Maher Maher said the legislation aims to protect people “from abuse at the hands of the small number of groups who perpetrate these practices”.

What’s the history of conversion therapy?

Conversion practices used to be done legally when same-sex attraction was officially considered a mental illness – and itself illegal across much of the western word. Mainstream psychiatric and sexual therapists used to practice hypnosis and counselling as well as aversion therapy involving electric shock, ice baths, hot coils, hard labour and nausea-inducing drugs during presentation of same-sex erotic images, while subsequently providing “rewards” when the person is shown heterosexual erotic images.

It didn’t stop there – in the 1940s and 1950s, U.S. neurologist Walter Freeman popularised the icepick lobotomy as a treatment for homosexuality – with many lobotomies performed mainly on gay men in those decades and a few in two decades after.

Watts-Freeman lobotomy instruments. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

During World War 2, Nazi Heinrich Himmler ordered homosexual men to be sent to concentration camps in order to “cure them” where they were subject to forced castrations.

Things calmed down a little but after that, but the common view was still that homosexuality and gender nonconformity needed to be treated as medical attention. For example, Sigmund Freud’s daughter and prominent psychoanalyst Anna Freud said in the 1960s she could “cure most homosexuals”.

Kelly Vincent from SA Rainbow Advocacy Alliance with Russell, a conversion therapy survivor. Picture: Matt Loxton

Conversion practices moved from the medical profession to quasi-religious groups in the 1970s when American Psychiatric Association delisted homosexuality as a mental illness 1973.

Many churches reacted against this declassification and began to create their own “self-help” type therapy groups premised the idea that the bible condemned homosexuality and therefore homosexuality could not be created by God.

Heinrich Himmler.

In many cases they advocated the idea – without proof – that childhood trauma, exposure to pornography, sexual abuse, a lack of physical affection from the parent of the same sex/too much attention from the parent of the opposite sex or even demonic possession led someone to same-sex attraction.

Groups such as Exodus International often suggested that getting non-sexual physical affection from the same sex would reduce homosexual desire.

One of the earliest and most public advocates of gender identity conversion through prayer was Sy Rogers, a former president of Exodus International, who went from trans female sex worker to male Christian Pastor in the early 1980s.

Sy Rogers in Singapore at City Harvest Church.

He said God intervened by stopping his planned sexual operation and through prayer God helped him “become the man” he “wanted him to be”. He went on to marry a woman, became a father, a grandfather and a Christian Pastor with a national profile. He toured the US and Australia promoting gay and trans conversion therapy.

Rogers died in 2020, but even toward the end of his life had scaled back his advocacy of the practice which had become more and more fringe, and considered more and more dangerous.

Many health organisations around the world have denounced and criticised sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts including the World Psychiatric and World Medicine Associations as well the Australian Medical Association and the Australian Psychological Society.

Adelaide man Jace Reh spent six years at a religious school, where he was forced into activities that tried to change his sexuality and shamed him for being transgender and queer. Picture: Matt Loxton

What are laws like elsewhere in Australia?

The South Australian Laws outlawing conversion practices would put the state in line with NSW, Victoria, QLD and the ACT who have already banned the practice.

Under proposed SA laws, expected to pass the Upper House of state parliament this week, perpetrators who cause serious harm to their victim face up to five years in jail.

The new laws are modelled on those passed in New South Wales earlier this year and include protections for discussions between parents and their children, and for statements of religious teachings and beliefs.

‘You are loved just the way you are’

Individuals who either try to take – or arrange to have someone taken – from the state for gay conversion purposes would face up to three years in jail, a fine of up to $15,000, or both.

The proposed laws would also allow victims of conversion practices to bring a complaint to the Equal Opportunity Commissioner, with enforceable remedies.

Attorney-General Kyam Maher said the government was sending a clear message to the LGBTIQ community.

“You are loved just the way you are,” he said earlier this year.

“Supporters of this ugly practice call it ‘therapy’. The fact is, this act is a form of abuse.“It is a damaging practice that seeks to force members of the LGBTIQ community to abandon who they are under the guise of ‘saving’ or ‘helping’ them.”