JUSTICE

Germany Approves Law Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’

The move makes Germany the first major European power to ban the discredited “therapy,” which would put bogus practitioners behind bars.

The German government on Wednesday signed off on a new law banning gay “conversion therapies,” which would punish practitioners with up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $33,100. The move makes Germany the first major European power to ban the discredited “treatment” aimed to change a person’s sexual orientation with techniques such as hypnotism, electro-shock therapy, and injections of testosterone. “Homosexuality is not an illness. So the term therapy in itself is misleading,” said Health Minister Jens Spahn, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats, adding, “This alleged therapy makes you sick and not healthy.”

Parliament is expected to pass the legislation by this summer. Currently, roughly 1,000 people in Germany are subjected to “conversion therapies” each year, according to Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation, an anti-discrimination organization. A spokesperson for the foundation said that Berlin’s decision could incite other countries to do the same. Just over a dozen U.S. states have outlawed conversion therapy and an estimated 700,000 Americans have been forced to undergo some form of the “treatments.”