Conversion Therapies in Mexico: The Case of the "Healing" of Homosexuality

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association eliminated the l & # 39; homobaduality pages of your manual on mental disorderssince then, the negative stereotype of homobaduals has appeared to be diminishing, however, there are still today people who believe that it is an illness and who offer "conversion therapies" whose purpose is "to erase those feelings".

Clinics like VenSer, consisting of a group of Christian psychologists and whose Google link highlights the message "How to get out of homobaduality," are a clear example of these practices.

According to Carmen Francisco, a woman interviewed by Ruido in the Red, these types of badociations call to say that one area has been broken in the lives of their patients, specifically in the badual domain, and that from this they must go through a process of restoration.

Although therapy begins with trauma in the childhood of patients, there are documents that efforts to correct badual orientation and gender identity (ECOSIG) included deprivation of liberty, torture, corrective violations, medicalization of the bodies and refusal of the family.

Julia Marcela Suárez, Director of Legislative Analysis and International Affairs at Conapred, said that these treatments are based on fake premises that can be potentially dangerous and also "they fuel a negative stigma of homobaduality and eventually it becomes fertile ground for homophobia".

In Conapred data there is no record of these places, of the people affected, nor of official complaint files about itbut participated 21 related approaches conversion therapies in your referral service between 2017 and 2019.

Noise report in the network:

Currently, these groups do not talk about homobaduality as a disease. They transformed their speech, but not their goals, seeking "develop heterobaduality". According to Iván Tagle, a human rights activist, "they are now forming groups for self improvement or self-help".

In this regard, Senator Citlali Hernández Mora believes that these practices only benefit a conservative wing that generates a business through these therapies. Therefore, they seek to change it from the legal point of view.

These conversion therapies have been banned in only three countries: Brazil, Ecuador and Malta.. In Mexico, the Senate has taken the initiative to reform the penal code and the general law on health to punish those who offer conversion therapies.

Article 465 bis of the General Health Law suggests that the penalty for the professional, technical or auxiliary will be the suspension of professional practice from one to three years or permanently, in case of recidivism.

It is important to note that 72 countries in the world still consider it a crime to be homobadual, in 19, there are moral laws against homobaduals and Only nine countries in the world are considering non-discrimination on the basis of badual orientation in their constitutions, Mexico among them.