It’s been nearly four years since the Conservative Party first pledged to eradicate what prime minister Boris Johnson has called the “absolutely abhorrent” practice of so-called conversion therapy. Since then, the UK has left the European Union, Donald Trump has lost the presidency of the United States and the world has been upended by a pandemic. And conversion therapy still remains legal in the UK.
The LGBT+ charity Stonewall defines conversion therapy as “any form of treatment or psychotherapy which aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or to suppress a person’s gender identity”. These practices can range from pseudo-scientific counselling sessions or being prayed over, all the way to corrective rape and exorcisms. The United Nations said such interventions “may amount to torture”.
In the UK, according to the government’s National LGBT Survey in 2017, 2% of LGBT+ people have undergone conversion therapy and a further 5% have been offered it.
