Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’: Legal and Policy Perspectives

This book looks at why and how states should legally ban LGBTQ+ ‘conversion therapy’. Few states have legislated against the practice, with many currently considering its legal ban.

Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’ brings together leading academics, legal and medical practitioners, policymakers, and activists to illuminate the legislative and non-legislative steps that are required to protect individuals from the harms of ‘conversion therapy’ in different contexts.

The book considers how best to address this complex and interdisciplinary legal problem which cuts across human rights law, criminal law, family law, and socio-legal studies, and which represents one of the key contemporary problems of LGBTQ+ equality and national and international human rights activism.

Foreword, Victor Madrigal-Borloz (Harvard Law School, USA)

Introduction, Ilias Trispiotis (University of Leeds, UK) and Craig Purshouse (University of Liverpool, UK)

Part One: Reasons for a Ban
1. The Legal Duty to Ban ‘Conversion Therapy’, Ilias Trispiotis (University of Leeds, UK)
2. Conversion Practices and Coercive Control, Jonathan Herring (University of Oxford, UK)
3. Historical, Clinical and Ethical Perspectives: An Update on ‘I’m Your Handyman’, Jack Drescher (Columbia University, USA)
4. Feeling Pain and Shame: The Emotional Grammar of Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’, Senthorun Raj (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

Part Two: The Scope of a Ban
5. ‘Conversion Therapy’ and Children’s Rights, Noam Peleg (University of New South Wales, Australia)
6. How Do Practices to ‘Convert’ Childhood Gender Diversity Impact a Child’s Right to Develop? Hannah Hirst (University of Sheffield, UK)
7. Ensuring Trans Protection within a Ban on Conversion Practices, Lui Asquith (Russell-Cooke LLP, UK)
8. Exorcism and Other Spiritual Modes of ‘Conversion Therapy’: Balancing Religious Liberty and Individual Rights, Javier García Oliva (University of Manchester, UK ) and Helen Hall (Nottingham Trent University, UK)

Part Three: Beyond a Ban
9. The Religious Dimension: Confronting Spiritual Abuse, Jayne Ozanne (Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition, UK)
10. Nothing About Us Without Us: Listening to and Engaging with Survivors of Conversion Practices, Jordan Sullivan (Community-Based Research Centre, Canada) and Nick Schiavo (No Conversion Canada, Canada)
11. ‘Conversion Therapy’ and Transformative Reparations, Natasa Mavronicola (University of Birmingham, UK) and Lee Davies (University of Birmingham, UK)

Ilias Trispiotis is Professor of Human Rights Law at School of Law, University of Leeds, UK.
Craig Purshouse is Senior Lecturer at the School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool, UK.