A Tory MP is today demanding doctors who practice so-called “gay cure therapies” be treated like criminals who carry out female genital mutilation.
Mike Freer wants treatments - the most extreme forms of which include electric shock therapy or training gay people to feel nauseous if they have homosexual thoughts - to be outlawed.
In a speech to Parliament he was to demand ministers act to ensure therapists do not “peddle the myth” that people can be cured of being gay.
While such treatments are not available on the NHS, it is still possible for people to access a range of therapies privately.
In January the government launched a voluntary “memorandum of understanding” saying practitioners should be aware of the ethical issues and the public made aware of risks.
During his speech Mr Freer planned to praise health minister Jane Ellison for her work outlawing FGM, before adding: “I must ask if she would have been happy with a memorandum of understanding?
“Would she have been happy allowing practitioners to be simply aware to the ethical implications [of FGM]? I suspect the answer is no.”
He added: “It is time to simply say [gay cure therapy] has no medical merit and can be harmful. It is time to say it is illegal in the UK.”
Recent YouGov polling showed one in ten health and social care staff had witnessed colleagues express a belief that people can be ‘cured’ of being gay.
In 2009 the BMC Psychiatry Journal surveyed 1300 medical professionals and found 15 per cent had offered some form of therapy.
At the start of the year NHS staff were told they should not be helping patients access such therapies.
Equalities Minister Nicky Morgan also said last month that they should be stamped out.
Mr Freer was to add: “Being gay is not a disease. Being gay is not an illness.
“It is not something that I or any other gay man or woman can be cured of. To suggest otherwise is not just demeaning. It is morally and medically wrong.”
