Germany moves to ban gay ‘conversion therapies’

Germany’s cabinet on Wednesday backed a law that would punish bogus practitioners with up to a year in prison for performing ‘gay-conversion-therapies’.

Activists hailed the move, saying Germany would become the first major European power to outlaw attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation with techniques including hypnotism and electro-shock treatment.

“Homosexuality is not an illness. So the term therapy in itself is misleading,” Health Minister Jens Spahn, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats said in a statement.

The treatments sometimes carried out by relatives or religious counselors caused severe mental and physical harm, this alleged therapy makes you sick and not healthy” Spahn added.