Openly Gay Indian Prince Joins Calls To Ban LGBT Conversion Therapy – Forbes
The global LGBT community are becoming more vocal about the horrors of conversion therapy, as eradicating the discredited practice emerges as one of the highest priorities for global LGBT citizens.
And the gay Indian Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil, is the latest voice to join calls to see laws that ban conversion therapy.
“I was myself a victim of conversion therapy,” he tells me from his royal establishment of Hanumanteshwar.
“From my parents. When I came out, the first thing they tried to do was convert me. They wouldn’t accept me as a gay child.
“They tried to ask the doctors to operate on me. They took me to religious leaders to ask them to cure me.”
The widely discredited practice sees vulnerable people subjected to shock treatments and other cruel tortures.
They promise and consistently fail, to “cure” people of being gay, bisexual, trans and all identities on the sexuality, romantic and gender spectrums.
Conversion therapy centres in India are legal; indeed, they have only been outlawed completely in five countries around the world.
But now the Prince is now calling for it to be banned in India, and across the world.
Mavendra, is the first openly gay prince in the world, spoke of numerous cases in India. The son of the Maharaja of Rajpipla in Gujarat says it is often worse for LGBT women:
“Lesbians are treated so badly, I’ve known cases where the family member with rape the child to prove she can have sex with a man. ‘That proves you are heterosexual.”
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“Indian parents are fearful of [people in] society, relatives, neighbours. I always say, [LGBT people] coming out to their parents is easier, than parents coming out about [having LGBT children] to the rest of the world.”
Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil at Amsterdam Pride, shared in 2018
“They are like ‘gas chambers’ for the LGBT community”
Another Indian Royal, Amar Singh, a Harvard graduate and Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur whose gallery champions female artists, has visited some of those performing the practice:
“I have visited dozens in India, and spoken to people running them. I have held men young and old in my arms, crying, after they’ve been kicked out of their houses,” Amar Singh tells me.
Speaking of practices like throwing fruit to beating LGBT people to cure them, Sing spoke of other extreme tortures too.
The India Royal likens them to ‘gas chambers,’ referring to the Nazi murdering of millions of Jewish people, and thousands of LGBT people in the holocaust. He does this because, they falsely claim to be able to ‘rid’ the world of LGBT people.
“They are fronts for unethical practices. You’re told if you are not cured, and you go back to your father – he will kill you.”
Amar Singh and Prince Manvendra discussing LGBT+ rights in India in August 2017 a year and a month … [+]
The global fight against LGBT conversion therapy
The fight against LGBT conversion therapy is fast becoming a global focal point for countries that have achieved LGBT anti-discrimination, equal marriage and adoption rights.
And the horror stories of torture, combined with peer-reviewed data, shows why.
The Trevor Project is the world’s most substantial suicide prevention and crisis intervention organisation for LGBT+ youth.
Their peer-reviewed study released last week of young LGBT+ people shows that those subjected to the therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide.
A vast majority in the EU parliament called on all member states to ban conversion therapy in March 2018, but so far only Germany has made moves to ban the practice.
On the global stage, UN experts are now calling for a worldwide ban on the practice they call “bogus.”
But for the time being, conversion therapy is only illegal in five countries around the world, Germany, Malta, Ecuador, Brazil and Taiwan. And in the U.S., just 20 States have laws prohibiting it.
People protest against the decision of a Brazilian judge who approved gay conversion therapy in Sao … [+]
In Israel this week, it’s become a hot topic after a bill banning the practice passed its first step to becoming legislation.
But that was against the will of religious parties in the fragile national unity government. They are now threatening to introduce bills which the centrist Blue and White, also a member of the government, would find objectionable, says the BBC. It has two further readings before it becomes law in Israel.
Just yesterday Mexico City became the first jurisdiction in Mexico to outlaw the damaging practice.
The social media giant Instagram also took the matter into their own hands last week, banning all content about the discredited practice from their platform.
Meanwhile in the U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, recommitted to his two-year-old pledge to ban them–but only after a government study is conducted on their prevalence.