The Spanish Evangelical Alliance (Alianza Evangélica Española/AEE) has publicly denounced a bill that would imprison pastors and others helping those wishing to leave a practicing homosexual lifestyle or reconcile their gender identity with their gender.
With cross-party support, the Congress of Deputies (Congreso de los Diputados), the lower house of the Cortes Generales at the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, approved on Tuesday (June 24) a preliminary bill amending 10/1995 of the Penal Code.
The amendment would “penalize conversion therapies aimed at eliminating or denying sexual orientation, sexual identity or gender expression,” according to a Congress press release entitled, “Congress Considers Bill to Criminalize Conversion Therapies Aimed at Eliminating or Denying Sexual Orientation, Sexual Identity, or Gender Expression.”
The leading Socialist Group’s proposal to jail proponents of so-called “conversion therapies” gained an overwhelming 311 votes in favor, compared to 33 against and one abstention.
“The group argues in the explanatory memorandum of its legislative text that it considers it necessary ‘to raise the punitive response because we are not facing isolated cases but one of the most serious forms of attack and denigration of the LGTBI collective, especially due to the appearance of new forms of dissemination of these self-styled therapies, such as web platforms, social networks, etc.,’” the Congress stated. “Similarly, this bill seeks to ‘advocate for a world free of the criminalization of sexual orientation, sexual identity and gender expression.’”
If the amendment is given final approval, the Penal Code would introduce Article 173, potentially imprisoning advocates of conversion therapies.
The current wording of this amendment (translated) states, “Anyone who applies or practices on a person acts, methods, programs, techniques or procedures of aversion or conversion, whether psychological, physical, pharmacological or of any other nature, aimed at modifying, repressing, eliminating or denying his sexual orientation, sexual identity or gender expression, shall be punished with imprisonment of six months to two years, with impairment of their bodily integrity or their physical or mental health or with serious impairment of their moral integrity.”
The penalty would be appropriate if the “victim” is a child or acts are committed for profit or using “violence, intimidation or deception,” or “when the offender belongs to an organization or association, even of a temporary nature, which is engaged in the performance of such activities.”
Penalties would also be imposed on those responsible for children or disabled people in “need of special protection” who facilitate “the perpetration of the offenses.”
“In these cases, when the judge or court deems it appropriate to the interests of the minor or person with a disability in need of special protection, it may also impose the penalty of special disqualification from exercising the right of parental authority, guardianship, guardianship, guardianship or foster care for up to five years,” the Congress added.
If the proposed law amendment is approved by the Congress of Deputies, it will be sent to the Senate for approval.
The AEE, however, pointed out that conversion therapy is already prohibited by state legislation. In an official five-point statement, the board of directors at the AAE strongly condemned the plan by Spanish policymakers.
Firstly, the Spanish evangelical body pointed to a repeated pattern by proponents of the proposed law.
“The pattern is repeated: first the concept is distorted starting by assigning a pejorative term, such as ‘conversion therapies’ and projecting a false image of manipulation and torture treatments, and finally imposing penalties intimidating prison sentences,” said the AEE board of directors. “Torture and manipulation in professional therapies or in personal help are already contemplated in the Penal Code and in the Deontological Code of Doctors or Psychologists, and it is not necessary to create new penalties.”
Furthermore, the AEE clarified that support treatments including pastoral care helping people recover their “concordance” between their biological sex and gender identification have “nothing to do with manipulations or tortures.” Pastoral support in such scenarios has nothing to do with “conversion therapies” because they are not intended to convert anyone, the AEE asserted.
“They only seek to grant to help to those who ask for it in freedom,” pointed out the AEE directors. They referred to such treatments being scientifically proven, “used with normality and security” and helping the person with their informed content, or with the permission of parents in the cases of children.
The AEE directors criticized the planned law’s proponents for creating imaginary scenarios about “conversion therapies” falsely projected as similar to those of anti-conversion laws of totalitarian regimes.
The Spanish evangelical organization also challenged the notion that gender is a “changing condition in which it is necessary to be strictly respectful with the self-determination of the person.”
“But the truth is that the regulation that is to be established contradicts this postulate by establishing that going from the congruence of sex with perceived gender, to the incongruence between both, is something that deserves to be supported with all the resources and budgetary allocations – but going the other way, from the incongruence to congruence, is condemned and is to be penalized with jail.”
The AEE questioned the rationality of such a contradiction: “The regulations impose a moral criterion that defines, in the face of homologous situations, opposite weightings: some are rewarded and promoted and others are penalized. It is consecrated as good to change in one direction, but it is anathematized to change in the opposite direction. And there is no objective criterion of coherence, but the pure discretion or prior moral judgment of those who want to enact this law.”
The third objection by the AEE questioned the criteria used to deny professional and personal support desired by someone who “wants to make the reverse path to the one that is sanctioned as ‘good’ by the promoters of the regulation.”
The Spanish evangelical body queried if “strict respect” was being shown by proponents of the law by ignoring a person’s free determination of their right to receive such support.
“In a society respectful of democratic freedoms, all the support that the Trans Law grants to those who want to transition, should be granted on equal terms to those who want to reverse the transition,” the AEE directors highlighted, adding: “Why not leave it up to the person to decide freely?”
Democratic society does not need moralistic tutelage that prescribes what is right and what is wrong in situations such as the ones cited, and even less needs demonization with “condemnations as heretics” on those who respect and support the free determination of those deciding to de-transition and ask for professional or personal help to do so, the AEE stated.
The AEE anticipated that if the bill becomes law, it will lead to conscientious objection as the only “legitimate and democratic recourse” in response.
“We recall that, when a previous government tried to limit the access of immigrants to public health care, some doctors courageously raised the legitimacy of the recourse to conscientious objection,” the alliance stated.
Lastly, the board of directors at the AEE called on policymakers to heed its objections and reverse the planned legal changes.
“As the Spanish Evangelical Alliance, we reject the bill and we call on the parliamentarians to vote in conscience, since we are not facing a question in which ideology should govern, but the deepest and most transversal democratic sense of respect for the fundamental rights of the person,” they stated.
