Swiss parliament rejects conversion therapy proposals

(Symbol image) Participants in the Midsumma Pride March, in Melbourne, Australia. KEYSTONE

The Swiss parliament does not want to ban conversion therapy in Switzerland yet. Following the Senate, the House of Representatives on Tuesday also rejected two parliamentary initiatives from Lucerne and Basel City calling for a nationwide ban.

However, this does not mean that the House of Representatives does not want a ban on conversion treatments to change a person’s sexual orientation or self-perceived gender identity.

In December 2022, the House of Representatives adopted a proposal from its legal affairs committee in favour of a conversion therapy ban. It is now pending in the Senate. Its legal affairs committee has decided to wait until a federal report on this topic is available, which the House of Representatives called for in a postulate in March 2022.

In the run-up to Tuesday’s debate, a minority of the House of Representatives´ preparatory committee also called for this report to be delayed. A majority of the House of Representatives agreed with this request. This is therefore off the table. The decision was made by 99 votes to 77 with 13 abstentions.

Sibel Arslan, spokesperson for the House of Representatives preliminary consultation committee, told the council that the report ordered by the House of Representatives from the Federal Council would be available this summer. From then on, parliament will therefore once again be dealing with a ban on conversion therapies.

An issue in numerous cantons

A ban on conversion therapies has recently been discussed or decided in several cantonal parliaments. The parliament in canton Zug recently decided to convert a motion in favour of a ban into a less binding postulate. A possible ban is therefore to be explored.

The Zurich cantonal council voted in favour of a ban on conversion therapy in November, as did the parliaments of cantons Neuchâtel, Vaud and Bern. The Geneva cantonal government also announced a draft law in favour of a ban in May last year.

Individual cases of conversion therapies

It is not known how many such therapies are practised in Switzerland. However, individual cases repeatedly come to the public’s attention. In 2018, a homeopathic doctor practising in cantons Geneva and Vaud offered to “cure homosexuality” and in 2020, a psychiatrist in canton Schwyz recommended himself for conversion therapy.

Adapted from German by DeepL/amva

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].