Which EU countries have reached their thresholds for the ECI petition to ban conversion therapy?
Which EU countries have reached their thresholds for the ECI petition to ban conversion therapy?
Slovenia is based.
I was expecting better from Denmark, though.
Dane here. Haven’t seen or heard about the petition.
I don’t think conversion therapy is a thing in Denmark, so most people are probably like “eh, what’s that old fashioned thing - we are already past that.”
Could be wrong though.
Conversion therapy is potentially a thing wherever the Catholic Church is allowed to operate, among other groups (for example here in CPH there is a strong Scientology presence).
As an Italian living in Copenhagen, I am genuinely surprised people here are sometimes so oblivious to issues in society.
Same thing with stuff like Salmonella cases, with multiple people telling me “Salmonella is not a thing in Denmark” 🤦
Thank you for enlightening me!
I guess Danes can be a little “stuck in their own heads”.
France showed tf up. Thank you France. Their signatures make up about 50% of the total number of signatures (>600k came from France and in total it’s approx 1.2M signatures).
Thanks also to all the countries with at least 100%, because more than 6 countries were needed.
Thanks for every single one that signed - no matter the statistics. Every signature counts.
I don’t believe ECIs ever get a lot of media coverage, sadly.
Most peolle don’t even know they can start ECIs and have their opinion taken into account at a european level. Best we can do is share the platform and make sure as many people as possible know about it.
I live in France and only heard about it from social media: first, by sheer chance, a few months ago from a minor Mastodon account, the second time three days before the deadline, from the same Mastodon account again. I don’t browse Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Tiktok at all, so I’m not sure how the coverage was there.
A trans friend who’s normally way better informed than me about this stuff told me he heard about it less than a week before the deadline, so clearly word hadn’t spread that well, even if France already did have more signatures than most countries at the time. From what I can tell, it spread through digital “word of mouth” rather than through established medias. There was some media coverage, but reeeaally at the last time. A few politicians (mostly from the left) talked about it during the last days, too.
Like someone else said, ECIs don’t get a lot of media coverage and most people don’t even know they exist. By the way, in France, there’s also an official petition system to submit law ideas to the parliament, and it’s also not very well known. (Another problem being that most petitions on the parliament website are ludicrous because, contrary to ECI, no vetting is done before publishing the petition (as far as I know). I take a look at it now and then, and it’s really tiring to search for the legitimate stuff in the midst of all the ridiculous crap.)
“It’s about covrage”, “It’s about reach, not public opinion”, etc…
If you compare this map to data about public opinion on LGBT in 2023, it mostly matches:
It’s not directly banned in Denmark. It’s basically non-existent, and as such difficult to find people who cares enough about banning it.
Indirectly it is already illegal, because it’s illegal to treat anyone for anything against their will. This includes children.
However, there are still people who send their children to a therapist or a doctor. I don’t know if a ban would change their minds in any way. Perhaps it’s better that the parents get to have that conversation with a doctor instead of just being angry at a law and seeking help at alternative places through religion or whatever. They’d probably do that with or without a law anyway, so if anything, it’s actually better if they have the opportunity to talk to a professional therapist first without just getting told off.
Politicians don’t want to deal with it. They’re afraid the backlash from people who are against all things “woke”, would be bigger than the support from anyone who actually cares about the virtue signaling.
If the practice is actually widespread and secretly done in religious circles, we would benefit from hearing those stories.