Vietnam Ends Conversion Therapy, Saying LGBTQ is “Not an Illness”
metroweekly.comUPI.Guidelines set forth by the ministry declare that education needs to be strengthened so that medical providers have the correct information about “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” and that LGBTQ people should be treated equally in medical settings.
The guidelines reiterate that LGBTQ identity cannot be treated as a disease, instructing health workers not to “interfere nor force treatment” on LGBTQ patients, and recommending that mental health services for LGBTQ people should be provided by people “who have the knowledge of sexual identity.”The announcement is seen as a “huge paradigm shift” in a nation where same-sex unions were banned until 2013 and where transgender identity was criminalized until 2015, and where the government-run media had, two decades ago, declared homosexuality to be a “social evil” comparable to prostitution, gambling, and drug use.
Already, some LGBTQ advocates are hoping the declaration will make it easier to lobby for marriage rights or legal recognition for same-sex couples.“We cannot overstate how big a fix this announcement is,” Kyle Knight, an LGBTQ researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the English newspaper The Guardian. “While attitudes won’t change overnight, this marks a huge paradigm shift.
As the most trusted source of medical authority in Vietnam, the impact on social perceptions of queerness will be enormous.“The myth that homosexuality is diagnosable has been allowed to permeate and percolate Vietnamese society,” added Knight.
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