'Goes against the values of our community': Conversion therapy survivors in Waterloo region seek full ban

Survivors of conversion therapy say it's still being practised in Waterloo region more than five years after it was banned for children in Ontario, and now a group is being formed to have it prohibited completely.

"I've had conversations with people who continue to experience this kind of treatment, so we know it's happening in our region," Mark Hartburg told CBC News. 

"A lot of folks just don't have any idea this kind of practice is happening, so at the least we want people to be aware" it is, said Hartburg, who is part of the group that is in the process of setting up a steering committee.

I know people who have been brought to stand before their faith communities to denounce their practices, denounce their sexual orientation, their same-sex attractions, being prayed over, being told to fast, being hit, yelled at.- Mark Hartburg, conversion therapy survivor

Third reading of a bill that would criminalize conversion therapy in Canada is currently underway in the House of Commons, and various other provinces have also cracked down on the widely discredited practice. It involves trying to change someone's sexual orientation or gender identity through counselling, behaviour modification or medication.

Hartburg said conversion therapy "goes against the values of our community."

People should not be subjected to pressure to change something that can't be changed, and it sometimes ends up harming them emotionally or leading to thoughts of suicide, he said. 

"Those are the kinds of things I've experienced in my past as well," said Hartburg. 

"There are some religious groups that have been explicit in offering it. I know people who have been brought to stand before their faith communities to denounce their practices, denounce their sexual orientation, their same-sex attractions, being prayed over, being told to fast, being hit, yelled at."

'A lot of pressure'

According to Hartburg, those who won't undergo conversion therapy are cast out from their faith communities. 

"That not only involves loss of community support, but it also has, in some groups, an eternal dimension that you're told if you practise this and you live like this, you can't inherit heaven and you are going to go to hell," he said.

"I know for myself, that was a lot of the pressure — you're going to be eternally damned for being queer, so you got to somehow get rid of it because you're not acceptable being queer."

Last fall, the federal government reintroduced legislation and the House of Commons gave approval in principle to Bill C-6, an act to amend the Criminal Code to make it illegal to force children or adults to undergo conversion therapy.

Provinces and territories with conversion therapy laws include:

• Ontario: practising it on minors is illegal.
• Manitoba: outlawed health professionals from offering the practice.
• Nova Scotia: has made it illegal for health professionals to provide it for minors.
• P.E.I.: illegal for minors and prohibits use of public funds to provide the practice.
• Yukon: bans the practice for minors, and keeps substitute decision-makers from consenting to it on behalf of another person. 

A 'traumatic' experience

The decades-old practice remains a source of trauma in the life of Cait G, who lobbies against conversion therapy and recently shared her experience in the documentary Conversion therapy in Canada: A national ban is just a starting point.

"At 55, my experience was a long time ago, when I was a child [but] it's too traumatic for me to make it a regular piece of my activism," she told CBC News.

"Just talking … for the documentary was difficult enough and has led to nightmares, so it's not something I can do all the time.

"It was only three years ago that I was able to finally ever say that I was proud to be trans. It took me nearly 40 years to be able to say that and it still makes me cry just thinking about trying to say it. It's still hard to say."

Cait said that as a child, she had no source to help relieve her dysphoria (anxiety and restlessness), and ended up in trouble with the law.

"I was shoplifting things like clothing or makeup or jewelry, that kind of stuff, and I got caught," she said. 

At the sentencing, her mother pleaded with the court to allow her to send her child to therapy instead.

"The therapist that she picked had some, let's say, avant-garde ideas about what they wanted to try to get me over my ideas of being trans," she said.

Activist aims to help other kids

Cait said she's speaking out now because she wants to ensure what happened to her doesn't happen to anyone else. 

"That's the reason that I do all of the education and diversity work that I do, so that people don't have to live the way that I did when I was growing up — particularly trans kids," she said.

"I want them to have the childhood that I dreamed of, and the great part is that they're getting that. Kids are getting to transition as young as four or five years old now," said Cait.

"That they get to live in their proper role right from the earliest age possible, it's still my dream. People talk about what they'd wish for — that's what I'd wish for."