OPINION | Yukon's conversion therapy bill exposes underlying mistreatment of LGBTQ community

The Yukon legislature has resumed, and with it debate over a proposed bill, the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Protection Act, which if approved, would ban conversion therapy on members of the LGBTQ community. 

The process of the bill's introduction and debate has exposed the underlying issues that need changing before LGBTQ people in Yukon are truly equal citizens. 

Minister of Tourism and Culture Jeanie McLean says the bill "represents one more step to making our community safer."

For queer people, it is just that — a step. 

But the bill itself doesn't take the issue seriously enough; nor, apparently, do some members of the territorial legislature, who fail to grasp the impacts of queerphobia and heteronormativism within our community. 

Conversion therapy is a controversial process where LGBTQ folks are subjected to so-called "treatment" and "counselling" to make them conform to cis-heterosexual norms of sexuality and gender. It has been proven repeatedly to be scientifically unsound and incredibly harmful to those subjected to it.

Brad Cathers of the Yukon Party seems keen to state there is "no evidence" conversion therapy has or is happening in Yukon, a backhanded dismissal of both the issue and the threat to the safety of queer people it represents.

Conversion therapy is abuse, and abuse is often hidden; it's unlikely organizations that offer conversion therapy — usually religious in nature — would advertise their "services." Just as an abuser generally doesn't publicly announce that they hit their partner. 

The safety, equality and autonomy of queer lives is not yours to give; it's ours to take.

Moreover, a letter in opposition to the bill submitted to and read during the Oct. 1 legislature by Yukon NDP Leader Kate White demonstrates there are people within our community who want to — and would — subject queer people to the practice. 

The letter, which came from a Yukoner  who identified himself as being in a position of power within his church, claims a ban on conversion therapy, "represents a dangerous and unprecedented political intrusion" and that "the government has no business telling churches and spiritual counsellors that they cannot nurture their adherents." 

His letter also links to a video "testimony" in which a man is "freed" from the "plague" of his queerness — backwards, queerphobic and manipulative beliefs and language commonly associated with religious conversion therapy.  

Although he did not directly oppose the bill, Cathers's statement that he "strongly disagreed with the government's decision not to do public consultation on the details of this legislation" is troubling.

The people whom conversion therapy impacts — queer youth and the queer community at large – already overwhelmingly stated we want these protections.

The matter originally went before the legislature in March — the result of a petition brought forward in April 2019 by a group of Yukon high school students concerned about how conversion therapy might impact them and their community. 

Cathers's statements assume that cis-heterosexuals should have a say in both the legitimacy and safety of queer bodies.

They don't. 

The safety, equality and autonomy of queer lives is not yours to give; it's ours to take. 

Addressing these heteronormative assumptions within our politics and community as we discuss this bill is especially important in light of the wildly troubling actions of the RCMP at a recent queer event, which they attended, against the community's wishes.

Even as Yukon politicians quibble over the semantics of a bill about queer people, proposed by queer people, to protect queer people, what faith should we have in its enforcement, when the Yukon RCMP do not respect our wishes, act without our consent outside their law-enforcement jurisdiction and then have the audacity to cry that it is they who are being discriminated against when censured?

Bills can be passed and laws can be changed, but until the territory and its political and action arms — politicians and the RCMP — grasp that queer and transgender lives are valid and autonomous outside of cis-heterosexual approval and show us we are equal, no real change can be made.

That means listening to us, adhering to the boundaries we set between our communities, and having those laws enforced by people who respect us. 

Until then, bills like this are only lip-service to the queer community. 

This column is part of CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blog and our FAQ.