Samuel Brinton was among the thousands of victims subjected to this inhumane procedure. At the ripe age of 12, he was beaten by his father repeatedly due to saying that he was attracted to a friend of the same gender. He was rushed into the hospital after his own father's blows left him vulnerable. Brinton was taunted by his father saying he had AIDs, that he was the only gay person in the country and that the government would kill him if they found out. After this incident, Brinton spent the next month being subjected to electrocution in a conversion therapy camp. Ice cubes were placed on his hands while he was being shown pictures of men hugging with the aim to associate pain with intimacy between men - this soon escalated to him being seared with fire.
However, after all this, he was subjected to what he calls ‘the month of hell’, “The month of Hell consisted of tiny needles being stuck into my fingers and then pictures of explicit acts between men would be shown and I’d be electrocuted.” Since then Samuel has been disowned by his family but has since used his story to help others who had been through the same ordeal.
Think of something that makes up a big part of your identity, got it? Now imagine if that part of you was so disgusted by members of the public that you end up getting sent away to strangers to try and strip you of that. Horrible right? Well, that’s what’s happening to hundreds of LGBTQ people in the UK right now.
Conversion therapy is a disgusting and abhorrent procedure that uses unethical and sometimes dangerous practices to change an individual’s sexual orientation and gender identity. This often includes methods of physical and psychological torture to make the victim associate that pain with their LGBTQ identity. This not only causes life long mental trauma but also makes the victim develop a sense of self-loathing and hatred. In 2017, the UK government conducted a national LGBT survey with over 108,000 participants making it the largest LGBT survey in the world. 2% of participants were reported saying that they have undergone conversion therapy- that’s over 18,000 people.
Luckily for the LGBTQ community in the UK, however, the government is on our side. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has plans to ban gay conversion therapies for good stating that the practice was “absolutely abhorrent’ and ‘has no place in this country’. This statement came two years after the government pledged to ban the practice as part of its LGBTQ equality plan.
Despite the government's support and stance on the situation, the sheer fact that conversion therapies still exist in this day and age sicken me beyond words. In a supposedly progressive society, It should be expected that conversion therapies would be eradicated completely by now but that is far from the truth. This should go without saying but the LGBTQ community is just the same as everyone else, they’re human and deserve the same respect as everyone else.
So stand with us and fight for the freedom of these people. Sign petitions, repost articles and raise awareness because the louder we get, the harder it will be to ignore.
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