Debate contribution: Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Ms Emma Sheerin on .
- MLA
- Ms Emma Sheerin
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 22 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5740867
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank the Member for giving way. The Member sat in the same presentation as I did this morning, so he is aware of the detail that I reflected on with regard to the rise in transphobic hate crime in this part of the world. Does the Member acknowledge that the language that we use here can have an impact there? That was explicitly said to us at the Justice Committee by representatives from the Rainbow Project last week: language normalises those discriminatory mindsets in the community, and that, in turn, leads to those people receiving abuse. Does the Member also acknowledge that, for a long time in this part of the world, talking and counselling therapies that were carried out by religious practitioners who did not have qualifications in that field compounded the abuse and harm caused to the victims of abuse, because everything that happened to them was pushed under the carpet? In the same way, there are people receiving so-called therapy to change them. You say that you recognise that some people are homosexual: if you accept that and accept that those people have the right to live as such, why do they need talking therapy? Why do they need to change? Why would anybody be motivated to change them? What is wrong with being homosexual if you accept that that is a totally fine, normal way to live?
232 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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