Letter in reply to the article "Here’s how European countries contemplating legal gender recognition can follow Spain’s lead" published in The Parliament on 2/3/23.
ILGA no longer speaks for me or for a growing number of LGB people, who resent the forced teaming of same-sex attracted people with people claiming various gender identities. The aims of these two groups are not the same, and the sooner we realise that they are actually conflicting on many levels, the better.
ILGA also recklessly promotes a legal ban on what they disingenuously call "conversion therapy", thereby imposing in fact a "gender affirmation only" policy, which risks criminalising any careful, holistic, exploratory approach in child psychiatry. Yet such exploration is vital, considering this group's many mental health issues and the overrepresentation in this group of LGB children who do not conform to society's normative expectations. LGB children risk becoming the first victims of this "affirmative only" policy. ILGA is abandoning them, by sidelining their safety and interests for an ideological folly that serves no one.
Kind regards,
WORIADS
Brussels, Belgium