Gay conversion therapy has been approved in Brazil

A judge in Brazil – supposedly one of South America’s most gay-friendly countries – has approved gay conversion therapy.

The move, by Waldemar de Carvalho in Brasilia, overrules a 1999 ban on such therapies.

The judge ruled in favor of an action brought by Rosangela Justino.

The evangelical Christian psychologist’s licence was revoked last year when she offered conversion therapy to a client.

‘I feel directed by God to help people who are homosexual’

In 2009 Justino told the Folha de S Paulo newspaper: ‘I feel directed by God to help people who are homosexual.’

David Miranda, an openly gay leftist councillor in Rio de Janeiro told The Guardian: ‘This decision is a big regression to the progressive conquests that the LGBT community had in recent decades.’

He furthermore added: ‘Like various countries in the world, Brazil is suffering a conservative wave.’

The decision ‘opens the dangerous possibility of the use of sexual reversion therapies’, the Federal Council of Psychology also said in a statement.

It also promised to contest the move legally.

The council’s Rogério Giannini added: ‘There is no way to cure what is not a disease.’

Brazilian pop star Larissa Machado commented on Instagram: ‘That’s what happens in my country. People dying, hungry, the government killing the country with corruption, no education, no hospitals, no opportunities …

She furthermore added: ‘And the authorities are wasting their time to announce that homosexuality is a sickness.’

This month, a bank shut down an LGBTI-themed art exhibit in Porto Alegre for ‘promoting pedophilia.’

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