Anniversary of the banning of sexual conversion therapy in Australia

February 17th 2026 is the 4th anniversary of sexual conversion therapies being banned in Victoria, and I make a point of marking it each year. I feel it’s worth remembering as a small milestone, as well as a sort of memorial to the very rough times endured by many queer and trans people in the past.

I’ve asked many people when they reckon conversion therapies were banned here, and the usual answer is that it must have been stopped a long time ago: “Maybe the 80’s… The 90’s? Surely no later than 2000…” Followed by genuine surprise when they learn it was only banned during COVID, followed by obvious discomfort to be talking about this topic at all.

It’s a discomfort that feels familiar from any time the topics of queer rights and lived experience come up in non-queer spaces. I remember growing up in southeast Victoria, there was a private camp retreat about 40 minutes drive towards Melbourne, that the grapevine said was a place where conversion therapies were practiced. Driving past on the way to sporting events, one of the guys might joke to another that we could stop off there so he could get “straightened out”, to the knowing chuckles of the others in the car, followed by a long period of dead silence and a change of topic. Nobody ever wondered aloud what it might have felt like for the people who went there, and even being reminded by a joke was obviously so uncomfortable. For many decades, the idea of unpleasant things being done to ‘treat’ queer people was silently accepted in Australian culture like a newer take on “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

This matters so much, because people learn their place in the world from what they observe, as much as from what they’re told. For young queer folks who grew up knowing that conversion therapy was happening to people just like them, it was a fundamental rejection of their budding worth as a person; a quiet way that society told them “We will allow this to happen, and are mostly fine with it when we bother to notice”. This isn’t even accounting for the direct harm experienced by those who were subjected to conversion therapies, for whom the rejection of their worth was no abstract idea, but a direct experience which many would have found profoundly traumatic.

If this is getting a little melancholy, it’s because each year I want to pause and say “Great! I’m pleased with the changes since 2022”, while sincerely meditating on the pain that it used to happen, which many people carry as part of their early memories. If you are carrying pain from your past experiences with sexual conversion therapies, whether first-hand or just knowing it was happening, please know that your feelings are valid. I still see you, and acknowledge the impact of your past, even if the world might shrug that queer people have got it made now, tacitly assuming that discrimination is over unless it’s brought to their uncomfortable attention.

If you’d like to talk about any memories or feelings that the above brought up, I’m around, and I’ve got time and space to explore it with you. Feel free to send me a message if you’d like to book a first session together. And please, celebrate the wins both big and small, and take good care of yourself when the shitty stuff gets you down.