It’s clear people want gay conversion “therapy” banned now, the Green Party says, after members handed over a petition with over 150,000 signatures to parliament today.
Banning the practice was part of the Government’s 2020 Manifesto, but Green Party spokersperson for Rainbow Communities, Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, said it wasn’t happening soon enough, and started the petition to put the pressure on.
On the steps of parliament today, flanked by survivors of conversion therapy, Kerekere welcomed the commitment to ending conversion therapy by the government.
“We decided that for our people, the safety of our community and so that the healing and the recovery can better begin is that [the law] needed to come forward, so we launched this petition.
“In one week… the people of Aotearoa responded – I can confirm that people wrote to me to say ‘I do not support the Green Party but I have signed your petition’, and so we know that people see this not a partisan issue, this is not a political issue, except for the people who are having to endure this treatment.”