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FRANCE HAS A new law that bans conversion therapies and authorises jail time and fines for practitioners who use the scientifically discredited practice to attempt to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ people.
The National Assembly approved the new law unanimously, voting 142 to 0 yesterday evening.
The legislation includes criminal penalties for people who are convicted of trying to “convert” LGBTQ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.
The law also opens the possibility for campaigners to file civil suits on behalf of victims, an advance hailed in parliament as a breakthrough for people who hesitate or are unable to alert police themselves.
Politician Laurence Vanceunebrock, who helped steer the law’s passage through parliament, said it would target “all those who equated an identity or a sexual orientation with sickness”.
“There is nothing to cure,” she told the National Assembly.
The French government’s equalities and diversity minster, Elisabeth Moreno, described conversion therapies as “barbaric” and told politicians that the suffering they inflicted “very often leaves permanent marks on bodies and minds”.
Under the new law, sustained efforts “that aim to modify or reprimand sexual orientation or gender identity” and which impact the physical or mental health of victims are punishable by up to two years in jail and €30,000 in fines.
The punishment can increase to three years’ imprisonment and fines of €45,000 for attempts involving minors or other particularly vulnerable people.
Therapies to change a person’s sexual orientation are already prohibited in multiple US states and the US Caribbean territory of Puerto Rico.
The law will take effect in the next 14 days with President Emmanuel Macron’s signoff.
Mr Macron hailed the legislation’s passage, tweeting: “Let’s be proud of it. Because being oneself is not a crime.”
Currently in Ireland, research into the practice of conversion therapy is being carried out before progressing plans to outlaw the controversial practice.
The delay in banning the practice in the Republic, a commitment contained in the Programme for Government, comes after it was decided that research is needed to determine how prevalent it is, and in what settings it occurs, before legislating to ban it.
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What a devastating disaster. To destroy such an old established business like this. Hope ye can stay going and regroup. Nothing sacred anymore.
Ann
Maybe someone else nearby with a Catering Kitchen could allow her to use their kitchen on a quiet, or a shut shop, day? Esp’ if it has its own “Free Power”/Off-Grid Renewable supply (to keep overheads down – for both parties). A lot of places don’t open on Mondays, Tuesdays, & Wednesdays anymore. If she could still meet even half her clients’ orders that fit with the days she has kitchen access (for retention of freshness), it would give her a fighting chance to keep the business *in business* and ticking over while the Tradies are in the bakery unit restoring and renovating the place…. after the insurance finally inspects & processes whatever payment they intend.
Also – There should not be any water *still* pouring out into her shop unit. Would the Firefighters not have given her a hand there to find the external stopcock and turn off the mains supply to the store entirely.
Unless it’s coming from a loft or rooftop storage tank? But even then, it should quit eventually when it runs out of water . . . .unless, again, the mains outside is not turned off and is still supplying the tank.
We’ll keep the fingers crossed for them anyway.
Best of luck bouncing back
Hope they’ve got adequate insurance that will cover rebuilding and possibly loss of earnings. Even so, next year’s premium might be off the wall. Hate to see a decent family-run business like that destroyed. Not too many left anymore.
Is it possible that the fire could be caused by the ole reliable climate change claim ? Asking for an insurance friend of mine
1862 was a long time ago. Thought it was mostly spuds on the menu then
@The Hard Road: Is that what you thought? Read much?
@Jack Hayes: Comments section is full of w anchors.
@Jack Hayes: I stand corrected. I had thought there were lots of people subsisting on potatoes rather than cream cakes during that period of Irish history. Now I know better
@The Hard Road: Like the man in the orthopaedic shoes.
@The Hard Road: Everything was on the menu then, if you had the wherewithal to pay for it!
@The Hard Road: You are on the right track …-ish. Spuds were never the problem. Wholesale confiscation of all livestock, tillage crops, and grains, by Britain, as “Taxes” surplus to coin taxes and rents, were the problem. All the “tenant” farmer was left with to sustain themselves were usually a few spuds and other scarce bits. Potato crop failed the years of the Famine Genocide, AND Britain still continued to levy and escalate confiscation of all harvests and livestock.
But you would definitely be correct. Very few indigenous Irish would have had the option or opportunity to eat home made cakes, let alone *purchased* bakery goods from the City. Back then, the shop probably predominantly supplied indigenous Protestants who had favourable access to higher salaried professional occupations and lay jobs; and the non-indigenous, like Brits, who held all the Wealth (from Resource stripping).
That is not to say there wouldn’t have been a fair few indigenous Catholics who had reasonably well paid jobs and/or happened to have multiple teenage children capable of and succeeding in getting a lower paid City job who’s wages would then all go into the pot for the mother to run the house (and, buy a rare cake on a rare special occasion).
So it wasn’t wholly impossible for indigenous Irish Catholics to purchase a cake.
It was just far more probable the Protestant Privileged, and the foreign Resource Strippers, were the more common customer (possibly alongside tea shops and other commercial enterprises that didn’t have an in-house baker)
@Pink Freud: comprehensive and factual answer.
@Pink Freud: Sort of what we have now but with multinationals
That picture brought me back .Terrible news and places like this are very few nowadays. Some are intent on destruction and for what purpose? I hope they recover. I have a yearning for a jam doughnut now.
Ireland wants a franchise here. Greggs maybe
@Thesaltyurchin: But do we really, you have clearly have not tasted anything from Greggs.
@Michael Ward: Sarcasm. Apologies, it’s a hard one when read in context. But we do prefer our shop owners to run a Centra, our coffee to be Starbucks. Imagine it’s less work for officials to do, bigger employers, lower wages. If a costa goes bust it probably doesn’t even register a blip on their overall books. Ireland has never liked the SME (imo).
have your say