Illustration: Stéphane Torossian
BEIRUT — When he was 17, his parents made him go through electroconvulsive therapy, says Hassan*.“It all began when I was 13, when I naively asked them why I liked boys. My father took me straight to a forensic doctor to find out if someone had raped me,” he recalls. Hassan remembers being sent to sheikhs and hospitals several times.“They said I had the devil inside me and performed horrible exorcisms on me,” he says. Hassan, who comes from a Shiite family in Sour, has since cut all ties with his mother and father. The 28-year-old struggles to talk about his buried past. In Lebanon, there seem to be all kinds of “conversion therapy,” designed to push LGBTQ+ people of various religious sects toward heterosexuality.While “unnatural sexual relations” are still punishable by law in this country, conversion therapies are not. Health...
BEIRUT — When he was 17, his parents made him go through electroconvulsive therapy, says Hassan*.“It all began when I was 13, when I naively asked them why I liked boys. My father took me straight to a forensic doctor to find out if someone had raped me,” he recalls. Hassan remembers being sent to sheikhs and hospitals several times.“They said I had the devil inside me and performed horrible exorcisms on me,” he says. Hassan, who comes from a Shiite family in Sour, has since cut all ties with his mother and father. The 28-year-old struggles to talk about his buried past. In Lebanon, there seem to be all kinds of “conversion therapy,” designed to push LGBTQ+ people of various religious sects toward heterosexuality.While “unnatural sexual relations” are still punishable by law in this country, conversion therapies are...
