But conversion therapy can harm a person, because how conversion therapy is actually undertaken sends a person a message: a message that they are not good enough, that they ought to be ashamed. They are stigmatised. Efforts are made to erase them, to rub them out, to take away parts of their very essence. They are threatened with being cast out from their family or community. Worse, it often happens to young people at a time when they should be nurtured by the adults around them and be allowed to develop a sense of belonging to their community. We are social beings and this type of psychological abuse is as harmful as physical abuse. So it is not surprising that conversion practices lead to worse mental health outcomes for those people who experience them later on in life. Tonight, we have the opportunity to consign conversion practices to history, where they belong, with all their abuse and superstition.