For Immediate Release

September 13, 2007

Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists
Phone: +1 (215) 222-2800
E-mail:  aglpnat@aol.com

Website:  www.aglp.org

For more info see www.aglp.org/pages/austrianresponse.html

AGLP Protest Leads Conversion Therapist to Withdraw from Austrian Psychiatric Conference

PHILADELPHIA, PA —In response to a letter-writing protest campaign initiated by the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists (AGLP), a conversion therapist has withdrawn from speaking at a psychiatric conference in Graz, Austria. 

The Austrian Society of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (OEGPP) is a sponsor of an upcoming conference, “Religiosity in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy,” to be held this October in Graz, Austria.  Markus Hoffmann, a German conversion therapist who leads an evangelical group that attempts to convert gays and lesbians into heterosexuals, had been invited to speak. 

AGLP President, Ubaldo Leli, MD, wrote the OEGPP in August:  “Conversion therapy of gay and lesbian people is unscientific, harmful, and unethical. . . By inviting these speakers to your conference, you are granting scientific legitimacy to a discredited therapy that not only continues to pathologize gay people, but is based on the erroneous assumption that homosexuality is a mental illness and that gay men and lesbians can and should change their sexual orientation.”

After receiving letters from AGLP, its members, and local Austrian groups, OEGPP’s Vice President, Dr. Christoph Stuppaeck, requested to the organizers that Hoffman’s invitation to speak be withdrawn.  Three days later, the organizers announced that Hoffmann had withdrawn from the conference.

Ubaldo Leli, MD responded:  “AGLP is happy to have played a role in protecting vulnerable gay patients from potential harm.  We now hope to work collaboratively with OEGPP to help them formulate a more scientific sound policy toward gay and lesbian patients.”

AGLP is an allied organization of the American Psychiatric Association.  Both groups maintain that conversion therapies are potentially harmful to patients.  The APA’s position statement can be found at:  http://www.psych.org/psych_pract/copptherapyaddendum83100.cfm. 

AGLP has produced “Abomination:  Homosexuality and the Ex-Gay Movement” a documentary detailing, through personal accounts, the harm caused by conversion therapy (for more info on Abomination go to http://www.aglp.org/pages/abomination.html).