Well, This Is Different.

[pErvinalia]

A Belgian man is currently trying to get doctors to agree to euthanise him after 17 years of failed gay conversion therapy.
By Stephanie Marie Anderson

10 Jun 2016 - 1:24 PM UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO
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Sebastién* is a 39-year-old man in Belgium who has known since he was 15 that he is gay, but cannot accept it. After 17 years of failed therapy to 'cure' his sexuality, he is now seeking to be granted euthanasia on the grounds of "unbearable" mental suffering, the BBC reports.

“My whole life has led me to this, really,” he tells the interviewer. “My mother had dementia, so I wasn’t right, mentally.

“All that was instilled in me, so I was extremely lonely, extremely withdrawn, very inhibited physically – scared to go out, scared of being seen, all the time scared, hugely shy.

“And growing up, I met a boy and I fell crazy in love. We were both 15. And it was just unbearable for me, you know? I didn’t want to be gay.”

Sebastién - who describes himself as being attracted to "young men and adolescent boys" says that he has been in love twice since then, with an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old, noting that he is "relieved to find" that he's capable of finding men outside of adolescence attractive.

“The moment when they put the drip in my arm – I’m not worried about that… For me, it’s just a kind of anaesthesia," he says, adding that the hardest part of it would be telling his family.

Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002. Sebastién's inital request has been approved, but in psychiatric cases, he must be deemed legally competent, prove that his is in a state of “incurable, constant and unbearable physical or mental suffering”, and have three doctors sign off on his request.

"I have always thought about death. Looking back on my earliest memories, it's always been in my thoughts. It's a permanent suffering, like being a prisoner in my own body," he says.

"A constant sense of shame, feeling tired, being attracted to people you shouldn't be attracted to - as though everything were the opposite of what I would have wanted."

http://www.sbs.com.au/topics/sexuality/ ... -sexuality

[PsychoSerenity]

Hard to know what to make of it without more detail and there might be something lost in translation? The original BBC article doesn't mention gay conversion therapy at all, but it does mention a strict catholic upbringing. If doctors really have been trying to cure him of being gay for 17 years, that's fucked up in itself. I would hope the years of therapy were more about helping him accept himself. He says he's never accepted being gay but there's no reason given as to why. I don't know how easy (or legal) it would be for doctors to say that the necessary treatment is to remove a religiously instilled belief that it's wrong to be gay. Of course it might not be about religion either, he may have some sort of innate sexual orientation identity dysphoria that they can do nothing about.

[cronus]

Whatever does it for you? How does he know he'll take to euthanasia once he's done it?

[pErvinalia]

Euthanasia will cure his gayness.

[Scot Dutchy]

Whatever does it for you? How does he know he'll take to euthanasia once he's done it?

It is his choice. A choice that everyone should have in a civilised country but of course plenty of so-called civilised counties has problems with that.
It is no big deal here either and is the final freedom we all have.

[cronus]

Since we don't know his family and friends and how much support or emotional nudge he's getting it is impossible to know how much it is actually his own choice? Good time to leave the EU. This is the same logic they applied to social issues before. Starts with good intentions....then before you know it all the trains are one way tickets.

[Scot Dutchy]

Since we don't know his family and friends and how much support or emotional nudge he's getting it is impossible to know how much it is actually his own choice? Good time to leave the EU. This is the same logic they applied to social issues before. Starts with good intentions....then before you know it all the trains are one way tickets.

Bollocks but that is par for the course for Anglo-Saxon minds.

[pErvinalia]

[mistermack]

It is no big deal here either and is the final freedom we all have.

In this country, loonies are not free to harm themselves.

The Dutch are just mini Germans at heart.

[Scot Dutchy]

It is no big deal here either and is the final freedom we all have.

In this country, loonies are not free to harm themselves.

The Dutch are just mini Germans at heart.