India’s first openly gay prince slams forced LGBTQ conversion therapy: ‘parents are literally torturing their children’
- Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil told a UK news channel his mother and father would’ve gone to extreme lengths to try to make him straight
- ‘My parents were planning to open up my brain, perform a surgery on my brain,’ he said. ‘They were planning to make me undergo electro shock therapy’
Speaking from Jaipur, India, Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil told news channel Sky News on Friday that his mother and father would’ve gone to extreme lengths to try to make him straight.
“My parents were planning to open up my brain, perform a surgery on my brain,” he said. “They were planning to make me undergo electro shock therapy.”
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“Fortunately for me and fortunately for them the American Psychiatric Association had said that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, so they were not successful,” he added.
Nevertheless, Gohil said he suffered severe “embarrassment” and “humiliation” while enduring the “pain and suffering” of his parents’ futile attempts to change his sexual orientation.
“It was an absolute case of discrimination, violation of human rights, whether I’m a prince or not a prince, parents have no right to put their children into such kind of a torture,” Gohil said.
Gohil is the founder of the Lakysha Trust, an LGBTQ charity based in the Indian state of Gujarat. According to his bio on the website, his sexuality was revealed to his family in 2002 after he was hospitalised with a nervous breakdown.
When he became comfortable enough to speak publicly about his sexuality in 2006, it said his family accused him of bringing dishonour to their clan and led to people in his home state of Rajpipla burning his effigy.
But Gohil continued to speak out about his experience, the biography says. In 2007, he was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey and told her he said had no regrets about coming out publicly, it says.
The American Psychiatric Association refers to conversion therapy as “sexual orientation change efforts” or “gender identity change efforts” to differentiate it from evidence-based therapy practices.
According to Reuters, more than 20 states in the US have laws that can subject healthcare providers to fines, license suspensions, and license revocations for trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of people under the age of 18.
It happens to so many individuals in India, I can give you so many numerous examples where parents are literally torturing their children
In India, however, Gohil said conversion therapy was still a widespread issue: “It happens to so many individuals in India, I can give you so many numerous examples where parents are literally torturing their children.”
There have been a few signs of progress in recent years such as Tamil Nadu becoming the first Indian state to issue reforms against the practice in 2021, the Independent reported.
Gohil isn’t the first Asian public figure to shine a light on issues facing the LGBTQ community over the past week.
As The New York Times reported, Japanese pop star Shinjiro Atae came out publicly at a performance in Tokyo on Wednesday following a two-year hiatus.
Speaking to the crowd of over 2,000, Atae, 34, said he had struggled for years to accept himself but finally had the courage to publicly say he is “a gay man”.
“I don’t want people to struggle like me,” he added.
Japan is the only G7 country where same-sex unions are not legal. In June, the country passed its first law on sexual orientation and gender identity seeking to “promote understanding” and avoid “unfair discrimination”, according to Human Rights Watch.
However, it noted that the law falls short on the comprehensive non-discrimination legislation equivalent to other developed economies that Japanese rights groups such as the Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislation have called for.
