“We have no power over research,” he said. He noted that the ruling also said academic research into sexual conversion therapy should be allowed, which the council has never banned. “It is not a serious, academic debate, it is a debate connected to religious or conservative positions.” “There is no way to cure what is not a disease,” Giannini told the Guardian. The Federal Council of Psychology said in a statement that the decision “opens the dangerous possibility of the use of sexual reversion therapies” and promised to contest it legally.Ĭouncil president Rogério Giannini, a psychologist based in São Paulo, said its 1999 decision prohibiting “sexual conversion” therapy had already faced off other legal actions and even a proposed bill in Congress. In a 2009 interview with the Folha de S Paulo newspaper, Justino said she saw homosexuality as a “disease”, advised patients to seek religious guidance and said: “I feel directed by God to help people who are homosexual.” She did not respond to a request to comment. Judge de Carvalho ruled in favour of an action brought by Rozangela Justino, an evangelical Christian and psychologist whose licence was revoked in 2016 after she offered “conversion therapy”.
