In 2016, Maria José Vilaça said that having a child gay “It’s like having a drug-addicted child.” At the time, she said she was misunderstood. Three years later, a TVI report showed the psychologist leading a “spiritual guidance” session for homosexuals, described as a “sexual conversion or reorientation” session, at the Church of Nossa Senhora do Carmo, in Lisbon. He will now be at a conference for young Catholics, taking place in Fátima between this Friday and Sunday, to talk about homosexuality. Luca di Tolve is another of the congressmen, presented as a “formergay” who changed “the direction of his life” after “turning to Our Lady” – he is now “a family man”. Isabel Moreira, deputy of the Socialist Party and one of the authors of the law that prohibits “conversion therapies”, calls for the intervention of the Order of Psychologists.
In the TVI report broadcast on January 10, 2019, the psychologist appears to say phrases like this: “I know a boy who told his wife, and at a certain point he publicly came out as a homosexual and, suddenly, everything happened to him and returned home.” She compares homosexuality to bipolar disease, stating that, in the “manic” phase, the person is homosexual and a defender of “the lobby.” gay” and that in the “normal phase […] comes home, wants to be heterosexual again.” A position that is not shared by the clinical community: homosexuality was no longer considered a disease on May 17, 1990, and is not something that can be the target of therapy.
In 2019, following the broadcast of the report, the Order of Portuguese Psychologists disciplinary analyzed the case.
Law prohibits “conversion therapies”
This Saturday, Maria José Vilaça will be a speaker at the lecture “Homosexuality: what was never told to you”. The next day, it’s Luca di Tolve’s turn to take the stage: the motto is “I was gay… Today I’m a family man!” Even before it took place, the event aroused criticism, almost all of which referred to the illegality of so-called “conversion therapies”. The practice carries penalties of up to five years in prison and the prohibition, on the part of those who practice or promote it, from exercising professions or activities that involve any regular contact with minors, for a period of two to 20 years.
The practice or promotion of these therapies constitutes a public crime, which is why anyone can report them. “Not only the doctors who do it, the psychologists who do it, but also the simple promotion is criminalized”, explains André Dias Pereira, jurist and professor at the University of Coimbra who, however, believes that “criminal law is not used to interfere in everything”, assuming doubts about where the space for freedom of expression begins and ends.
Critics ask for intervention from the Order of Psychologists
“Often, these meetings in which we try to promote what is a supposed cure, for something that is not a disease, are a threat to us as LGBT people”, recalls Daniela Bento, president of ILGA – Intervenção Lésbica, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex. In view of these events, it is peremptory: “conversion practices are a public crime”, “a complaint to the Public Ministry should work.” And he emphasizes that the younger population “is often in a very vulnerable situation, very serious problems can arise.”
On social media, several figures