With so-called ‘conversion therapy’ still legal in Ireland, Michael Craughwell is urging the LGBTQ+ community and allies to sign a petition, calling for a ban on the practices across EU member states.

“I didn’t want to die in that place.”
The voice of Willie Ryan, the gay protagonist of John Broderick’s 1965 novel The Waking of Willie Ryan.

Astonishingly for a writer in mid-20th century Ireland and one of the most famous people from my hometown of Athlone, Broderick focused on what we today would call ‘conversion practice’ in his books. His 1961 debut novel The Pilgrimage centres around the attempt to “cure” a gay man married to a woman of his sexuality by pilgrimage to a religious site. However, the Irish Censorship Board banned the book.

Four years later, The Waking of Willie Ryan, mentioned earlier, was published. It follows a gay man who breaks out of an “insane asylum” after being confined there for 25 years for his sexuality to confront his family and the religious leaders of his community who imprisoned him there. 

As a gay man from the same town as John Broderick, his candour and defiance in bringing this topic to the fore at a time when homosexuality was illegal and taboo resonates with me. Furthermore, since heinous ‘conversion practices’ are still not outlawed in Ireland, he has inspired me to ask the Irish LGBTQ+ community and its allies to support a ‘conversion practices’ ban today by signing a petition that has been launched to do this.

The petition aims to ban ‘conversion practices’ (also known as so-called ‘conversion therapy’) targeting LGBTQ+ citizens in the European Union. These are “interventions aimed at changing, repressing or suppressing the sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression of LGBTQ+ persons” and classified by the United Nations as torture. Many countries have now banned ‘conversion practices’ with legislation but Ireland has yet to do so.    

The mechanism used for the petition is the European Citizens’ Initiative, whereby citizens in all EU member states have until May 17, 2025, to sign using a central online collection system. To succeed, two conditions must be met:
1. The petition must be signed by 1 million EU citizens
2. At least seven EU member states must also collect a minimum threshold number of signatures set based on their population size. Ireland’s threshold number is 9,165 signatures.

At the time of writing, just under 3,500 signatures from Ireland have been collected. There are presumably more than 9,165 LGBTQ+ people and allies in Ireland, so if every eligible person in the community signed the petition, we could reach the threshold for the entire country in no time! It is now also over halfway through the one-year collection period, so please sign sooner rather than later to maximise the chances of success.

To be eligible to sign, you need to be an EU citizen and old enough to vote in European Parliament elections. It takes about 30 seconds to sign the petition and you need three pieces of information: your name, address and date of birth. None of these details are publicly published.

Returning to John Broderick, it has also been just over 100 years since his birth. To mark this, Lilliput Press has republished The Waking of Willie Ryan both in print and as an audiobook. As well as reading it, we, the LGBTQ+ people and allies of Ireland today, can commemorate this extraordinary work of literature and its author by signing this petition.

I’m proud to be a gay man and proud to come from a town and country with a literary heritage that highlighted the mistreatment of the LGBTQ+ community in the face of censorship and suppression. You can build on this previously censored legacy to help prevent your LGBTQ+ family, friends and colleagues in Ireland and the entire EU, and potentially even yourself, from suffering such mistreatment in the future by signing the petition.

To sign the petition calling for an EU-wide ‘conversion therapy’ ban, click here.