Show Notes
🎙️ Peaked Reports of conversion therapy are "completely exaggerated" Host: Róisín Michaux Guest: Kurt Krickler Link (free version): https://peaked.substack.com/p/reports-of-conversion-therapy-are?r=1numbu
Episode Overview Kurt Krickler is a lifelong gay rights advocate who worked with the lobbying organisation ILGA-Europe from its earliest days. He was an ILGA volunteer before they even added the L, never mind the T, the Q or the I (or the worryingly ambiguous "plus+"). He watched the organisation's evolution from a group of scrappy activists to what it is today: a multi-million euro, multi-tentacled monster that fights to deny sex-based protections, where Kurt once fought to establish them. Having left ILGA when their mission creeped, Kurt has been pulled out of activist retirement to try to undo some of their more recent damage. He is one of the founding members of Athena Forum, a Vienna-based organisation that seeks to play ILGA at their own game: namely, lobbying the institutions that have been completely captured — inside and out — in order to return some sense to policy and law on a European level. In particular, there's a vote coming up in the next few days in the Council of Europe on a resolution, introduced by a UK Labour MP, to ban "conversion therapy". This conversion therapy ban gambit is now a long-standing LGBTIQ+ advocacy goal, and it's not what it looks like. In the crudest terms, this resolution, if it were to be obeyed by Council of Europe member states, would make it extremely difficult to talk to a young person who has fallen into the gender identity trap. As such, it is a menace to young same-sex attracted (and gender non-conforming) people. Read more about the campaign on Athena Forum's website and if you're in one of the 46 member states implicated, you can get involved.
What we talked about What the Council of Europe is and how it differs from the European Union
Why non-binding resolutions still matter politically and legally
How "conversion therapy" has expanded far beyond its historical meaning
The chilling effect on therapists working with gender-distressed patients
How activists use things like non-binding resolutions to influence national legislation
Problems with data integrity in EU-funded LGBTIQ discrimination research
The institutional evolution of ILGA and the emergence of alternative advocacy voices
Why Kurt co-founded Athena Forum and what it seeks to change
About the guest Kurt Krickler is an Austrian gay rights activist who has been involved in European and international advocacy since the late 1970s. He co-founded Homosexuelle Initiative Wien (HOSI Wien) in 1979 and later served on the board of ILGA-Europe, including as Co-Secretary General from 1996 to 2003. After ILGA-Europe shifted its focus to gender identity to the detriment of its gay rights focus, Kurt helped co-founded Athena Forum in 2025, an organisation focused on sex-based rights, evidence-based policy, and engagement with European institutions.
Historical Context: ILGA and the Amsterdam Treaty During the conversation, we reference a key moment in EU legal history: the inclusion of sexual orientation as a protected ground in the Treaty of Amsterdam, which came into force in 1999. A widely cited ILGA-Europe publication from that period, After Amsterdam: Sexual Orientation and the European Union (1999), documents how this treaty change transformed LGBT advocacy in Europe and enabled EU-level anti-discrimination legislation and funding for NGOs. This shift marked the beginning of ILGA-Europe's permanent institutional presence in Brussels and fundamentally changed the scale and scope of European LGBT lobbying.
Why This Vote Matters Although Council of Europe resolutions are not legally binding, they are routinely used by advocacy organizations and policymakers to justify: National legislation
Professional and regulatory guidelines
Criminal sanctions
Litigation strategies
As Kurt
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