In Spite of Consent: Spain's Conversion Therapy Ban and the Limits of State Care

In late June 2026, Spain's Congress of Deputies passed an amendment to the national penal code classifying certain support programs for individuals with homosexual inclinations as criminal offenses under Title VII, the section governing 'torture and other crimes against moral integrity.' The bill has yet to reach the Senate, but its terms are already specific: prison sentences of six months to two years, fines over eight to twenty-four months, and professional disqualification of up to five years for anyone who applies 'acts, methods, programs, techniques, or procedures of aversion or conversion whether psychological, physical, pharmacological, or of any other nature intended to modify, suppress, eliminate, or deny their sexual orientation, sexual identity, or gender expression' — and this even, the text states, 'with their consent.'[^1]

Bishop José Ignacio Munilla of Orihuela-Alicante responded publicly on his Radio María Spain program, Sexto Continente, calling the bill an act of persecution against Catholics with same-sex attraction who, out of formed conscience, wish to live chastely and seek help to do so. 'So-called conversion therapy doesn't exist,' he stated, describing the term as 'an ideological construct of an anti-Christian lobby in an attempt to prevent pastoral accompaniment.' He closed his public commentary by citing Acts: 'We must obey God rather than men.'[^1]

The bishop's objection is not merely political. It points to a conceptual confusion at the center of the legislation — one with direct consequences for how psychology understands its own purpose.

What therapy is for

The question the Spanish bill cannot answer is this: what is psychological care for?

If the answer is the relief of distress, the bill's framers might argue that any program associated with sexual orientation causes harm and therefore falls under therapeutic prohibition. But the research literature does not support that framing when applied to voluntary, values-congruent support. Self-determination theory, developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, consistently finds that behavior aligned with internalized values produces greater wellbeing and autonomy satisfaction than behavior driven by external pressure — including the external pressure of a legal system that tells a person their freely chosen framework for living is inadmissible.

If the answer is the liberation of the person to live freely and responsibly, the question shifts entirely. Benedict Ashley, whose work on the integration of psychology and Catholic anthropology Matthew McWhorter examines in National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, distinguishes sharply between restoring a person's psychological freedom and directing what they do with that freedom once it is recovered. The therapist's task, on Ashley's account, is to help a person become capable of free ethical decision-making — not to predetermine the content of those decisions.[^2] A Catholic with same-sex attraction who, with full psychological clarity and genuine freedom, chooses a life of chastity in accord with their faith is exercising exactly the kind of autonomous moral agency that therapy, at its best, is meant to restore.

The Spanish legislation, by prohibiting support programs 'even with consent,' moves in the opposite direction. It substitutes the state's judgment about authentic selfhood for the individual's own. That is not therapy. It is its negation.

The person seeking accompaniment

Catholic Christian mental health, as framed in the work of Vitz, Nordling, and Titus, treats the person as an integrated unity of body, soul, intellect, and will — not as a bundle of drives whose satisfaction constitutes flourishing.[^3] The human person, on this account, is genuinely free, capable of ordering desire toward chosen goods, and responsible for that ordering. This is not a diminishment of the person with same-sex attraction. It is the same anthropological framework applied to every person who brings disordered desire — in whatever form — to the work of moral and psychological growth.

Nordling and his co-authors describe the Catholic Christian approach as seeking 'to increase flourishing and freedom for responsible thinking, choosing, feeling, and relating to other people.'[^3] A person who comes to a pastoral counselor or psychotherapist seeking support in living chastely is asking precisely for this kind of help: not a change imposed from outside, but accompaniment toward a life they have chosen from within.

The law cannot see this distinction because it has already decided that chastity, when sought by someone with same-sex attraction, is a form of self-harm. That is a philosophical claim, not a clinical one — and it is one the state is making without argument, embedding it in penal code rather than submitting it to scrutiny.

Conscience and the limits of the therapeutic role

Ashley's framework helps clarify a further issue the legislation raises. Once a person has recovered sufficient psychological freedom — once the compulsions, distortions, and neurotic patterns that obscure free choice have been addressed — what remains is a moral and spiritual life that belongs to them, not to their therapist, and certainly not to the state.

Ashley, as McWhorter summarizes, holds that the therapist must exercise 'prudential self-restraint' once a client is able to make free ethical decisions. Ethical choices at that stage are 'motivated by their own conscious, rational system of values.' The therapist's role at that point is to ensure those choices remain 'free of illusion and neurosis' — not to redirect them toward a preferred outcome.[^2] The Spanish bill, in effect, legislates a preferred outcome and calls any support for a different outcome torture.

Bishop Munilla framed this in terms of conscience: Catholics with same-sex attraction who in conscience wish to live chastely are being told, by law, that the help they seek is criminal.[^1] Whatever one makes of that register, the underlying point is precise. A law that criminalizes conscience-congruent care does not protect persons. It overrides them.

What accompaniment requires

Therapeutic alliance — the quality of the working relationship between a person and the professional accompanying them — is among the most robust predictors of positive outcomes in clinical psychology research. Alliance depends on the accompanied person's confidence that their goals and values are being taken seriously, not corrected in advance by the helper's commitments. A Catholic seeking pastoral support in living chastely brings to that relationship a specific understanding of the human person, a specific set of commitments, and a specific account of flourishing. Accompaniment that meets them there is not ideological imposition. It is the condition of real therapeutic work.

Spain's bill, whatever its intent, positions the state as the subject of that journey instead. The person with same-sex attraction who freely asks for support in living chastely is told that their request is legally impermissible. The counselor or spiritual director who responds is told they face criminal prosecution. The chilling effect on Catholic mental health practice follows directly from treating a person's free, conscience-driven request for care as equivalent to the application of torture.

Psychology exists to serve the person's freedom, not to determine its content. A law that forgets this has not protected anyone.

References

[^1]: Nicolás de Cárdenas, 'Spanish bishop says new bill persecutes same-sex-attracted Catholics who want to live chastely,' EWTN News, June 29, 2026, reporting Bishop Munilla's remarks on Sexto Continente, Radio María Spain.

[^2]: Matthew McWhorter, 'Integrating Spirituality and Mental Health Services: Insights from Benedict Ashley on Psychotherapy,' National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 20, no. 1 (2020): 111–136.

[^3]: Paul C. Vitz, William Nordling, and Craig Steven Titus, eds., A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person: Integration with Psychology and Mental Health Practice (Irondale, AL: Divine Mercy University Press, 2020), 434.