The Catholic Church has hit out at proposals to ban gay ‘cure’ therapy in Mexico.

Mexico has recently seen a wave of large-scale protests opposing same-sex marriage heavily backed by Catholic groups, after President Enrique Peña Nieto pushed to bring about equal marriage country-wide.

But this week the Church went even further in attacking state anti-discrimination watchdog Conapred for opposing the practise of ‘ex-gay’ therapy.

Telesur TV reports that the spokesperson of Mexico’s Catholic church, Father Hugo Valdemar, fumed: “There is persecution against the Church.

“It is something very serious, the state now determines the sexual behavior of citizens and forbids any attempt to return to normalcy.

“The state prohibits parents from helping their children to solve their sexual doubts and prohibits homosexuals from changing, but if they want to change their sex they fund that atrocity, it’s something diabolic.”

He continued to claim that country would imprison anyone who disagrees with the “gay dictatorship”.

The Catholic Church has a long, sordid history of enabling gay ‘cure’ therapy – both at a local church level and at an institutional level across the world.

Last year, a former priest alleged that the Vatican even operates its own secret gay ‘cure’ clinic for Catholic priests who are caught having sex with men.

The Church routinely refers to gay people as “persons who experience same-sex attraction” in documents – a term frequently used in gay ‘cure’ groups to pathologise homosexuality.