Laws generally track opinions. If they fail to do that, nobody complies with them.
Fortunately this seems to be still up for debate, so hopefully people who are sane will debate the content.
See, this is what happens when people who know buggerall about therapy start writing laws about therapy.
An actual therapist faced with a client who says “I don’t want to be gay” would necessarily ‘explore the [patients] identity’ before even attempting any sort of conversion, and would only attempt taking that further if there were any ambiguity that could be used to deliver a positive result.
Since most psychological therapies are open-ended and have loosely-defined goals, the therapist may decide that the patient’s target is unreasonable and try to take him/her down a different path - or to stop the therapy.
The crucial point is that conversion (as commonly understood) is more-or-less impossible, so the law is banning something that isn’t even doable in theory. It’s like banning people from making perpetual-motion machines.
What is possible (if difficult) is treating a neurosis that involves some confusion of gender identity or sexuality. There are many recorded instances, for example, where women subjected to childhood abuse (not necessarily sexual abuse) find it impossible to form sexual relationships with men, and choose female partners as the next-best alternative to a life of celibacy, even though they’re not technically gay. The law would make it illegal to treat people in this position - or, at least, would make therapists wary of taking it on.
So can all sorts of therapies if misapplied. On that basis, every dietician ought to be in jail (a) because they peddle quackery and (b) their prescriptions cause immense harm. Several mainstream medical “treatments” ought to be illegal. Broadly speaking, a qualified clinician is expected to determine whether the benefits of the proposed therapy outweigh the potential risk. Sometimes he gets it wrong. The critical point here is, are lawyers likely to be more capable of making that judgement call than the clinicians on the spot, or researchers who have studied the topic in detail and guide ‘best practice’?
I think @BiggusDickus correctly parsed the meaning of that definition.
This isn’t “therapy”. We know it isn’t therapy because no qualified therapist would condone such a thing. Unfortunately, the difference between ‘abuse’ and ‘therapy’ is one of those ‘I know it when I see it’ things. Which is why the law generally allows the medical profession to regulate itself, with all the downsides that that carries.