We’ve seen story after story about how conversion therapy does more harm than good. As the harm done by “pray away the gay” has become more apparent, there have been calls to ban the practice of trying to turn gay and lesbian youths straight through so-called therapy. Well, that effort gained a major supporter on Wednesday night. In response to a petition set up in memory of an Ohio transgender girl who committed suicide after being subjected to conversion therapy, President Obama let it be known that he wants this practice to end.
You may know that in December, Leelah Alcorn killed herself after writing a suicide note that her fundamentalist parents forced her to attend numerous conversion therapy sessions. They also cut her off from the outside world for almost five months. Just days after Leelah’s death, a petition was launched at WhiteHouse.gov that called for the passage of a federal ban on conversion therapy, called “Leelah’s Law.” It tallied more than 120,000 signatures–well over the threshold for a response from the White House. That response came from a White House senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, who wrote that her boss agrees that conversion therapy has “devastating effects” on LGBT youth. For that reason, Jarrett wrote, “this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors.”
Jarrett went further in an interview with The New York Times. She said that “countless young people” have been affected by this “therapy.” Among them are the dozens of kids who were packed off to Escuela Caribe, a supposedly Christian boot camp in the Dominican Republic, over the years by parents who wanted to turn them straight. White House officials later said that for now, Obama will throw his weight behind efforts to ban the practice at the state level. According to the New Civil Rights Movement, only California, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia explicitly ban the use of conversion therapy on minors. In one other state, Maryland, state health occupation boards apparently take a dim view of conversion therapy.
You can probably imagine that a lot of religious right heads exploded after this news broke. Bryan Fischer of American Family Radio probably spoke for a lot of fundies on Thursday when he thundered that Obama was “guilty of child abuse.” He claimed that homosexuality “chews people up,” and helping people–especially “sexually confused teenagers”–is an act of love.
Really, Bryan? You mean to tell me that what happened to four young men from New Jersey who were clients of a particularly notorious “pray away the gay” outfit, Jews Offering New Alternatives For Healing, was an “act of love”? They had to engage in a number of degrading practices during their sessions, including stripping naked in front of counselors. A judge declared that this “therapy” amounted to fraud under New Jersey law. And you think that what happened to “David,” one of the victims of Escuela Caribe, was an “act of love”? He told me that his counselors tried to convince him he’d been sexually abused in the past–even though recovered-memory therapy is considered pseudoscientific nonsense by every mainstream psychological association.
Given how rapidly society has changed its mind about the gay lifestyle, one can hope that the president’s announcement brings us one step closer to eradicating this harmful “therapy” once and for all.
