Conversion therapy is the caveman-like practice of “healing” LGBT people. Participants, mostly minors forced in by their parents, undergo extreme brainwash therapy in the hopes of turning them straight. Most conversion therapists believe being gay is a choice, or is a result of sexual trauma as a child. Conversion therapy can consist of meeting with a “therapist” once a week, to admittance into a 24 hour facility in which you eat, breathe, live, conversion practices.
An online petition calling for a ban on conversion therapy received 120,000 in just three months. In response, President Obama decided it was time to end such discriminatory and threatening practices. Mr. Obama is going to support the efforts to ban the practice at state level, instead of calling for a federal law banning therapists from using conversion tactics. We can only hope a federal ban will be enacted at some point.
California, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia have already banned therapists from offering treatment to minors. Legislation regarding conversion therapy has also been introduced in 18 states, including the Human Rights Campaign and a gay rights group that tracks this type of legislation.
With President Obama’s initiative, and overwhelming evidence of the link between conversion therapy and suicide among the LGBT community, this oppressive and ignorant practice might someday be put to a stop.