House Member Proposes Federal Action to Ban Conversion Therapy for LGBT Youth

Last month, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) introduced the Stop Harming Our Kids (SHOK) Resolution, which calls on states to ban conversion therapy aiming to “repair” youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).

“Being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender is not a disease to be cured or a mental illness that requires treatment,” said Speier during a press conference. “This backward ‘therapy’ has been rejected for over 40 years as scientifically invalid by the American Psychiatric Association and other mental health groups.”

Spier called conversion therapies a form of mental and physical torture that poses serious health risks for American youth.

Under the SHOK Resolution, states are called “to protect minors from efforts that promote or promise to change sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, on the premise that homosexuality is a mental illness or developmental disorder that can or should be cured,” according to a press release from Speier’s office.

The resolution was introduced five days after the April 8 call by the Obama Administration to end conversion “therapy” in response to a petition calling for action on whitehouse.gov signed by more than 120,000 Americans (Psychiatric News, May 1). The petition was prompted by the recent death of a transgender youth by suicide following what she reported were efforts by her therapist to convert her back into a boy.

“Conversion therapy is a set of dangerous practices that falsely claim to be able to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” Samuel Brinton, cochair of the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ #BornPerfect campaign and a survivor of conversion therapy, said at the press conference. “When I was 10 years old, a licensed psychotherapist tried and failed to change something that I never chose. He told me that I was sick and God hated me and that the government had exterminated all other gay people. I believed him .”

Brinton told the audience that he was subjected to practices such as the “ice block,” a technique in which blocks of ice were placed on his hands while being shown pictures of men being affectionate with one another. The only relief from the ice occurred when pictures of a man and woman were shown. Brinton described also enduring other practices in which he was stuck with needles in his fingers and underwent rounds of electric shock.

“These practices create, rather than cure, physical and mental health conditions,” said Brinton, who told the audience that he had attempted suicide years later as a result of the mental and physical abuse stemming from therapy.

“Way too many children are subjected to conversion therapy,” said David Stacy, M.A., government affairs director of the Human Rights Campaign, in addressing the audience. “The message is clear: no kid should be harmed. Some parents are thinking that they are trying to help their kids, but they need to be educated on the detrimental and long-term effects of these types of therapy.”

Other LGBT advocacy groups at the press conference in support of the SHOK Resolution included PFLAG (formerly known as Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and the Trevor Project, which calls for public education on the falsehoods surrounding the outcomes of conversion therapies for LGBT individuals. ■

The text of the SHOK Resolution can be accessed here.