BREAKING: Obama To Support Total Ban On ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy For Minors

President Barack Obama will announce support for efforts to ban so-called “conversion” therapy for minors, that has been deemed harmful.

In response to a “We The People” petition on the White House’s website, President Barack Obama will be announcing his support to ban “reparative,” “conversion,” or “ex-gay” therapy for minors. These pseudo-therapies have been deemed both ineffective and harmful. Practitioners of these sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) claim they are able to change a gay person into a straight person, but every major medical organization has ruled against their use.

“Tonight, somewhere in America, a young person, let’s say a young man, will struggle to fall to sleep, wrestling alone with a secret he’s held as long as he can remember,” President Obama wrote on the White House’s petition website. “Soon, perhaps, he will decide it’s time to let that secret out. What happens next depends on him, his family, as well as his friends and his teachers and his community. But it also depends on us — on the kind of society we engender, the kind of future we build.”

The petition that directed the attention of the president was in response to the suicide of transgender teen Leelah Alcorn, “Enact Leelah’s Law to Ban All LGBTQ+ Conversion Therapy,” which The New Civil Rights Movement campaigned for. NCRM readers quickly helped the petition pass the 100,000 mark, which then required a White House response. 

UPDATE: Will Obama’s Call For Ban On Harmful ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy Make It Happen Quicker?

“We share your concern about its potentially devastating effects on the lives of transgender as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer youth,” a statement, written by Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, says, The New York Times reports tonight. “As part of our dedication to protecting America’s youth, this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors.”

Mr. Obama will not explicitly call for a federal law banning therapists from using such therapies on their patients, but he is open to conversations with lawmakers in both parties, White House officials said on Wednesday. Instead, he will throw his support behind the efforts to ban the practice at the state level.

 

Image: “Pres and Mrs Obama host LGBT event in the East Room” June 30, 2014. Photo by Mark Knoller via Twitter