Louisville, Kentucky Mayor Greg Fischer has signed a law banning so-called conversion therapy for minors. The “therapy” purports to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. As such, Louisville is now the 82nd U.S. municipality to ban the practice. 40 percent of all U.S. states also have such bans.
Fischer said, “Our LGBTQ kids, they don’t need to be converted or repaired. They need to be loved, supported, and accepted for who they are.”
Anti-LGBTQ groups have argued that ex-gay therapy bans violate their rights to “free speech” and “religious freedom,” but so far the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear cases challenging these bans. However, the increasingly conservative tilt of the court however could possibly help overturn these bans.
Both a majority of Americans oppose conversion therapy. Every major American psychological and medical association has disavowed conversion therapy as a pseudoscientific form of psychological torture.
The actual methods of the so-called therapy are quackery. People are told to avoid masturbation, not shake hands with any one of the same sex, not listen to music, to rigorously exercise and study the bible. Practitioners also use “covert aversion” (making LGBTQ identity seem dangerous, unhealthy and repulsive) or “reframing of desire” onto opposite-sex partners.
About 84 percent of former patients say it inflicts lasting shame and emotional harm. Many conversion therapy practitioners have subsequently come out as still gay and apologized for the harm they’ve caused.