GOOD NEWS FOR ONCE

New York Pursuing Ban on “Ex-Gay” Torture

ChambersWell, gosh, it’s getting so that you can’t even stuff a terrified kid into a car in the dead of night, ship ’em off to a torture camp and psychologically abuse them until they break anymore. What ever happened to the good old days?

The Empire State Pride Agenda has just launched a campaign to end the practice of torturing gay kids until they pretend or are convinced they’re not gay anymore. You may know the practice as “pray away the gay,” and sometimes it’s called “ex-gay therapy,” even though it’s really only therapy in the same way that drilling a hole in the head to let ghosts out is surgery. It’s called “conversion therapy” by others, even though it doesn’t actually convert people.

People sometimes ask if there’s a need for LGBT advocacy groups after a state wins marriage equality, and so this is a very handy answer. Yes, believe it or not, there is still work to be done beyond just marriage.

The bill comes at a particularly delightful time: the belief that it’s possible to forcibly alter a person’s sexuality has been weathering a lot of setbacks lately, and hopefully it’ll be gone altogether. A Mormon ex-gay group just got shut down/squished into another organization. Leaders in the movement continue to admit that it doesn’t actually work. And various other states (California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) have banned the practice for kids or are working on bans of their own.

Soon there’ll come a time when our kids watch But I’m a Cheerleader and wonder, “what was that all about?”

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