House Dem calls on states to ban conversion therapy

Following a push from President Obama last week to end conversion therapies for LGBT youth, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) introduced a resolution Tuesday that calls on states to ban the practice.

“It’s time to end this abusive quackery masquerading as medicine,” Speier said in a news release. “Being transgender, gay, lesbian or bisexual is not a disease to be cured or a mental illness that requires treatment.”

The American Psychiatric Association and many other mental health groups, she said, have rejected that view for nearly 40 years.

{mosads}The Stop Harming Our Kids (SHOK) Resolution asks states to protect minors from efforts to change sexual orientation, gender identity or expression on the premise that homosexuality is a mental illness or developmental disorder that can or should be cured.

In addition to the resolution, Speier is considering introducing legislation to create a federal ban on conversion therapy.

Her announcement comes less than a week after the Obama administration condemned conversion therapy, after a WhiteHouse.gov petition called “Enact Leelah’s Law to Ban All LGBTQ+ Conversion Therapy” received more than 120,000 signatures.

The petition was named after Leelah Alcorn, a 17-year-old transgender youth who committed suicide in December. In the note she left behind, said her parents “forced her to attend conversion therapy, pulled her out of school and isolated her in an attempt to change her gender identity,” the petition said.

A day after Obama’s announcement, the White House added a gender-neutral bathroom to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in effort to be more welcoming to LGBT people.