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NYC Candlelight Vigil for Leelah Alcorn, Columbus Circle,
Manhattan, NYC, January 10, 2015. Photo: The All-Nite Images.
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Practicing Gay Conversion therapy on minors in Illinois will
soon be illegal. Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed a bill into law recently
banning the practice in the state and making it the fifth jurisdiction after
California, New Jersey, Washington DC and Oregon to do so.
“Illinois
families can now have confidence that the mental health professional they turn
to in times of uncertainty may not use their state license to profit from their
children’s pain,” Samantha Ames, staff attorney with the National Center for
Lesbian Rights, said in a statement following the governor’s action Thursday.
“Most
importantly, Illinois
kids can now rest easy in the knowledge that they cannot be forced or coerced
to undergo dangerous and discredited treatments to fix who they are,” the
statement continued.
Illinois
is the first state to include language linking conversion therapy to consumer
fraud. Critics of conversion therapy have said the practice is ineffective
because sexual orientation is not a choice and is harmful to minors.
"A
more accurate name for conversion therapy is child abuse," Jim Bennett
Midwest regional director for the LGBT rights group Lambda Legal said.
"Our LGBT young people deserve to be embraced for who they are."
President
Barack Obama called for an end to gay conversion therapy in response to a
White House petition brought after the
suicide of transgender Ohio teen Leelah Alcorn. The American Psychiatric
Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 and has
stated that behavioral therapy used to change a person’s sexual orientation is
ineffective.
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