Gay rights advocates have made significant progress in the fight to discredit and ultimately ban conversion therapy, a practice that claims to “cure” gay people. The mainstream medical community is united in its view that the therapy is both ineffective and potentially harmful. So far, California, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., have passed laws banning licensed therapists from subjecting minors to such treatment.
Here comes the backlash.
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Carden Crow, a 36-year-old transgender man from Tahlequah, Oklahoma, said he went through conversion therapy twice, as well as an exorcism, before attempting suicide in his teen years. He worries that the proposed law will encourage more people to try conversion therapy.
“I think it would be the only justification that people really need to go ahead and say, ‘Well, my church agrees with it and now my government agrees with it, so why not?’ I think it would provoke a downhill slope,” Crow said. “That’s really kids being sacrificed.”
