These Court Rulings Could Be A Major Blow Against The Practice Of ‘Curing’ Gay People

Gay rights advocates are celebrating two recent ruling from a New Jersey judge that could be pivotal in the fight to end the controversial practice of using therapy in an attempt to make a gay person straight.

The rulings are part of a first-of-its-kind consumer fraud case that will go before a jury in June. In 2012, four young men and two of their parents filed a lawsuit against Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing, or JONAH, accusing the nonprofit conversion therapy center of violating New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act by claiming that its counseling services could cure clients of being gay.

In the lawsuit, the young men say they were emotionally scarred by the false promise of change and by the techniques employed in the therapy — including being forced to strip naked in front of their counselor and to participate in disturbing role-playing exercises. In one instance, one of the plaintiffs was instructed to beat an effigy of his mother with a tennis racket, “as though killing her,” the lawsuit said.

“A consumer fraud law in other states, if NJ sets a precedent with this case, would allow adults to take licensed and unlicensed practitioners to court to seek redress for the harm done,” Jack Drescher, M.D., who is a member of the American Psychiatric Association and a leading voice against conversion therapy, said in an email to HuffPost.

Although a final ruling on the case is not expected until later this year, the suit could already prove to be a turning point in the fight to end the practice, Drescher said.

“For the past twenty years, conversion therapists and so-called ex-gays have appeared in courts and at legislative hearings to oppose civil rights for gay people using the discredited argument that homosexuality is a ‘treatable disorder’ and not an innate trait deserving of legal protections,” he said. “This judge’s decision is the first, to my knowledge, that in plain language calls conversion therapy ‘junk science’ and its practitioners as being out of touch with the scientific mainstream.”

The Huffington Post