Obama decries ‘conversion’ therapy

by Anthony Glassman

Washington, D.C.--In response to a petition on the White House’s website, Pres. Barack Obama called for an end to so-called “conversion” therapy for minors, which seeks to change their sexual orientation.

The petition, “Enact Leelah’s Law to Ban All LGBTQ+ Conversion Therapy,” has received over 120,000 signatures, and a week into April, the White House responded with a statement by spokesperson Valerie Jarrett, prefaced with a comment by Pres. Obama.

“Tonight, somewhere in America, a young person, let’s say a young man, will struggle to fall to sleep, wrestling alone with a secret he’s held as long as he can remember,” he wrote. “Soon, perhaps, he will decide it’s time to let that secret out. What happens next depends on him, his family, as well as his friends and his teachers and his community.”

“But it also depends on us -- on the kind of society we engender, the kind of future we build,” he concluded.

Obama is not pushing for federal legislation to ban the discredited therapy, but supports state bans, of which at least three have already passed.

“Leelah’s Law” is named after Leelah Alcorn, a 16-year old transgender girl who stepped into traffic on I-71 in Cincinnati on December 28. Her suicide note mentioned that her family sent her to a Christian therapist who tried “conversion” therapy.

“When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong,” Alcorn wrote in her suicide note, posted to her Tumblr. “If you are reading this, parents, please don’t tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don’t ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won’t do anything but make them hate them self. That’s exactly what it did to me.”

“My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to Christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more Christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help,” she continued.

The White House response was hailed immediately by the American Psychological Association, one of a number of professional organizations that decry the practice of “conversion” therapy as harmful to its patients.

“So-called reparative therapies are aimed at ‘fixing’ something that is not a mental illness and therefore does not require therapy,” said APA president Barry S. Anton. “There is insufficient scientific evidence that they work, and they have the potential to harm the client. APA has and will continue to call on mental health professionals to work to reduce misunderstanding about and prejudice toward gay and transgender people.”

The APA issued a task force report in 2009 found that mental health professionals should not tell their clients that their sexual orientation can change, since there is almost no evidence that such a change is possible.