Posted on 12/08/2016 6:33:21 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
Pittsburgh City Council on Wednesday advanced legislation that would prohibit licensed mental health professionals from subjecting minors to “conversion therapy,” the practice of attempting to change a person's sexual orientation.
The legislation is intended to protect gay and transgender people younger than 18 and was a response to the election of Republican Donald Trump and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as president and vice president, said council President Bruce Kraus, a South Side Democrat.
Kraus, who is gay, called conversion therapy “a form of soul murder.”
“I think it's obvious if anyone has followed national news there's clearly been a change in administrations, and there's a history that our vice president-elect has brought with him,” Kraus said. “He supports this barbaric practice of conversion therapy and funding of conversion therapy.”
National LGBT groups have registered similar complaints about Pence since the election, but a Pence spokesman has denied that Pence supports conversion therapy.
Councilman Dan Gilman of Squirrel Hill, who sponsored the bill with Kraus, said his office has received calls from a few people who said they were subjected to conversion therapy in the city.
He declined to provide the practitioners' identities.
“This is about being a city that protects children from mental and physical abuse,” Gilman said.
While critics claim conversion therapy sometimes comes in the form of physical and mental abuse, the New York Times reported last week that most current practitioners rely on psychoanalytic methods that include group therapy.
Groups including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have condemned conversion therapy.
City residents offered mixed opinions.
Mark Brentley Sr., 59, of Allegheny Center, a former Pittsburgh Public Schools director, said parents should be permitted to seek conversion therapy for their children. He told council members they were “overreaching” by proposing the ban.
Harriet Schwartz, associate professor of psychology and counseling at Carlow University who was accompanied by two Carlow students, praised council for voting to ban the practice.
“I think that the ban is important for the protections it provides and also because it sends an important message,” she said. “It tells the (LGBT) young people in our region that they're not someone who is broken and who needs to be fixed.”
Councilwoman Darlene Harris drew criticism from Kraus when she questioned whether the city had legal authority to enforce the legislation. Kraus accused her of supporting Trump's campaign. She called him the worst council president in city history.
Kraus said an assistant city solicitor approved the bill, but Solicitor Lourdes Sanchez Ridge said she would have to research it before providing a legal opinion. Downtown attorney Phil DiLucente said the city has authority under its Home Rule Charter to enforce the ban.
“They're permitted to pass laws that they believe would speak to the detriment of the health, safety and welfare of its citizens,” he said.
Harris abstained from a preliminary vote that passed 8-0. Council, which has nine members, all Democrats, is expected to schedule a final vote for Tuesday. If it passes, Mayor Bill Peduto's office said he intends to sign the bill.
...literally.
But they can do radical hormone therapy and surgery to change a person’s sex.
Being a queer is “soul murder”. Calling themselves “gay” is desperation.
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