A 17-year-old transgender youth, Leelah Alcorn, stunned her friends and a vast Internet audience in December when she threw herself in front of a tractor-trailer after writing in an online suicide note that religious therapists had tried to convert her back to being a boy.
In response, President Obama is calling for an end to such therapies aimed at “repairing” gay, lesbian and transgender youth. His decision on the issue is the latest example of his continuing embrace of gay rights.
In a statement that was posted on Wednesday evening alongside a WhiteHouse.gov petition begun in honor of Ms. Alcorn, Mr. Obama condemned the practice, sometimes called “conversion” or “reparative” therapy, which is supported by some socially conservative organizations and religious doctors.
The petition has received more than 120,000 signatures in three months.
“We share your concern about its potentially devastating effects on the lives of transgender as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer youth,” the statement, written by Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, says. “As part of our dedication to protecting America’s youth, this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors.”
Currently 48 states still allow this barbaric practice, and even though there are efforts to ban it in many of them, so far only two have made a choice to protect the rights of the gay teenagers who are most often subjected to this cruelty.
With President Obama's endorsement this quackery might get the attention that it has long deserved and we can finally do away with it as we did electroshock therapy and treatments for so-called "female hysteria."
OT It's not like Sarah or Chuck Jr. or Bristol to be so quiet. Any news about Sarah's cancelling her NRA speech? Has anyone called around the Wasilla/Anchorage hospitals to see if someone from the family has been admitted-- one of the senior Heaths? Any gossip about Track? It's not like the Palins to be so silent.
ReplyDeleteI was just thinking that this statement from the White House might elicit a wacko response from Sarah who seems to be in hiding since jumping ship on the NRA.
DeleteBeaglemom
...We're looking at YOU, Marcus Bachmann...
ReplyDeleteMarcus you flaming gay lizard! Your "degaying" days are over!!!
DeleteIt's hard enough just growing up, add the pressure to change something that's not your choice, and you have a recipe for poor self esteem, eating disorders, alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide. There should be a law on the books and a penalty for practicing quackery. What, exactly, are they trying to repair with this "therapy"?
ReplyDelete"What, exactly, are they trying to repair with this "therapy"?"
DeleteThey're trying to repair sham marriages just like their own. I can't imagine how many GOPsters are sexually of more than one persuasion (not merely preferring both sexes to only one, but and/or preferring children as well as adults and/or preferring groups as opposed to merely monogamy with a single spouse). They openly say the people who identify as gay 'should' (their word) marry heterosexual (presumably unassuming, unknowing) females, and then everything will be just hunky dory. The deception involved in this is just mind-boggling, to say nothing of the voyeur motives they obviously have of minding everyone else's bedroom business. The entire GOP just gives me the creeps, big-time. Why they can't just keep their mouths shut and mind their own business reveals a heckuva lot more than they realize it does. Just check any psychology book, and you'll know what I mean.
Michelle and Marcus Bachmann Fire up the indignation mobile! Trot out your success stories...
ReplyDeleteI imagine there will be a backlash against me, but I guess I'm used to it over here.
ReplyDeleteI think conversion therapy is a bad idea, harmful, hurtful and probably agree with most of the bad things said about it. However, I would not like it banned.
1) If they can ban conversion therapy, they can ban a lot of other stuff, including religion, and anti-religion. I really don't think we want the government deciding what we can and can't say to consenting adults, and can and can't believe.
2) banning it will drive it underground. Letting it be in the sunlight will allow it to be seen, and heard, and hopefully mocked and ridiculed. I imagine that will be a lot more effective than sending it underground.
Lucy
You realize the President just poked a big hole into one of their many big-time grifting machines (gay conversion therapy, including well-paid talk show gigs, book tours involving same subject, the ability to fund-raise – as a charity – using said positions, etc.). As always with the GOP, the 'moral position' is merely the pretense: the real position – about anything – is the money, power, and control over other people.
Deleteaddendum - I don't have a problem with banning it for minors, as the administration is suggesting. We restrict things to protect minors that we don't protect adults from all the time. Lucy
ReplyDeleteWell, yeah, I thought that was the point: protecting minors. If adults want to submit themselves to that kind of stupidity, more power to 'em.
DeleteDon't these wacko's like Marcus Bachmann get some kind of tax relief or funding for this stuff? Liberals need to cry out more about how WE don't like our tax dollars being spent on this "quackery."
ReplyDelete