May 27, 2016
SPLC Releases 'Quacks' Report on Gay 'Conversion Therapy'
READ TIME: 2 MIN.
The Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report this week calling on Congress to pass a law banning the practice of gay conversion therapy.
In the report, titled "Quacks: 'Conversion Therapist,' the Anti-LGBT Right, and the Demonization of Homosexuality," the SPLC recommends the following steps.
At a minimum, states and localities should outlaw the provision of conversion therapy to minors. Already, four states and two cities have passed such laws. Many more are considering similar action.
Congress should pass the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act introduced last year by U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) A companion bill was filed in the Senate this April by U.S. Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.). The legislation would classify conversion therapy as a fraudulent practice under the Federal Trade Commission Act, making it illegal to advertise or sell.
Professional associations licensing psychiatrists, psychologists and other counselors should sanction members who engage in it.
Insurers, both private and public, should refuse to reimburse claims made by reparative therapists.
"This is a report about junk science and some of the people who propagate it," reads the opening of the SPLC report. "It is not about silly, perhaps amusing theories about ESP or life on the moon or even purported miracle cures for cancer. The 'science' examined here actively harms people, leading with grim regularity to suicide, depression and an array of self-destructive behaviors. It demeans, defames and defrauds human beings, typically at their most vulnerable moments. And, as if that weren't enough, it regularly lays the blame for the alleged malady of homosexuality at the feet of gay people's parents, despite the fact that they are wholly innocent."
The report gives a detailed timeline of homophobia and 'reparative therapy' and offers a profit of some key organizations in the 'ex-gay' movement that include Courage International, Homosexuals Anonymous and organizers of the 2013 "Ex-Gay Pride Rally" that failed to draw ten participants.
