Taking The Cure

Or more correctly, being forced to take the cure.

I believe that New Jersey and California are the only states to ban exgay therapy for minors, while a number of states have introduced bill to that affect; Virginia, Washington, Maryland, New York, Minnesota and Illinois. But in Illinois the Republican House shot it down.

Illinois House Rejects Bill Banning Help for Homosexual Youth
Christian News
By: Heather Clark
April 14, 2014

SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois House of Representatives has rejected a bill would have banned ‘sexual orientation change efforts’ for homosexual youth.

HB 5569 was sponsored by Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), a lesbian lawmaker who also pushed for the legalization of same-sex “marriage” in the state last year. Cassidy’s bill, known as the Youth Mental Health Protection Act, asserts that there is nothing wrong with desiring to have sex with the same gender and bars mental health professionals from providing reparative or conversion therapy to youth under 18.

Every professional health association has said that conversion therapy does more harm than good. It increases suicides in LGBT youth. The APA has said that it is unethical to force a child to take conversion therapy.

The Republicans claimed that,

But Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) opposed the bill, stating that legislators have no business regulating mental health practices.

“This is stuff that we should not be legislating on at all. We have no purview in this department. We have no expertise in this department,” she stated. “It’s absolutely something that should not ever be legislated on. Let people decide for themselves what they need to have for themselves.”

Which is utter nonsense. The state licenses mental health practitioners and regulates what they can and cannot do already.

The Republicans have also killed the bill to ban reparative therapy for minors.