The Leading Edge

Have you ever seen a President do more for LGBT people? It took him a little time getting up to speed but President Obama I think has done more than any other president, his latest act was,

Obama calls for end to 'gay conversion therapies'
Christian Today
By Ruth Gledhill
10 April 2015

Leelah explained how her parents had forced her to attend "conversion therapy", pulled her out of school and isolated her in an attempt to change her gender identity.

Now President Barack Obama has responded to a White House petition calling for an end to all conversion therapies aimed at reorienting gay, lesbian and transgender youth.

An accompanying post entitled "Official White House Response", quoting President Obama, says: "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. 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."

This is all well and good, but in order for anything to be done Congress has to act and show how I do not see a Republican Congress voting for this in an election year.

The article goes on to say,

"This Administration believes that young people should be valued for who they are, no matter what they look like, where they're from, the gender with which they identify, or who they love," the White House response says.

There are still therapists who think conversion or as it is also known as reparative therapy works, that you can force a child into a gender role. The APA in a resolution say,

Therefore be it further resolved that the American Psychological Association opposes portrayals of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth and adults as mentally ill due to their sexual orientation and supports the dissemination of accurate information about sexual orientation, and mental health, and appropriate interventions in order to counteract bias that is based in ignorance or unfounded beliefs about sexual orientation.

Here in Connecticut the topic of banning conversion/reparative therapy for minors has come up and it is not high up on the legislative priorities because from what I have been told there are no therapists in Connecticut that do conversion/reparative therapy.