Beating The Trans Out Of You

Connecticut is one of the few states that ban conversion therapy and some of those states are under attack by the religious right.

'Don't hurt your children': A history-making trans man warns against conversion therapy
In Puerto Rico, Justin Santiago made history over his birth certificate. Now he hopes his painful experience decades ago helps ban a practice, which he described as "torture."NBC News
By Angélica Serrano-Román
May 14, 2021

Justin Santiago, 66, the first trans man in Puerto Rico to change his name and gender on his birth certificate, remembers the long-ago incident that led to years of pain he hopes other teens don’t have to endure.

During biology class in the mountain town of Barranquitas, Santiago would sit at his desk, take a wooden pencil, grab a sheet of paper and write love letters to his teacher.

She had a voluptuous body, Santiago recalled, and wore her curly blonde hair tied back. He wrote the letters hoping that one day she would reciprocate his feelings. Every time Santiago wrote a love letter he would leave it in the teacher's mailbox and hope for the best.
[…]
“But I’m a man,” said Santiago, then 15 and a trans youth.

That statement by him lead to years of torture…

The incident led to years of conversion therapy — an unscientific practice that seeks to change people’s sexual orientation and gender identity through psychological techniques, causing guilt and shame.

“They broke me and turned me into a sick person,” Santiago said. The treatment involved prescribing him psychiatric drugs that led to other dependencies, he said, with no one ever held accountable.

Here in Connecticut we passed a law banning conversion therapy in 2019 unanimously in both chambers (I wrote about it here and here.), but down in Puerto Rico they…

On May 6, a Puerto Rico Senate committee killed Senate Bill 184, which would have banned conversion therapies in Puerto Rico. The failure to advance the bill was a blow to LGBTQ advocates like Santiago, who had told his story before the Committee on Community Initiatives, Mental Health and Addiction.

I guess down in Puerto Rico Senate the conservatives think that it is okay to beat the gay out of children.

Conservatives like Sen. Joanne Rodríguez-Veve and Rep. Lissie Burgos-Muñiz, of Proyecto Dignidad (The Dignity Party), a Christian-led party founded in 2019, opposed the bill against conversion therapies. Rodríguez-Veve has argued that “parents have a right to raise their children according to their convictions.”
[…]
Since the bill was introduced, conservative and religious public officials have argued that conversion therapies do not exist on the island. Vázquez-Rivera, the psychologist, disagrees. Through his practice, he says he’s seen conversion therapy lead to anxiety, depression, drug abuse, maladaptive behaviors and suicide attempts.

We had the same thing, here in Connecticut some conservatives said that there were no places in Connecticut that practiced conversion therapy, when it was pointed out to them that two practices did they said “Gee we didn’t know that.”

But amazingly the bill passed and not a single Republican voted against the bill, we did have to put a religious exemption that only exempts religious officials, however, if they are also a licensed therapist they could lose their license. The law would have never passed the Supreme Court without that clause because of the First Amendment.

All the medical and psychiatric associations ban the practice by their members.

The conservatives want the right to beat the “gay” out of their children and do long lasting harm to their children.

“Sin is not homosexuality,” Pedro Julio Serrano, a well-known LGBTQ+ activist, said at the public hearings. “Sin is homophobia.”