Medical Experiments On Inmates

Trump & his cronies wasted no time at all launching another attack on the LGBTQ+ community...

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is running a conversion therapy program. We must not let it stand

Opinion: The Trump administration is imposing unnecessary cruelty on incarcerated transgender people who have nowhere to go, writes NCLR legal director Shannon Minter.

The Advocate

Shannon Minter

Mar 19, 2026

On February 19, 2026, the Federal Bureau of Prisons issued a new policy on the “Management of Inmates with Gender Dysphoria.” The title sounds clinical. The reality is brutal: the federal government has now officially placed itself in the business of punishing transgender people for being who they are, by withdrawing their medical care, confiscating their personal belongings, and subjecting them to forced psychological treatment. It is, in every meaningful sense, a blueprint for a government-run conversion therapy program, one targeting thousands of incarcerated people who have nowhere to turn.

This is becoming increasingly similar to what the Nazis did to the Jews. Conversion therapy is already banned in many states because of the profound harm it inflicts on patients!

NCLR condemns this policy in the strongest possible terms. For now, a federal court order is blocking its enforcement, and we are committed to ensuring it stays that way. But the policy itself is a declaration of intent, and we are calling on everyone, not just those who are transgender, not just those who have loved ones in prison, to recognize what it represents and to oppose it.

Part of the AMA  statement reads:

LGBTQ so-called “conversion therapy”

So-called “conversion therapy” refers to any form of interventions which attempt to change an individual’s sexual orientation, sexual behaviors or gender identity. Underlying these ‘therapies’ is the assumption that homosexuality and gender nonconformity are mental disorders and that sexual orientation and gender identity can be changed. This assumption is not based on medical or scientific evidence. Professional consensus rejects pathologizing homosexuality and gender nonconformity and evidence does not support the efficacy of changing sexual orientation.

“Conversion therapy” often includes unethical techniques including electric shock, deprivation of food and liquid, chemically induced nausea and masturbation reconditioning. These practices may increase suicidal behaviors and cause significant psychological distress, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, internalized homophobia, self-blame, intrusive imagery and sexual dysfunction.

The APA statement on the Supreme Court case reads in part...

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is deeply concerned that the Supreme Court’s decision in Chiles v. Salazar will potentially harm many LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly minors, who will no longer be protected by state laws against conversion therapy.

Being LGBTQ+ is not a mental illness or disorder. Conversion therapy — efforts to change sexual orientation and gender identity — is not a legitimate therapeutic treatment. Leading health care entities, the APA among them, have concluded that these are potentially harmful, discredited practices and are not supported by scientific evidence.

Question: Do you know who else performed medical experiments on prisoners?

Consider Holmesburg Prison, where incarcerated people, many of them Black were used in pharmaceutical and chemical experiments from the 1950s through the 1970s. Those tests included exposure to dioxin, experimental drugs, radiation, and chemical agents.

And during World War II, a number of German physicians conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.

Trump has officially stooped to that level in his pogrom to wipe us out!

Scr*wed Again!

I am sick and tired of hearing “religious freedom” used as a justification for harm—especially when many of the states that have banned conversion therapy, including Connecticut, have done so to protect people’s health and well-being.

Supreme Court says state bans on ‘conversion therapy’ violate counselors’ free speech rights

The Los Angles Times

By David G. Savage

March 31, 2026

• The ruling in a Colorado case is likely to invalidate similar bans in California and 23 other states.
• It is the third significant defeat at the Supreme Court for LGBTQ-rights advocates in the past year.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that state laws forbidding “conversion therapy” for minors violate the free-speech rights of licensed counselors.

The court said Colorado’s law violates the 1st Amendment, and the ruling is likely to invalidate similar laws in California and 23 other states.

In an 8-1 decision, the justices said Colorado’s ban on “talk therapy” may prevent Christian counselors from helping teens work through their feelings about sexual attractions or their gender identity.

[...]

“Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same. But the 1st Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country,” Gorsuch wrote. “... However well-intentioned, any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented alone in a 35-page opinion.

Do you know what PubMed is? It is the medical databased of peer-reviewed medical studies.

Understanding harms associated with gender identity conversion efforts among transgender and nonbinary individuals: The role of preexisting mental well-being

Int J Transgend Health

2024 Apr 4

Tural Mammadli, Jarrod Call, Darren L Whitfield, Brendon T Holloway, N Eugene Walls

Abstract

Background: Affirmation of gender identity is critical for the mental health and overall well-being of transgender and nonbinary (TNB) persons. Gender identity conversion efforts (GICE), an outlawed practice for licensed professionals in numerous U.S. jurisdictions, have been associated with negative mental health and substance use outcomes. Limited previous literature examining GICE exposure has been criticized for failing to distinguish mental well-being for TNB persons before or after GICE. Our study builds on current literature by examining differences in TNB persons' psychosocial risk indicators based on their GICE exposure, accounting for pre-GICE mental well-being. Methods: We conducted a secondary data analysis using the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (N = 25,810), the largest available national survey aimed at understanding TNB persons' experiences. Using logistic regression models, we examined how GICE exposure (disaggregated by temporal precedence of initial suicide attempts) is related to health (psychological distress, extra-medical prescription use, healthcare avoidance), socio-structural (public restroom avoidance, housing instability), and interpersonal outcomes (sexual assault, emotional and physical intimate partner violence (IPV)). Results and conclusions: Initiating a suicide attempt post-GICE or in the absence of GICE were the only consistently significant predictors of poor outcomes across all domains compared to participants who never experienced GICE or attempted suicide. Findings suggest, however, that a combination of GICE with a history of suicide attempts (pre- or post-GICE) was indicative of the highest risk across outcomes, highlighting the particularly hazardous nature of combining poor mental well-being and GICE exposures. Our study adds much-needed complexity to our understanding of how GICE exposure's role in the well-being of TNB persons may differ related to their pre-GICE mental health. Our findings add further credence to previous studies identifying harms associated with GICE exposure, regardless of pre-GICE mental well-being.

These studies consistently show that conversion therapy leads to higher psychological distress, increased substance use, greater healthcare avoidance, and a higher risk of violence and instability (such as housing insecurity).

The Supreme Court has disregarded our pain and suffering. What about our rights?

In the PubMed study “Lifetime Exposure to Conversion Therapy and Psychosocial Health Among Midlife and Older Adult Men Who Have Sex With Men,” the findings are clear: the effects last a lifetime. The study looked specifically at midlife and older adults and found links to depression, PTSD symptoms, internalized stigma, and overall poorer psychosocial health.

Yet the courts are putting “religious freedom” over our health.

The Supreme Court disregarded our pain and suffering! What about our rights? In the PubMed article "Lifetime Exposure to Conversion Therapy and Psychosocial Health Among Midlife and Older Adult Men Who Have Sex With Men" that effects last a lifetime and results in; tudy looked specifically at midlife and older adults and found links to: depression, PTSD symptoms, internalized stigma, and overall poorer psychosocial health!

Yet the courts are putting “religious freedom” over our health.

This is not "Speech" it medical care! 

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This was delayed because of the paperwork I have to do, my identity was stolen yesterday... tons and tons of paperwork. I was at the police station filing a report.

We Banned It Here But It Is Making A Comeback!

It is the new darling of Trump & Company... the Republicans are making it a comeback, they don't care the harm it does, it just fits right in with their ideology. And no matter what they call it, a rose is a rose by any name. And this one? It’s just as thorny.”

This is from last year but it still covers conversion therapy push by the Republicans.

First They Tried to “Cure” Gayness. Now They’re Fixated on “Healing” Trans People.

Inside the movement to resurrect conversion therapy.

The Rolling Stone

By Madison Pauly with Henry Carnell

July+August 2024

The conversion therapists met last November at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip. Behind the closed doors and drawn blinds of a Hampton Inn conference room, a middle-aged woman wearing white stockings and a Virgin Mary blue dress issued a call to arms to the 20-some people in attendance. “In our current culture, in which children are being indoctrinated with transgender belief from the moment they’re out of the womb, if we are confronted with a gender-confused child, you must help,” declared Michelle Cretella, a board member of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity. “We must do something.”

[...]

Not that they’d call what they do “conversion therapy.” That term lacks a precise definition, but it is used colloquially to describe attempts to shift a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In the 1960s, some psychologists tried to make gay men straight by pairing aversive stimuli, like electric shocks or chemically induced nausea, with images of gay porn—techniques that ran the risk of causing serious psychological damage even as they failed to change participants’ sexual orientation, researchers eventually concluded. Today, “conversion therapy” generally takes the form of verbal counseling. Participants are typically conservative Christians who engage voluntarily—motivated by internalized stigma, family pressure, and the belief that their feelings are incompatible with their faith. Others are children, brought into therapy by their parents.

They didn't use the words Conversion Therapy because they know they can't win, so they obfuscate their real agenda and use words like "Cure," "Reparative therapy," "Faith-based counseling" and no matter what they call it, it is still brain washing.

AP News wrote...

Trump’s health agency urges therapy for transgender youth, not broader gender-affirming health care

By  GEOFF MULVIHILL, CARLA K. JOHNSON and AMANDA SEITZ

May 1, 2025

President Donald Trump’s administration released a lengthy review of transgender health care on Thursday that advocates for a greater reliance on behavioral therapy rather than broad gender-affirming medical care for youths with gender dysphoria.

The 409-page Health and Human Services report questions standards for the treatment of transgender youth issued by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and is likely to be used to bolster the government’s abrupt shift in how to care for a subset of the population that has become a political lightning rod.

Major medical groups and those who treat transgender young people sharply criticized the new report as inaccurate.

This “best practices” report is in response to an executive order Trump issued days into his second term that says the federal government must not support gender transitions for anyone under age 19.

So what does it call for? Well you can probably guess since this post is about conversion therapy.

The report accuses transgender care specialists of disregarding psychotherapy that might challenge preconceptions, partly because of a “mischaracterization of such approaches as ‘conversion therapy,’” a discredited practice that seeks to change patients’ sexual orientation or gender identification. About half the states have banned conversion therapy for minors.

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry has said evidence shows conversion therapies inflict harm on young people, including elevated rates of suicidal thoughts.

Peterson Toscano did a play about his experiences his in conversion therapy, in it he talks about his "Cures" after many tries one day it dawned on him... doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity! He threw his hands up and said "I'm gay!" He and his husband live now in Pennsylvania. He has also done a play about us, called Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender in the Bible

Here in Connecticut we have a law Public Act No. 17-5 AN ACT CONCERNING THE PROTECTION OF YOUTH FROM CONVERSION THERAPY in it, it says...

(1) "Conversion therapy" means any practice or treatment administered to a person under eighteen years of age that seeks to change the person's sexual orientation or gender identity, including, but not limited to, any effort to change gender expression or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward persons of the same gender. "Conversion therapy" does not include counseling intended to (A) assist a person undergoing gender transition, (B) provide acceptance, support and understanding to the person, or (C) facilitate the person's coping, social support or identity exploration and development, including, but not limited to, any therapeutic intervention that is neutral with regard to sexual orientation and seeks to prevent or address unlawful conduct or unsafe sexual practices, provided such counseling does not seek to change the person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

[...]

Sec. 2. (NEW) (Effective from passage) (a) No health care provider shall engage in conversion therapy.

That is quite straight forward, there are exceptions for priest, or other religious leaders.

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Hopefully I'm on my way home for some doctor's appointments, just routine visits for a 70+ senior.

The Twisted News

The Republicans are quietly twisting the meaning of conversion therapy in to something nasty. They are saying that Conversion Therapy bans include our healthcare! But they want insurance to pay for detransition costs.

Jennifer Lawrence roasts Mike Pence over LGBTQ conversion therapy

Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence roasted Mike Pence at the GLAAD Media Awards, joking that the former US vice president was secretly gay and had gone through conversion therapy. 

Pink News

By Emily Chudy

May 14, 2024

During the LGBTQ+ organisation’s 35th annual media awards on Saturday (11 May), which was disrupted by a pro-Palestine protest, Lawrence took to the stage to tear into Pence’s alleged support for conversion therapy. 

Joking that she had once fallen in love with a gay man and tried to “convert” him, before realising that “conversion therapy doesn’t work”, Lawrence went on to target Pence, quipping that he must be secretly gay. 

“Did you hear me, Mike Pence?” Lawrence said. “I said: ‘Conversion therapy is not real’, even though you think it worked on you.”

While Pence has denied supporting the practice – which purports to change a person’s sexuality or gender identity – opponents, highlighting his well-publicised broadly anti-LGBTQ+ views, have claimed the former presidential candidate backs the idea.

There have been a couple of bills to say the trans healthcare is really “Conversion Therapy.” The Florida Phoenix writes,

Florida House Republicans approved a proposal Monday that would require health insurance companies providing gender-affirming care for transgender people to also cover therapies to affirm a person’s sex assigned at birth — otherwise known as conversion therapy.

The sponsor of HB 1639, GOP Rep. Douglas Michael Bankson representing parts of Orange and Seminole counties, said he doesn’t intend to make anyone choose to reverse transition procedures but that he wants to make that choice more accessible.

The legislation mainly focuses on mandating coverage of detransition treatments to reverse the process of gender-affirming care such as hormone replacement therapy. However, Bankson also plans to swap gender for sex assigned at birth in state driver’s licenses and IDs.

While down in Arizona the Arizona Mirror writes about that state’s effort,

“This is a pretty normal tactic from any anti-LGBTQ elected official to find maybe the couple of folks who have had bad experiences and maybe decided to detransition — and again, that’s up to them — and use it as an example for every single transgender person in the country,” Sharpe said. “It becomes this sort of scare tactic and feeds into this disinformation machine that anti-equality elected officials have been feeding into for the past several years.”

Senator Kelda Helen Roys of Wisconsin wrote on her state webpage,

Today, Republicans voted to suspend a rule preventing state-licensed counselors and therapists from subjecting youth to so-called “conversion therapy,” a discredited and abusive practice that purports to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Sen. Kelda Roys: “‘Conversion therapy’ is child abuse and has no place in Wisconsin. This discriminatory, harmful practice should be banned to protect every child. As Republican legislative leaders have called for good faith efforts to work with Gov. Evers and Democrats, it’s disappointing that one of their first official actions is to use vulnerable children as pawns in their right-wing culture war.

“Actions like this send a clear message to LGBTQ children and families that they aren’t welcome in Wisconsin. It contributes to the outflow of young professionals and working families leaving the state to live in more inclusive places. Worst of all, conversion therapy causes concrete harm to vulnerable young people – including increased risk of depression, drug use, homelessness, and suicide.”

Rep. Sue Conley: “Today’s vote by Republicans is deeply disappointing and disturbing. ‘Conversion therapy’ has no basis in science and is adamantly opposed by professionals in the counseling field. This practice has been proven to put youth at risk of psychological harm. Allowing conversion therapy in Wisconsin reverses the decision made by professional social workers and experts to ban the practice in their profession. Politicians have no business interfering in the work of mental health experts, especially when it involves our children.”

And it is not just the states, the House Republicans added this amendment according to Roll Call.

House Republicans who waged fierce political battles over Obamacare and abortion after that have found a new focus as the lead-up to the 2024 elections: gender-affirming care for transgender Americans.

They’ve added riders on seven of the 12 House fiscal 2024 appropriations bills that would put restrictions on gender-affirming care, which can be anything from hormone therapy to surgical care to insurance coverage of either.

The fight has extended beyond spending bills into policy measures as well: They’ve held up traditionally bipartisan programs to pay for pediatrician training over hospitals’ decisions to provide such care. Another bill would create a global gag rule for gender-affirming care similar to the Mexico City policy for abortion care.

That is the Republican version of Doublespeak which Wikipedia defines as…

Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs and "servicing the target" for bombing), in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth.

Doublespeak is most closely associated with political language.

That sure does sound like what the Republicans are doing! And you can bet your bottom dollar that if Trump wins and the Republicans gain control of Congress you will see legislation on a national level as those laws that the Republican states have passed!

So the next time you hear Republicans talking about a ban on Conversion Therapy beware; what they are really talking about is a ban of trans healthcare!

They want to wipe us off the face of this earth!

Vote Blue and save lives! 

NEWS FLASH… Supreme Court

Connecticut is one of a number of states that ban conversion therapy on minors, today the Supreme Court just declined to overturn a Washington state law that ban conversion therapy.

High Court, in declining to weigh conversion therapy ban, allows law to stand
NPR
By Nina Totenberg
December 11, 2023

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday declined to hear a case challenging Washington state's ban on conversion therapy of minors. In doing so, the court left standing a lower court decision that upheld the state's ban on a therapy that the American Medical Association says "is not based on medical and scientific evidence."

The Washington passed law, enacted in 2018, allows the state to revoke the licenses of therapists who try to change a minor's sexual orientation. Brian Tingley, a family counselor and advocate for conversion therapy, challenged the law in court, represented by the anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom. He claimed that the law violates his First Amendment right to free speech.

Two lower courts upheld the law.

The court's decision not to hear the case Monday included no reasons, as is standard when it denies a case. But, Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas dissented from the order, and would have heard the case.

The Advocate reported…

In a decisive move affirming the rights and protections of LGBTQ+ youth, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a First Amendment challenge to a Washington State law banning conversion therapy. This ruling upholds measures in Washington and more than 20 other states against a practice aimed at changing a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

his is a Biggie!

Why you ask?

Brian Tingley, a family counselor who challenged the law, was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian law firm that opposes the rights of LGBTQ+ people. He argued that the law infringed upon his free speech and religious rights. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against Tingley, stating that the government can regulate the conduct of medical professionals, especially when it concerns the safety of minors.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is the law firm that brought the case here in Connecticut about the trans athletes, which so far the case went against them. That’s two cases that they lost.

NBC News reported what the dissenters had to say,

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh all said they would have heard the appeal.

Thomas wrote that there is "a fierce public debate over how best to help minors with gender dysphoria" and that the state had "silenced one side of this debate."

In a separate brief opinion, Alito said that the case "presents a question of national importance" that clearly implicates free speech issues.

NPR also added,

In his dissent, Thomas wrote, "Although the Court declines to take this particular case, I have no doubt that the issue it presents will come before the Court again. When it does, the Court should do what it should have done here," take the case "to consider what the First Amendment requires."

Yes… you will see other cases like this wind their was to the Supreme Court, Alliance Defending Freedom will analyze the case and come back again with a tweaked new case.
 

The Harm Lasts A Lifetime!

We fought long and hard to pass the legislation but we finally passed it and now it is being questioned by the a Christian Supreme Court.

We proved the damage it does, we proved that it doesn’t work, we proved that being LGBTQ+ is not a choice but the Christian right is trying to bring back Conversion Therapy.

Religion vs. LGBTQ+ rights: Supreme Court weighs 'conversion therapy' bans for minors
The issue of banning 'therapy' to make a gay or lesbian person straight has reemerged as the Supreme Court has become more conservative and receptive to appeals dealing with religious freedom.
USA Today
By John Fritze
October 9, 2023

The Supreme Court is being asked to weigh a ban on “conversion therapy” − the practice of trying to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity − in an appeal that tests the court's appetite for engaging this term in the legal battle between religion and LGBTQ+ rights.

Long discredited and already banned for minors in about half of U.S. states, the practice of using ''treatment'' to make a gay or lesbian person straight has reemerged as the Supreme Court has become more conservative and receptive to appeals dealing with religious freedom. Opponents say the practice can involve electrical shocks and nausea-inducing drugs as well as psychoanalysis and counseling.

Brian Tingley, a licensed family counselor in Washington state, is challenging the state's ban on the practice for people under 18, claiming it violates his free speech and religious rights. The law, he told the Supreme Court this year, "forbids him from speaking, treating his professional license as a license for government censorship."

They want to be able to torture people, because that is what it is… human torture.

The American Psychological Association writes,

Since 1998, the American Psychiatric Association has opposed any psychiatric treatment, such as "reparative" or conversion therapy, which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or that a patient should change his/her homosexual orientation1. This position statement updates and replaces previous position statements about conversion therapy regarding sexual orientation, furthermore it also comments on conversion therapy with gender diverse patients in an attempt to prevent harm to any lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer person.

In the past, diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity (e.g. homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender identities) were seen as a mental illness. This changed in 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association stated that homosexuality per se is not a mental disorder. While Gender Dysphoria remains a part of the DSM-5, there is growing social acceptance that human sexuality and gender identity can present in a variety of ways as part of the human condition.

The validity, efficacy, and ethics of clinical attempts to change an individual's sexual orientation have been challenged. The literature also consists of anecdotal reports of people who claim that attempts to change were harmful to them, and others who claimed to have changed and then later recanted those claims. Along a similar vein, gender diverse patients have been shown to benefit from gender-affirming therapies, and given the documented harm of “reparative” or conversion therapies regarding sexual orientation, it would likely be seen as unethical to research reparative therapy outcomes with gender diverse populations.

While many might identify as questioning, queer, or a variety of other identities, “reparative” or conversion therapy is based on the a priori assumption that diverse sexual orientations and gender identities are mentally ill and should change.

And now in the name of the First Amendment and god they want to bring back the torture. The USA Today article goes on to say,

Opponents of the practice say states have banned it for minors because it increases the risk of depression and suicide for LGBTQ+ young people. Washington's law doesn't apply to churches or religious groups, only to therapists who are licensed – and regulated – by the state.

"This is a dangerous practice," said Laurel Stine, chief policy officer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. "The Supreme Court has not taken up any of these challenges before, and we are confident that, if they do, we will win."

The same for Connecticut, the religious voodoo witch doctors can practice it until their heart contents so now the religious right are trying to get the ban banned based on the First Amendment.

"Bottom line: The government cannot censor a counselor’s speech," Bursch said. "Washington's counseling censorship law violates freedom of speech and harms counselors and their clients."

The bottom line is the ban is because it does harm!

Critics say they believe the law − and the science − is on their side when it comes to "conversion therapy" bans. The American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association for Social Workers and other leading medical groups have all repudiated the practice.

Casey Pick, director of law and policy for The Trevor Project, which focuses on suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ young people, said every court that has considered a statewide ban has upheld it.

"There is no reason the (Supreme) Court should not do the same here," she said, "and ensure that LGBTQ young people across the country continue to be protected from unprofessional, unscientific and deeply harmful practices."

Wishful thinking!

That was the courts of old, the new Trump Supreme Court has put “religious freedom” before the Constitution. This court believes its mission if from god! A vengeful god who is anti-LGBTQ+.

It's my life.

What gives them the right to tell us what we can say?

What gives them the right to tell us what we can read?

What gives them the right to tell us who we can associate with?

This is like that old water torture where the drip water on your face… drip… drip…

The laws they are passing against us keep on piling up, one after another in an endless stream of laws. Their latest assault on us is they want to repel the bans on conversion therapy for minors!

It's my life, it's now or never*

I ain't gonna live forever

I just want to live while I'm alive

In Ohio they are priming the pump with their lies.

Ohio Trans Care Ban Sponsor Caught on Video Backing Conversion Therapy

State Rep. Gary Click also connected LGBTQ+ identity to Nazi ideology.

The Advocate

By Trudy Ring

May 30 2023

Ohio Rep. Gary Click, sponsor of a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors in the state, says he’s never promoted or practiced conversion therapy — but he’s been caught on video endorsing the discredited and harmful practice, which his bill likewise endorses.

Click, a Republican, is also associated with numerous religious right groups and leaders, including Tony Perkins, president of the notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ Family Research Council, the Ohio Capital Journalreports.

His pending legislation, House Bill 68, would ban hormone treatment, puberty blockers, and gender-affirming surgery for the purpose of gender transition for anyone under 18. Genital surgery is almost never performed on minors anyway. The penalty for violation would be discipline by the relevant professional licensing board, and violators would be subject to civil suits as well.

It is like a contest which state can come up with the most draconian anti-LGBTQ laws.

Why do they want to ban us and make us criminals? What have we ever done to them? We just want to live our lives!

“Collectively, these provisions amount to forced conversion therapy for transgender youth,” journalist Erin Reed writes in her Substack newsletter. “It pulls them from their medical care, it bans well-supported psychological care by imposing burdensome reporting requirements and mandating assessments that do not exist, it bars aiding and abetting gender transition for trans youth, and it explicitly legalizes conversion therapy for this population.”

You do know what they do during conversion therapy? It is know avoidance therapy where they use negative reinforcement, sometimes it is electro shock therapy where they zap you brain. According to GLAAD,

The harms of conversion therapy

San Francisco State University found that "compared with LGBTQ young people who were not rejected or were only a little rejected by their parents and caregivers because of their gay or transgender identity, highly rejected LGBTQ young people were:

8.4x more likely to report having attempted suicide

5.9x more likely report high levels of depression

3.4x more likely to use illegal drugs

3.4x more likely to be at high risk of HIV and STDs

Many think that conversion therapy is nothing more than torture.

“You’re not born that way,” he says. “God’s not going to curse you in the wrong body. He’s not going to curse you with desires that cannot be adequately and appropriately and biologically fulfilled correctly.”

He criticizes California legislation banning conversion therapy, which he inaccurately says applies to churches — in reality, the law applies only to state-licensed mental health professionals. He also contends the state is prohibiting the sale of books that offer advice on changing one’s sexual orientation or gender identity — again, not true.

This guy says he is Christian doesn’t the Bible say about “Not bearing false witness?” They lie about the ages protected by the law, they lie abut clergy not being exempt. they lie, and lie.

During the sermon, he also connects LGBTQ+ identity to Nazi ideology. He shows a picture of himself at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., posing in from of a wall bearing Martin Niemoller’s famed poem “First They Came,” listing various groups singled out for persecution and extermination in Nazi Germany. He likens this to what he considers the assault on the family, saying, “When the family crumbles, society crumbles. If the church is silent, then the church will be held responsible. We can’t afford to be silent.” Never mind that the Nazis sent LGBTQ+ people, especially gay men, to concentration camps and that some churches were silent about that as well as the mass murder of Jews and other populations.

So the oppressor is saying that he is being oppressed because he is being blocked from oppressing others! Because he is being stopped from torturing us.

All we want to do is live our lives in peace, to be who nature made us, to love who we want to love. But these people want to butt into our lives.

Better stand tall when they're calling you out

Don't bend, don't break, baby, don't back down

What gives them the right?

~~~

* It’s My Life – Bon Jovi

Good News

I figured that you needed some good news…

Minnesota Senate Passes Bill To Ban 'Conversion Therapy' For LGBTQ+ People

The state is a step closer to joining 20 others that have clamped down on the discredited practice.

Huff Post

By Shruti Rajkumar

April 22, 2023

The Minnesota Senate passed a bill Friday that would ban so-called conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ youth and certain adults.

The legislation, SF23, targets the discredited practice of seeking to change people’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. If signed into law, mental health practitioners and professionals would be prohibited from engaging in conversion therapy with anyone under the age of 18 or any “vulnerable adult,” a label that can include those receiving treatment for physical, mental or emotional conditions.

The Senate voted 36-27 to advance SF23, with two Republicans joining the chamber’s slim Democratic majority. Its passage followed years of failed attempts to get the bill through the legislative body. The proposal had previously passed in the state’s House of Representatives on multiple occasions.

SF23 now awaits a signature from Gov. Tim Walz (D), which would put Minnesota alongside the 20 other states, as well as the District of Columbia, that have passed laws banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ minors.

The way that the Republican states are going they are almost encouraging people go to Conversion Therapy because they think being LGBTQ+ is a choice therefore people can be tortured to be straight, as in scared straight.

Conversion Therapy Banned In England! However…

We are not included!

Conversion therapy: Ban to go ahead but not cover trans people
The government now says it will ban so-called conversion therapy for gay or bisexual people in England and Wales - but not for transgender people.
By Sophie Gallagher Josh Parry
BC News
April 1, 2022


It comes hours after it had said it would drop plans for the ban entirely.

The announcement on Thursday evening that ministers would explore non-legislative routes to stop the practice was criticised by LGBT groups and MPs.

According to NHS England, conversion therapy tries to change someone's sexual orientation or gender identity.

NHS England and other major psychological bodies in the UK have warned all forms of conversion therapy are "unethical and potentially harmful".

A senior government source has told the BBC the ban will feature in the next Queen's Speech.

The legislation will mean therapy to attempt to change people's sexuality will be outlawed, but those practices carried out to try to change people's gender identity will not.

We were not thrown under the bus by gays and lesbians but by the right-wing conservatives.

But the announcement that the ban will not cover gender identity has been met with criticism from some MPs and charities.

The Rainbow Project, said any ban that did not include transgender people was "not a real ban". Labour MP Nadia Whittome said it was "still not good enough", before adding: "LGB comes with the T, and the Tories are not on our side".

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Jayne Ozanne, a conversion therapy survivor and chair of the #BanConversionTherapy coalition, accused Boris Johnson of throwing LGBT people under a bus, adding it was "utterly ludicrous" that transgender people were not included in the ban.

World wide conservatives are doing everything in their power to force us back into the closet.

A Little Good News

On this Sunday here is a little good news for those of you on TikTok…

TikTok bans misgendering, deadnaming trans people
In updated community guidelines released Tuesday, the social media platform also explicitly barred content that “promotes conversion therapy programs.”
NBC News
By Jo Yurcaba
February 8, 2022


The social media giant TikTok on Tuesday explicitly banned certain types of anti-LGBTQ content and speech on its platform.

In updated community guidelines, the company noted that it is “adding clarity on the types of hateful ideologies prohibited on our platform," stating that it will ban deadnaming, or using a transgender person’s pre-transition name, and misgendering, using incorrect pronouns.

The platform is also prohibiting “content that supports or promotes conversion therapy programs,” referring to a discredited practice that seeks to stop someone from being LGBTQ. 

“Though these ideologies have long been prohibited on TikTok, we’ve heard from creators and civil society organizations that it’s important to be explicit in our Community Guidelines,” Cormac Keenan, the company's head of trust and safety, said Tuesday in a statement. “On top of this, we hope our recent feature enabling people to add their pronouns will encourage respectful and inclusive dialogue on our platform.”

For me I am an old fogey who is only on Facebook, but many younger people are on TikTok and this is good new for them less harassment online. Ms Magazine said this about it.

The decision to ban anti-trans content is of particular note, as an October report from Media Matters showed a deep connection between transphobia and other kinds of far-right extremism—which researchers found was then being reinforced by TikTok’s algorithm. “Exclusive interaction with anti-trans content spurred TikTok to recommend misogynistic content, racist and white supremacist content, anti-vaccine videos, antisemitic content, ableist narratives, conspiracy theories, hate symbols, and videos including general calls to violence,” wrote researchers Olivia Little and Abbie Richards. The recent change from TikTok will no doubt lessen the probability of users falling down what Little and Richards call “far-right rabbit holes.”

LGBTQ advocacy organizations like GLAAD applauded the change to the guidelines. “When anti-transgender actions like misgendering or deadnaming, or the promotion of so-called ‘conversion therapy,’ occur on platforms like TikTok, they create an unsafe environment for LGBTQ people online and too often lead to real world harm,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD. “TikTok’s move to expressly prohibit this harmful content in its Community Guidelines and to adopt recommendations made in GLAAD’s 2021 Social Media Safety Index raises the standard for LGBTQ safety online and sends a message that other platforms which claim to prioritize LGBTQ safety should follow suit with substantive actions like these.”

But the right-wing National Review said…

“Misgendering” is activist-speak for referring to a person by the pronouns associated with his or her birth sex. “Deadnaming” means referring to a person by their birth name. And “conversion therapy” — at least in the context of transgenderism — means a range of tried and tested talk-therapies used to explore root causes of gender dysphoria in the hope of helping the patient become more comfortable with his or her body.

It’s bad enough that there are countless videos on TikTok glamorizing transition and uncritically reciting the dogmas of gender ideology. But removing all counter influence in addition to this will only worsen transgender social and peer contagion. Parents, take note — TikTok is no place for kids.

Notice how they say that "'conversion therapy' — at least in the context of transgenderism — means a range of tried and tested talk-therapies…” if it is so tried and tested how come every medical and psychological association says it is quack therapy?

You may now return to your Super Bowl pre-game shows.

Turning It On Its Head

Here in Connecticut we have a law banning conversion therapy, Public Act 17-5 for minors. The prevents therapist from trying to make children straight, but in Britain the law has a diabolical twist.

We need to talk about conversion therapy before it is barred, say MPs
The Telegraph via Yahoo
By Edward Malnick
January 22, 2022


Boris Johnson is facing mounting calls to halt the fast-tracking of a ban on conversion therapy, as 30 Tory MPs warn against rushing through a new law "without debate".

In a letter to the Prime Minister, a copy of which has been seen by this newspaper, the MPs say they are "deeply concerned" that the proposed ban could also "criminalise legitimate therapies" for children suffering from gender dysphoria - the unease or distress experienced by those who feel at odds with their sex.

[…]

But proposals published last year make clear that the ban would also encapsulate conversion therapy aimed at changing gender identity, which MPs fear will criminalise routine conversations between children and parents, teachers, or clinicians.

Did you get that? If a healthcare provider helps a child to transition they might be breaking the law.

In December, Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary and equalities minister, bowed to pressure to extend the formal consultation on the issue, which was initially restricted to just six weeks and due to close before Christmas. It is now open until February 4 after Mr Johnson raised concerns with aides about the initial time period.

The conservatives are trying to ram through the bill with little or no debate in the bill. What do they want to hide? Why are they stymying debate?