Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin voted Thursday to strike a recently implemented rule protecting LGBTQ youth from so-called LGBTQ “conversion therapy.” The widely debunked practice attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
After around four hours of testimony, the Republican-led Joint Committee on Administrative Rules voted 6-4 along party lines to repeal the ban, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.
“Once again, Republican legislators have demonstrated that they will put politics over people and allow young people in Wisconsin to be hurt by those who should be helping them thrive,” the Wisconsin Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
The ban, which barred mental health professionals from attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, was initially passed in 2020 by a state board overseeing licensing for marriage and family therapists. In 2021, GOP lawmakers blocked the rule until the end of the 2022 legislative session. The rule went back into effect last month.
Instead of using their legislative power to stop “a dangerous and deeply harmful practice,” some legislators have chosen to “interfere with the recommendations of medical and scientific professionals,” the statement said, adding its negative impacts are “well documented.”
In the U.S., efforts to “convert” LGBTQ people are opposed by prominent professional medical associations including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The United Nations Human Rights Office has advocated for a global ban on the practice, calling it “an egregious violation of rights to bodily autonomy, health, and free expression of one’s sexual orientation and gender identity.”
A peer-reviewed journal study published in the American Journal of Public Health in July 2020 found LGBTQ youth who underwent conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report having attempted suicide, and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the prior year.
“The GOP’s decision to un-ban conversion therapy in WI will have dangerous effects for years to come,” Democratic state Rep. Greta Neubauer wrote on Twitter Thursday afternoon. “LGBTQ+ kids deserve the opportunity to grow up to be who they are without shame — it truly astounds me that the GOP would want to allow this cruel practice.”
Neubauer, the assembly minority leader, added that, while the move is “heartbreaking,” it won’t “break our resolve to do better for the LGBTQ+ community in Wisconsin.”
Fair Wisconsin, a nonprofit that works to protect the rights of the state’s LGBTQ community, echoed the sentiment. “This is a major setback for our state, but we’re not giving up,” the group tweeted.
According to the think tank Movement Advancement Project, 20 states and Washington D.C., as well as several counties and cities, have laws in place to protect LGBTQ youth from the practice — which means 28% of LGBTQ individuals in the U.S. live in states with no laws or policies banning conversion therapy for minors.
_____
