Revival of Conversion Therapy: Incremental Back Lash Against LGBTQIA2S+ People

Just what we don’t need: The revival of Conversion Therapy, under the title of “free speech.” Municipalities around the United States are being targeted by Mat Staver and the Liberty Council founder and chair, who wants to fight against those cities and towns that have banned conversion therapy. The latest town or city that reversed its ban on conversion therapy was Waterloo, Iowa. The reason? The cost of keeping the ban in place. They banned conversion therapy in May, 2023. They will bring it back Aug. 1, 2023.

To refresh memories: Conversion therapy is the attempt to use weaponized passages from the Bible to be sure those LGBTQIA2S+ people who are coming out of their respective closets, or those parents who “fear” their child or children may be LGBTQIA2S+, go through a period of indoctrination and brain washing. Though not based on any science per se, but only “faith,” at the end of the day, this harmful practice is meant to keep those who are in the closet, or may have one foot out of their LGBTQIA2S+ closet, back into the closet, and assume the life of a happy go lucky cisgender whatever.

What Mat Staver and others are trying to do is curb the rights of LGBTQIA2S+ people not only in Iowa, but around the nation. Their aim is to have the Supreme Court of the US even back-track with same sex marriage, and force LGBTQIA2S+ people back into the closet, back to the margins of society as outcast people, using Scripture and Jesus and God and the Spirit as advocates for marginalization.

If one thing is true of conversion therapy, it is this: Conversion therapy is bad for your mental health, and is based upon a very skewed translation of Scripture, to say the least. Even President Biden understands its harm, and is trying to get Congress to pass a bill to ban conversion therapy in the US. Sadly, many states and municipalities allow conversion therapy. 

For more on this issues, go to this article: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2023/08/26/liberty-counsels-lawsuit-threat-prompts-waterloo-to-repeal-gay-conversion-therapy-ban/70689840007/

Those forces in this country, who have wed their political ideology and use Scripture to support it, rather than the other way around, are bigots who want to pull the country back to the 1950s. They must be stopped in every city, town, village, state, and this country. This is a matter of justice and love.

Conversion therapy is not of Jesus, let alone of modern psychological practices. The psychological community has debunked the practice. It is heretical and it is psychologically dangerous, especially to those of us who identify as LGBTQIA2S+.

And if you need a reminder of the dangers of conversion therapy, just read Boy Erased by Garrard Conley, or see the film. Watch it and weep.

We are all created in the image of God, non-LGBTQIA2S+ people, and LGBTQIA2S+ people. 

Sigh. 

Forward together, not one step back.



 

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