WASHINGTON — A new grassroots group, 50 Bills 50 States, launched this week seeking to protect LGBT youth from the practice of conversion therapy. The discredited therapy seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity using what many consider torturous techniques.
Samuel Brinton, a survivor of conversion therapy and one of the group’s founders, said, “Conversion therapy is a scam. It starts with the idea that being lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender or queer is a mental illness. That’s wrong. Our sexualities and gender identities are gifts that should be celebrated. Instead, these snake oil salesmen abuse children, attempting to change who they were born to be. They are born perfect and any therapist that says otherwise shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near kids.”
Young people in conversion therapy are subjected to shame, verbal abuse and even aversion techniques like electric shocks. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that these techniques are both ineffective and cause lasting damage. This has led the major mental health organizations to reject conversion therapy. The practice has already been banned in five states including California, New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, D.C and several cities and the group hopes to increase the number of areas across the country where LGBT youth will be protected.
“In the states and cities where the bans are already in place, we want to revive the conversations so that LGBTQ kids know they are beautiful and loved,” Brinton said. “And in the other 45 states, we are going to work with legislators to introduce bills banning these brutal practices. We know every state won’t pass these bills in 2017 but the unanimity of submitting them will resonate from coast to coast.”
The group raised more than $10,000 in its first week. “The outpouring of support has truly touched me,” said Brinton. “Donations came from pastors. Donations came from porn stars. Donations came from nuclear scientists. Donations came from nurses. It was nothing short of astounding.”
For more information, visit https://50bills50states.org/.
Brinton’s tale of conversion therapy is unlike any other I have heard. It is outlandish, involving ice, electrical current, and easily disprovable lies which the therapist supposedly tells the patient as part of the therapy. (For example, Brinton claimed that his therapist told him that every gay person in the world had died and that Brinton was the only one left.) He won’t name the therapist. And in all these years, no one else has come forward with a comparable tale. TBH, I don’t believe him. If we had an “LGBTQ” press which actually practiced journalism and didn’t just run press releases, maybe these questions could be resolved.
And yet, just a brief search turned up a gay conversion therapy camp at which three young men were tortured to death:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3186820
Here’s an article that talks about gay kids being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and flown to the DR to be abused, physically and sexually:
http://www.newsweek.com/where-american-teens-abused-name-god-258182
Here is yet another that talks about electroshock therapy being used on gay kids:
https://www.google.com/amp/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_582b6cf2e4b01d8a014aea66/amp
None of these are from the “LGBTQ” press. This was ten minutes of searching. Gay kids are being tortured, right now, for being themselves. People have killed and tortured others for being different throughout history; disbelieving Sam’s story because you don’t want it to be true does not make it so.