Are you sure you want to delete this post?
Sam Brinton, New York Times Opinion, Jan 24, 2018: I Was Tortured in Gay Conversion Therapy. And It’s Still Legal in 41 States.
Sam Brinton's parents were Southern Baptist missionaries who believed that conversion therapy could cure abnormal sexual behavior. Brinton writes:
"For over two years, I sat on a couch and endured emotionally painful sessions with a counselor. I was told that my faith community rejected my sexuality; that I was the abomination we had heard about in Sunday school; that I was the only gay person in the world; that it was inevitable I would get H.I.V. and AIDS.
"But it didn’t stop with these hurtful talk-therapy sessions. The therapist ordered me bound to a table to have ice, heat and electricity applied to my body. I was forced to watch clips on a television of gay men holding hands, hugging and having sex. I was supposed to associate those images with the pain I was feeling to once and for all turn into a straight boy. In the end it didn’t work. I would say that it did, just to make the pain go away."
Brinton's experience is not just an isolated case. As he points out, conversion therapy is legal in 41 states, and he is not alone. Some 700,000 adults (including 350,000 adolescents) have been subjected to conversion therapy. Health care professionals will conduct conversion therapy on some 20,000 teens before they reach the age of 18. It's even a bigger business for religious advisors who are expected to administer the therapy to 57,000 teenagers before adulthood.
Trump's religious advocates are a big part of his base of supporters, so don't look for any changes in the laws of these states. A federal law would not stand a chance of being passed with this Congress.
I just share this as another example of how our society has failed to move on in the 21st century. What next, taking our country back to the days of witchcraft persecutions?