Michigan became the 22nd state Wednesday to ban “conversion therapy,” the discredited pseudoscience that attempts to convert gay, lesbian, and bisexual people heterosexual. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed two bills into law Wednesday — House Bill 4617, which defines conversion therapy, and House Bill 4616, which bars licensed therapists from subjecting minors to the practice and lays out penalties for violation, including discipline by public health regulators. Photo: Officer of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
Michigan became the 22nd state Wednesday to ban “conversion therapy,” the discredited pseudoscience that attempts to convert gay, lesbian, and bisexual people heterosexual.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed two bills into law Wednesday — House Bill 4617, which defines conversion therapy, and House Bill 4616, which bars licensed therapists from subjecting minors to the practice and lays out penalties for violation, including discipline by public health regulators.
Both bills will take effect in 90 days.
“Today, we are banning the horrific practice of conversion therapy in Michigan and ensuring this is a state where you can be who you are,” Whitmer said in a statement. “As a mom of a member of the community and a proud, lifelong ally, I am grateful that we are taking action to make Michigan a more welcoming, inclusive place.”
“Conversion therapy” has been condemned as useless and harmful by every major medical and mental health organization in the United States.
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Also, research has indicated it heightens the risk of suicide among LGB young people.
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth who experienced conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the last year than their peers who hadn’t been in conversion therapy, according to a 2020 report from The Trevor Project that was published in the American Journal of Public Health.
The therapy is also called “pray the gay away” and became infamous after the 2007 “South Park” episode “Cartman Sucks.” Butters Stotch’s parents thought he was “bi-curious” and sent to him a “pray-the-gay-away” camp, where several youth committed suicide after being told they were sexually confused and going to Hell.
“Conversion therapy” emerged in the mid-19th century, when being gay was viewed as “either a criminal act or a medical problem, or both,” according to a 2009 report by the American Psychological Association. In 1952, homosexuality was included as a mental illness in the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (better known as the DSM), and a variety of barbaric procedures aimed at changing one’s sexual orientation were introduced.
How barbaric?
Some therapists used electric shock treatments or induced nausea, vomiting or even paralysis when their patients had “same-sex erotic” thoughts.
Other people were told to wear a rubber band around their wrist and snap it whenever they were attracted to a member of the same sex.
Also, in 1965, Time magazine ran an article with the headline “Homosexuals Can Be Cured.”
Despite intense resistance from gay rights leaders at the time, these gross treatments were practiced into the 1970s.
The legislation signed Wednesday creates penalties for licensed mental health professionals, but doesn’t address unlicensed professionals who perform conversion therapy, including religious leaders providing conversion therapy with no mental health care licensure.
All Republicans in the Michigan House voted against the bills and all but one Republican senator rejected them in the Michigan Senate.
Some lawmakers claimed the bills limit conversations mental health care providers can have with patients and interfere with family conversations.
Reminder: Conversion therapy has been condemned as useless and harmful by every major medical and mental health organization in the United States.
