White House calls for end to psychiatric therapies seeking to change sexual orientation

President Barack Obama has called for an end to psychiatric therapy treatments seeking to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of gay, lesbian and transgender youth. It comes in response to a petition.

Deutsche Welle, 9 April 2015

The White House statement is in response to a petition calling for Obama to back a law to ban conversion therapy. The practice is supported by some socially conservative organizations and religious doctors.

The petition was started following the suicide in December of 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn (photo). She died after her parents forced her to attend conversion therapy, took her out of school and isolated her in an attempt to change her gender identity.

"The overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates that conversion therapy, especially when it is practiced on young people, is neither medically nor ethically appropriate and can cause substantial harm," the author of the White House statement, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said.

Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, welcomed the White House statement. "Having President Obama and the weight of the White House behind efforts to ban conversion therapy is so critical in the fight for transgender and LGB young people," Keisling said in a statement.

Jarrett told the petition's promoters they agreed with the effects of therapy treatment: "We share your concern about its potentially devastating effects on the lives of transgender as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer youth."

The White House did not explicitly call for congressional legislation to ban the therapies nationwide. But Jarrett's statement highlighted 18 states which have introduced legislation similar to measures already in place in California, New Jersey and Washington, DC which ban licensed professionals from using conversion therapy on minors.

jm/rc (Reuters, AP)

Research indicates that as many as a third of LGBT people have undergone

 some form of conversion therapy – from religious counselling to showing

males gay porn and giving them electric shocks. Photograph: Alamy

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(Photo: Alexandria)

"The Akashic Circle" – Jul 17, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Religion, The Humanization of God, Benevolent Design, DNA, Akashic Circle, (Old) Souls, Gaia, Indigenous People, Talents, Reincarnation, Genders, Gender Switches, In “between” Gender Change, Gender Confusion, Shift of Human Consciousness, Global Unity,..... etc.)  - (Text version)

“… Gender Switching

Old souls, let me tell you something. If you are old enough, and many of you are, you have been everything. Do you hear me? All of you. You have been both genders. All of you have been what I will call between genders, and that means that all of you have had gender switches. Do you know what happens when it's time for you to switch a gender? We have discussed it before. You'll have dozens of lifetimes as the same gender. You're used to it. It's comfortable. You cannot conceive of being anything else, yet now it's time to change. It takes approximately three lifetimes for you to get used to it, and in those three lifetimes, you will have what I call "gender confusion."

It isn't confusion at all. It's absolutely normal, yet society often will see it as abnormal. I'm sitting here telling you you've all been through it. All of you. That's what old souls do. It's part of the system. …”