Conversion Animadversion

State Assembly member Deborah Glick has secured passage of a bill in her house of the Albany legislature that would provide for sanctions against mental healthcare providers who practice “conversion therapy” on patients younger than 18 years old.

The measure seeks to ban a pseudoscientific practice that aims to modify an individual’s sexual orientation (from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual) using discredited forms of psychological manipulation, such as the delivery of electric shocks. Mental health professionals are virtually unanimous in their consensus judgment that conversion therapy is, at best, ineffective and possibly harmful for the patients subjected to it — especially children.

Ten U.S. states (along with the District of Columbia) ban the practice — including New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont. In New York, it is illegal in the five boroughs of New York City, and in Erie County (near Niagara Falls), but no State-wide ban has even been enacted. In the absence of such a measure, Governor Andrew Cuomo formulated regulations in 2016 designed to discourage the practice.

An outright ban (enacted by statute, rather than regulation) would go farther, however, making a mental health professional who engages in the practice (at least when treating children) guilty of “professional misconduct,” which could put the provider at risk of his or her license being suspended, as well as opening the door to civil (and possibly criminal) liability.

“Being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is not a deficiency in need of treatment,” Ms. Glick noted after her bill passed the Assembly. “Our children must be protected from this discriminatory and damaging practice that masquerades as a legitimate mental health treatment.”

Ms. Glick first introduced this measure in the 2013-2014 legislative session (around the time that New Jersey passed it own, similar ban), and then again in 2015-2016 term. Both times, it passed the Assembly, but then remained stuck in various Senate committees, never coming to a vote in that chamber.

But Ms. Glick remains determined, saying, “I call on the State Senate to do the right thing and join the Assembly by sending this crucial bill to the Governor’s desk.”