Minneapolis Bans 'Ex-Gay' Therapy
- By
- Carlos Santoscoy
- | November 24, 2019
The Minneapolis City Council on Friday unanimously approved an ordinance that prohibits therapies that attempt to alter the sexual orientation or gender identity of minors who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
Such therapies go by names such as “conversion therapy,” “reparative therapy,” “sexual orientation change efforts” or “ex-gay therapy.”
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Mayor Jacob Frey has vowed to sign the legislation “as soon as it hits [his] desk.”
Passage of the law will make Minneapolis the first city in Minnesota to prohibit such therapies.
The legislation was co-authored by Council Member Phillipe Cunningham, a black queer transgender man who has said he was exposed to such therapies through his church.
“We have a moral obligation to step up where partisan politics at higher levels of government have failed our kids,” he said in a statement. “I ask for other cities and towns to also step up for the children and young people across our great state.”
He added that such therapies were “tantamount to torture.”
Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the Christian conservative Liberty Counsel, told the Star Tribune that his group was watching developments in Minneapolis. While Liberty Counsel has had a mixed record in challenging such bans, it recently won a court challenge against Tampa's ban.
“It's all political and it's enforcing an agenda, and at some point in the future, the political agenda will run head on to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Staver told the outlet.