The Illinois House on Thursday rejected
a bill which sought to ban “ex-gay” therapy to minors.
The Conversion Therapy Prohibition
Act, introduced by state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, was defeated with a
44-51 roll call, the Chicago
Sun-Times reported. Twenty-two members did not vote.
“This treatment plan causes
depression, causes suicidal actions and is incredibly harmful to
children,” Cassidy told colleagues. “The practice of conversion
therapy is dismissed by every major scientific organization and
should not be utilized. There's not a single scientific basis for
one's sex orientation being a disorder.”
“We need to protect our children,”
the openly gay Democrat added.
The measure would have prohibited
so-called conversion therapy that attempts to turn gay teens
straight.
Opponents of the bill argue that it
would harm children.
“Cassidy's proposed legislation is
destructive, unethical, and dishonest,” the Illinois Family
Institute said in a statement. “It depends on unproven,
non-factual, non-evidence-based assumptions that even homosexual
scholars reject but the public continues to buy hook, line and
sinker. The ultimate motivation behind this legislation is to
promote the Leftist assumptions of adult homosexuals who seek to wipe
disapproval of homosexual acts from the face of the planet even if
doing [so] requires deception, harms children, undermines parental
rights, and corrodes fundamental First Amendment speech and religious
liberty.”
In August, New Jersey became the second
state after California to ban the practice.