Gov. Wolf signs order to discourage conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth in Pa.
“Political attacks on LGBTQ communities are not happening in a vacuum — they’re happening in our towns and they’re happening in our schools," Wolf said.
Gov. Tom Wolf on Tuesday signed an executive order seeking to “discourage” conversion therapy in Pennsylvania, calling the controversial practice that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity a “junk science” that harms LGBTQ people across the commonwealth.
The executive order comes amid a surge of anti-gay rhetoric and sharpened attacks on LGBTQ people nationally, as Republican-dominated legislatures in some states are seeking to roll back constitutional protections in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
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“We have a crisis here,” Wolf said. “Political attacks on LGBTQ communities are not happening in a vacuum — they’re happening in our towns and they’re happening in our schools...and they’re causing horrific consequences for the mental health of a whole generation.”
While Wolf’s executive order would not ban conversion therapy outright, it will direct state agencies to “discourage” the practice in the commonwealth, and instead promote evidence-based treatment and seek to bolster policies that better support LGBTQ residents.
Conversion therapy has long been discredited by medical and psychological experts. The American Medical Association has long condemned its underlying assumption that queer or non-cisgender identities amount to mental disorders as baseless. In more recent years, governments and even religious leaders have petitioned to eradicate the practice from the healthcare system.
While somewhat limited in scope, Rafael Alvarez Febo, executive director of the Pennsylvania Commission on LGBTQ Affairs, said the executive order is a sign that conversion therapy’s days are numbered in Pennsylvania.
A survey from the Trevor Project, a crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth that supported Wolf’s executive order, about 13% of LGBTQ youth reported being subject to conversion therapy, most of them when they were under 18.
“Young people should never be punished for being who they are and that’s what so–called conversion therapy does, while causing sometimes irreparable trauma to individuals,” Alvarez Febo said.
Philadelphia is one of two counties that has enacted its own ordinance banning conversion therapy for minors, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit research organization focused on equality. Statewide, a dozen cities maintain similar ordinances, among them Doylestown, Reading, State College, and Yardley.
But attempts at a statewide ban have stalled in the Republican-controlled legislature.
Legislative campaigns to bar conversion therapy date back nearly a decade. Outgoing state Rep. Brian Sims of Philadelphia introduced a bill last year that would ban the practice of conversion therapy on anyone under 18 years old, though the bill has languished in the committee phase since March 2021.
Wolf called on the General Assembly to take action.
“All of our youth deserve to grow up in a Commonwealth that deserves and respects them,” he said.