NEW YORK: Assembly Passes Ban On "Ex-Gay" Torture Of LGBT Youth

Via press release from the Pride Agenda:

“Today the New York State Assembly stood with us and agreed that we’ve allowed our children to be subjected to harm for too long and that state licensed therapists should not be allowed to practice widely discredited and damaging conversion therapies that try to change a young person’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” said Empire State Pride Agenda Executive Director Nathan M. Schaefer. “State licensed therapists must not be legally allowed to intentionally harm children. We call on the Senate to swiftly pass this bill and get it to Governor Cuomo’s desk for his signature this session.”

As Jane Shurka, the mother of a conversion therapy survivor Mathew, so eloquently relayed yesterday on the rally stage facing the Capitol Building at the Pride Agenda’s big LGBT advocacy day, Equality & Justice Day, “I don’t blame my ex or myself so much as I blame the therapist. He’s the one with the license and he convinced us that orientation can change when we didn’t know any better. If conversion therapy is not available to minors under 18, parents may question themselves and realize there’s a good reason not to do it. We must pass this bill and make conversion therapy illegal in New York. If it were illegal when my son was coming out, he may not have lost five precious years of his life to this dangerous practice. And I could have been the proud mom of a gay son a lot sooner!”

The state Senate, as always, will be a much bigger lift.