Senate Democrats oppose conversion therapy

CONCORD, NH - Conversion therapy is designed to traumatize LGBTQ youth. It is mental abuse pure and simple. Conversion therapy can produce lifelong guilt, anxiety, and self hatred. Conversion therapy is based on false pseudoscience rooted in hatred rather than fact.

Suicide is an epidemic within the LGBTQ community, and LGBTQ youth who come from unaccepting families are 8.4 times more likely to have attempted suicide. Conversion therapy encourages a feeling of rejection for LGBTQ youth. In an interview with the Huffington Post one survivor of conversion therapy said of the culmination of his therapy: “We were no longer people at the end of the program.” Conversion Therapy focuses on dehumanizing LGBTQ youth, it is an amoral attempt to abuse our children into denying a part of their identity they cannot.

Conversion therapy takes away the chance to develop self-confidence, become empowered, and learn to love oneself from those who are forced into this regressive form of fake science. SB 224, which would have banned conversion therapy, passed the Senate despite the majority of Republican Senators voting against it before it was eventually signed into law. Each of the 8 Republican Senators who voted to allow this heinous abusive therapy to continue in New Hampshire is up for reelection this year. A Senate Democratic majority will be dedicated to protecting all children, we will be dedicated advocates for the LGBTQ community and we will continue our fight against conversion therapy and all abuses of the LGBTQ community in the Live Free State.