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Legal Experts Blast Appeals Court Ruling Striking Down Florida Conversion Therapy Ban

New Civil Rights Movement | December 2, 2020

Topics: 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, Born Perfect, conversion therapy, Florida, Trump administration, US Supreme Court

The deciding votes in the 2-1 decision invalidating the city of Miami Beach’s ban on conversion therapy for minors were made by Trump-appointed judges, because of course they were.

A federal appeals court on Friday, November 18 struck down two local Florida ordinances that ban dangerous and harmful conversion therapy by licensed medical professionals. The 2-1 majority decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is being criticized by legal and human rights experts.

Nearly every major medical association in the U.S. has denounced conversion therapy as harmful and dangerous. The practice, which purports to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, has been linked to suicide. Those who have been subjected to it often call it “torture.”

The Florida law applies only to licensed medical professionals, not to members of the clergy, yet on Friday the 11th Circuit panel claimed it violated the First Amendment.

Slate’s legal expert Mark Joseph Stern called the ruling a “really awful and frightening decision.”

This is what Rule By Trump Judges looks like: We are not allowed to shield LGBTQ youth from discredited "conversion therapy," even though it increases risk of suicide.

Trump judges won't let LGBTQ people protect our own communities, our own children, from harm. Sickening.

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) November 20, 2020

Georgia State University College of Law law professor Anthony Michael Kreis calls conversion therapy “abusive,” and says the ruling by the 11th Circuit is a “truly reprehensible decision and civil rights disaster that will necessarily result in children suffering.”

Welcome to the world of First Amendment where LGBTQ kids will be psychologically tortured because a bunch of Trump appointees don't care about this community.

— Anthony Michael Kreis (@AnthonyMKreis) November 20, 2020

“To date 107 laws have passed to protect LGBTQ youth from conversion therapy,” says Matthew Shurka, the co-founder of NCLR’s Born Perfect. He calls the 11th Circuit’s ruling an “outlier.”

“Five of those laws have been challenged in federal court and each have been upheld. Today’s ruling from the 11th circuit is an outlier. Our courts cannot allow professionals to harm our LGBTQ youth.”

But Slate’s Stern says he expects the U.S. Supreme Court will take up these cases, and warns the current 6-3 conservative majority will strike down any bans on conversion therapy.

“I have no real doubt that SCOTUS will find these bans unconstitutional,” Stern warns.

The Supreme Court's six conservative justices will likely (1) strike down laws barring licensed counselors from seeking to change a minor's sexual orientation or gender identity, and (2) continue to uphold laws that force physicians to recite anti-abortion propaganda to patients.

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) November 20, 2020

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image by Daniel Gonzales via Flickr and a CC license.

Falwell’s Fall: The Optics of Jerry Falwell Jr.’s “Leave of Absence”

Lucas Wilson | August 20, 2020

Topics: censorship in schools, conversion therapy, Jerry Falwell Jr, Liberty University, The Liberty Way

The fact that it took a (barely) racy photo to inspire Liberty University to take action against the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr, proves that Liberty cares more about appearances than doing the right thing, argues former LU student Lucas Wilson.

Recently, Jerry Falwell Jr. “mutually agreed” with the Liberty University Board of Trustees “to take an indefinite leave of absence” as LU’s president. The “agreement,” or more likely Falwell’s forced acquiescence, to step down comes in the wake of a “racy” photo surfacing that reveals the former university president at a Trailer Park Boys-themed party with his pants unzipped and his underwear and stomach exposed, holding a (presumably alcoholic) drink, with his arm around a younger woman whose pants are also undone.

Of course, the irony is that Falwell was, until August 7, the leader of Liberty, the world’s largest evangelical university, a school that fines and punishes students for the activities that Falwell, his family, and others are caught doing in the photo and an accompanying video. After the photo and video surfaced, the Board decided that Falwell’s presidency of LU needed to come to an end — for now, at least. 

Many online have celebrated Falwell’s removal, even if it is only temporary — and for good reason. This bizarre photo is nothing new in how Falwell has conducted himself in the years after taking over the school in 2007. Since, Falwell has established for himself a full resumé of bigotry and accompanying antics. A zealous supporter of Trump, whom he invited to speak on MLK Day in 2016, Falwell also recently published a racist tweet proclaiming that he would only wear a face mask during the pandemic if it had a photo of a man in black face and a man in a KKK uniform.

He has, moreover, a lengthy track record of censoring student free speech on campus and muffling student dissent, in addition to silencing faculty and university employees; university-wide fearmongering; lying; hypocrisy; questionable business deals; making, along with his wife, openly transphobic remarks; gesturing toward shooting “Muslims” if they were to step foot on LU’s campus; and putting students in danger by keeping Liberty open during times of COVID; among other unsavory public statements and actions. 

That it took this particular photo to give Liberty’s Board of Trustees pause speaks volumes about both Liberty and US evangelicalism more broadly. Falwell’s extensive and sustained track record of genuine wrongdoings, briefly listed above, was not what tipped the scale to have him ousted from his position. Rather, a photo in which he posed with a young woman in partial undress, a photo that in actuality reveals very little, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

Years of overt racism, Islamophobia, and transphobia, in concert with tyrannical leadership and governance, did not seem to be of much concern for the Board of Trustees, which is of course no surprise given the university’s so-called religious “commitments.” Indeed, many evangelicals have little concern for denouncing racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia because of how heavily their faith is invested in white supremacy, heteronormativity, and their belief in their own religious superiority. But instead of addressing Falwell’s many instances of chauvinism and intolerance, the Board suddenly seemed to care about Falwell’s public persona when the so-called “purity” of a woman — and by extension the “purity” of Liberty — was threatened by him posing in what is, in truth, an emphatically benign photo. 

That it was this photo — and not, say, Falwell’s racist tweet — that brought about his removal as president points to the way that LU and the evangelical church are not invested in being moral or upright. They are, by contrast, significantly more concerned with looking moral in their own estimation; that is, with appearing upright by the standards of other evangelicals. 

In lieu of removing Falwell for making qualitatively harmful and hateful declarations over the past several years as LU’s president, the Board of Trustees opted to remove him for a picture that reveals little, other than Falwell’s belly and underwear, and does little actual harm — other than to the reputation of the university, which upholds standards of sexual “purity” that are arguably more damaging to the school’s name than the photo itself.

The Board of Trustees’ recent decision demonstrates that though they (finally) took the moral high road to remove Falwell, the cause for his removal was not about actual misconduct. For if the Board was actually concerned with misbehavior, Falwell would have been dismissed long ago. The Board’s decision was, instead, catalyzed by the optics of evangelical morality — that is, the desire to seem moral without actually changing how one lives. The major difference between Falwell, LU, and the wider evangelical community, however, is that Falwell was caught, figuratively and literally, with his pants down. 

—

In light of the school’s prudent removal of Falwell from his post, it is high time to stress how much work Liberty has to do, particularly as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Though many believe that Falwell will likely be back after tritely “repenting” for his past misdeeds — not to mention how several have wondered if his current replacement is simply a puppet under Falwell’s control — it nonetheless bears mentioning what needs to be undone in regard to the institutionalized bigotry for which Falwell and his late father are, in large part, responsible.

Not only does the school have a one-on-one gay conversion therapy program — and a group version thereof — but it is also home to a rampant culture of homophobia about which another graduate also recently wrote, detailing her experience as a lesbian. 

Additionally, Black students and staff have made known the white-supremacist culture of Liberty over the past several months. A former Black student at Liberty recently came forth with a story about a white LU instructor making a so-called “joke” about not having to worry about being whipped as a form of punishment. Moreover, a former queer, African American employee described when he, as the director of diversity retention, was forced to delete a tweet that read “BLACK LIVES MATTER” — a statement that is not and should not be considered controversial. He further explained: “I suppressed so much of my humanity as a black and queer man in being [at Liberty].” 

The way women are treated and expected to act at Liberty further reveals how far the school has to go in order to align itself with the baseline social mores of 2020. A Twitter thread from earlier this year, which is as laugh-out-loud comical as it is illuminating about the normalized sexism at LU, gives voice to the experiences of a number of women who attend or attended Liberty.

In concert with the school’s academics, which a former professor describes as having “fallen dramatically over recent years,” Liberty’s campus culture of homophobia, racism, and sexism — an unholy trinity of discrimination, so to speak — needs to be addressed. For a university to have such a publicly-known, institutionalized, and flagrant ethos of intolerance, one that actively works against minority students’ very personhood, should be of great concern for the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges, the governing body that accredits Liberty. 

Despite the fact that Falwell is now (temporarily?) gone — which is of course a victory in and of itself — Liberty has far to go in regard to how it treats its students who are not straight white men. If Liberty ever wants to be taken seriously as an institution of higher education — a goal yet to be realized, particularly by the standards of those in academia — it will have to begin updating its equity, diversity, and inclusion practices to fit the century in which it finds itself.

Top Photo via Twitter

This Is What Conversion Therapy Looks Like

Marilyn Drew Necci | May 18, 2020

Topics: Born Perfect, Boy Erased, conversion therapy, Garrard Conley, Liberty University, Lisa Linsky, Love In Action, Lucas Wilson, Matthew Shurka, Restoration Path, The White Paper, This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, Zach Stark

This Thursday, advocacy group Born Perfect presents a digital event featuring a film and panel discussion focusing on notorious conversion therapy group Love In Action.

On Thursday, May 21, anti-conversion therapy advocacy and support group Born Perfect will present a digital event based around the film This Is What Love In Action Looks Like. In addition to the film, the event will feature a panel discussion moderated by Born Perfect’s Virginia Ambassador, Adam Trimmer.

This Is What Love In Action Looks Like is a documentary film released in 2012. It tells the story of Tennessee teenager Zach Stark, whose parents responded to him coming out to them by sending him to a Memphis-based conversion therapy program called Love In Action. Stark’s confinement at the camp sparked a nationwide protest, and the film follows a six-year span of events touched off by Stark’s experiences. Since the film was released, Love In Action changed its name to Restoration Path, and the program’s founding director, John Smid, went from identifying as “ex-gay” to accepting himself and marrying his partner, Larry McQueen, in 2014.

Love In Action also figures into Garrard Conley’s Boy Erased, a memoir about his experiences with conversion therapy that became the basis for the 2018 film of the same name. Conley will be one of the participants in the panel discussion to follow the screening of This Is What Love In Action Looks Like. He’ll be joined by Lisa Linsky, the principal drafter of a document known as The White Paper, which outlined the history of conversion therapy and gave some important background on the essential fraudulence of Love In Action. Also on the panel will be Luke Wilson, the survivor of conversion therapy at Liberty University who recently told of his experiences in a GayRVA article, and Born Perfect co-founder Matthew Shurka.

While Virginia did recently become the 20th state to ban conversion therapy for minors, the widely discredited practice remains a real issue, even within the Commonwealth — as Wilson’s recent GayRVA article makes clear. Trimmer hopes this event will help facilitate a wider understanding of just what it is that makes conversion therapy an ongoing problem for the LGBTQ community.

“Conversion therapy impacts our community in multiple settings, including organizations like Love in Action, college campuses, and licensed professionals’ offices,” said Trimmer. “I am hoping that Virginians will see how serious and ubiquitous this issue is as we talk through our own experiences, the legislative protections, and the history of conversion therapy.”

Born Perfect’s digital event will take place over Zoom; the event, which begins on May 21 at 5:30 PM, is free to attend. However, advance registration is necessary; those interested can register online at bornperfect.org/bpevents.

Image from This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, via TLA Releasing

Group Conversion “Therapy” – And Its Aftermath – At Liberty University

Lucas Wilson | April 22, 2020

Topics: conversion therapy, coronavirus, covid 19, Dane Emerick, Jerry Falwell Jr, Liberty University

A former Liberty student shares his experiences with conversion therapy on campus — and the profound negative effects it had on his life and the lives of many others.

We’re only a month into quarantine, and already Liberty University, the world’s largest evangelical college located in Lynchburg, Virginia, and its president, Jerry Falwell Jr., are demonstrating why so few respect or take them seriously.

Most recently, Falwell not only revealed his bizarre conspiracy theories about COVID-19, but also decided, recklessly, to allow students back on campus after spring break amidst the pandemic, later filing for arrest warrants (through the LU police department) for two reporters covering the story. This is not to mention how earlier this year, Falwell announced his ardent support for Vexit, a comical plan for several Virginia counties to secede from the state because of proposed changes to gun laws. And before that, Falwell unveiled his school’s new Falkirk Center, an “evangelical thinktank,” which says that turning the other cheek is no longer sufficient when it comes to fighting what they believe to be a “culture war” against the big bad liberal Left.

Needless to say, the foolishness and irresponsibility of Liberty and Falwell don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

I, too, contributed to upholding LU’s stellar reputation when I wrote about my weekly one-on-one meetings with the man on campus who tried to “help” turn me straight: Dane Emerick, a so-called pastor who continues his pseudo-counseling at LU today. However, as anyone with even a basic understanding of psychology might guess, he wasn’t all that successful.

Yours truly is still very gay.

My stories from Liberty, both in gay conversion therapy and beyond, are legion, and to offer them all — in their more-often-than-not absurd detail — could fill an entire book. I am therefore resigned to offering just a few here.

Lucas with friends, freshman year at Liberty (2009). Photo courtesy of the author.

From the time a Resident Advisor casually whispered for me to come to his room for some “fun” after a nightly room check (yes, we were checked nightly to ensure we followed curfew [and, yes, we had a curfew]) to when a Worship Studies professor repeatedly propositioned me to “meet up” off-campus and, after I didn’t, low-key threatened to implicate my cousin into the situation (it was a whole thing), I certainly had my fair share of strange encounters with other Liberty gays. But I was not a major player in the gay underground of LU or in Lynchburg. More often than not, I was too hell-bent on becoming straight.

I had drunk the Liberty Kool-Aid and, for the most part, actively fought against my gay desires, as evidenced by my recurrent meetings with Pastor Dane over the span of my undergrad tenure. And because I was supposedly making such “progress” toward becoming straight — insofar as I went on a few dates with a few lady friends of mine (emphasis on friends and a few) and learned to affect a more straight-presenting brand of “masculinity” (with any aberrant “feminine” behavior being chalked up to me being Canadian [whatever that means]) — Pastor Dane offered me the chance to join his gay conversion therapy group meetings.

Now imagine this: you’re gay and at a school where you’re not allowed to articulate or act upon your sexuality, leaving you with having to guess who might also be gay, with very few clues. Then, your conversion therapist tells you that you have an exclusive opportunity to gather in a small, sweaty room for a secret meeting with about fifteen or so other gay guys.

To put it mildly, conversion therapists aren’t the brightest of folks. As you might have expected, for several of the guys who attended, the conversion therapy group became gay Christian speed dating. 

Though I only went to the group meeting once, it both gave me a clearer picture of who else was gay on campus and allowed me to meet one of my campus crushes, a guy I’ll call Mac. My and Mac’s schedules seemed to align, because oftentimes when I went to the cafeteria, he was there, too.

I distinctly remember seeing Mac because I had thought he looked like Ricky Ullman from the Disney Channel’s Phil of the Future, who just so happened to be a major tween crush of mine. Many times, Mac and I used to sit a few tables apart from each other in the cafeteria, and I would let my eyes meet his a few seconds longer than is socially acceptable, furtively signaling to him my hush-hush interest. However, the problem was that I never knew whether or not his sustained eye contact was a returned gesture. Meeting him at the conversion therapy group meeting seemed to clear things up.

When I was in attendance, the conversion therapy group, formerly called “Masquerade,” was dubbed “Band of Brothers” (may the homosocial/homoerotic under/overtones be lost on no one). Now called “Armor Bearers,” the group meeting, led by Pastor Dane, was held in a location on campus that was not disclosed to anyone but the group members in order to ensure secrecy — something with which evangelical gays are intimately familiar.

A photo of an on-campus advertisement for Armor Bearers, provided by a current queer LU student (2019)

So, as we all piled into the room, we pressed up against one another and shared our so-called weekly “victories” (times we resisted our gay desires). We discussed the concomitant issues of “struggling with same-sex attraction” (the phrasing used in such evangelical circles). And, of course, we prayed with and for each other after we listened to scripture read aloud.

But the glue that held the group together was the way in which its members constantly performed an affected presentation of pseudo-machismo, an off-brand version of stereotypical “manliness.” “Praying for you, dude!” “Right on, bro!” “Man, Jesus is really working through you!” It was like they were trying to approximate the discourse of a gay locker-room porno they had watched beforehand. Cringe-worthy, to say the least.

But regardless of how I, even then, was repelled by such artificial and poorly executed “masculine” speech, I managed to secure Mac’s number afterwards. Within weeks of texting and Skyping, it became clear that Mac felt similarly to the way I felt about him. There was a problem, though: he had a girlfriend.

I told Mac that nothing could happen between us if his girlfriend was in the picture; I said that until he ended things with her, I was off-limits. And how did Mac respond? 

He thanked me. 

He said staying with his girlfriend was the right thing to do, and that if he and I had continued down the “sinful” path we were traveling, we would have only found unhappiness, regret, and unfulfillment.

Disappointing, to say the least. Mac and I slowly stopped texting and Skyping as much, and we eventually stopped talking altogether, though we still remain connected on social media. When I last looked Mac up on Facebook, he, like the aforementioned Resident Advisor, had gotten married. To a woman.

Thankfully, unhitched and in pursuit of a proper education, I left Liberty for graduate school in my native province of Ontario, leaving behind American evangelicalism, albeit temporarily. In doing so, I found my vocation in academia, particularly in the fields of literature, religion, and Holocaust studies. 

Since beginning my doctorate, though, I have returned to the upside-down world of conversion therapy in evangelical contexts, this time as a scholarly line of inquiry. In fact, much of my work on the unrespected pseudoscience of conversion therapy centers on Liberty’s version thereof as a central case study.

Lucas in Toronto (2020). Photo courtesy of the author

During my last trip to Lynchburg, I saw a couple of gay friends who also went through conversion therapy. One friend in particular, who we will call Gabriel, grabbed a drink with me at a swanky Lynchburg hotel bar. Gabriel and I had first met during our freshman year because at the time, when I was trying to be straight, I was pursuing his best friend, who we will call Becky. Despite things not working out between Becky and me for obvious reasons, Gabriel and I remained pals. 

It was to Gabriel that I turned after a freshman year tryst with one of my dorm’s Spiritual Life Directors. But I didn’t tell Gabriel exactly what had happened right away — or at least not directly. Since my Spiritual Life Director refused to speak with me after our “romantic” encounter — most likely due to his heavy burden of subsequent evangelical shame — and because I had, at that point, yet to gather the confidence to reach out to Pastor Dane, I was left with decidedly few people in whom I could confide.

To whom could I turn and tell that I was gay at a school that fined and/or punished students who were caught in “homosexual activity”?

Before I explicitly told Gabriel what had transpired between me and my Spiritual Life Director, I followed in the footsteps of so many angsty teens before me: I wrote a poem. The poem was titled “You Ever Notice How Cold It Gets in the Fall?” My capacity for subtlety was apparently not overly refined.

In an effort to share what happened, in (what I thought was) a stealthy way, I asked Gabriel if I could read to him my poem. He answered in the affirmative, and after I finished, he looked at me with empathetic eyes, eyes that told me he might actually know what I was “covertly” trying to communicate. After a few minutes of awkward, fumbling, back-and-forth conversation, we both blurted out that we “struggle with same-sex attraction.” I asked him if he had ever liked women, to which he said, “No. Never.” 

Today, Gabriel is also married. And, like Mac, to a woman. 

Thankfully, not all of us Liberty queers ended up married to women. A number of gays from Liberty landed in cities like New York, DC, and Atlanta — far away from their evangelical pasts and at a safe distance from Liberty and its culture of fear. Some have turned their experiences into literary works of art, like Andrew Hahn, who recently documented his experience at LU in God’s Boy, an equally scathing and heartbreaking poetry collection. And some, like me in Toronto, ended up working back in their hometowns, living that big gay lifestyle about which we were emphatically warned.

But many don’t. Many of these “ex-gays” — those who have convinced themselves (and have been convinced by others) that they are not gay — end up living inauthentic lives that become prison cells of unfulfilling existence.

These are the men who act according to the evangelical scripts they have been taught to follow, which they mistakenly believe will afford them meaning, purpose, and ordered lives. These are the same men who, when they hit a certain age, will realize they have wasted precious years that they will never get back. And these are the ones who will show up as faceless torsos on Grindr whilst away on business trips, only to return home to their families, eagerly counting down the days until their next lascivious get-away.

It still boggles my mind to think that I probably would have claimed a similar “ex-gay” identity, had it not been for the actual education that I received post-Liberty. Crazy what a little learning and critical reflection does for a guy. 

And it is in the spirit of critical reflection, in concert with the practice that evangelicalism taught me of sharing my “testimony,” that I continue to expose conversion therapy programs for how embarrassingly unsuccessful they are. Despite never having changed an individual’s sexual orientation, this base practice at Liberty and beyond somehow still endures. As someone who underwent conversion therapy, I am doing what I can to speak up for those who have been victims to such psychological, emotional, and spiritual violence.

In fact, if I able to change even one person’s mind about conversion therapy’s legitimacy, I’ll be more successful than the “ex-gay” movement has been in changing the sexual orientation of any single individual in all the decades it has existed — something that is remarkably pitiful given that changing individuals’ orientations is its express purpose.

Call me crazy, but I think the odds are in my favour.

Top Photo via Liberty University

Democratic Lawmakers Reflect on Historic General Assembly Session

VCU CNS | March 16, 2020

Topics: Bill DeSteph, Cold cases, conversion therapy, danica roem, driver's license, Eileen Filler-Corn, General Assembly 2020, Ghazala Hashmi, gun control, house of delegates, insulin price cap, lee carter, marijuana decriminalization, Mark Herring, minimum wage, reproductive rights, Virginia senate, voter rights

In the first session in over two decades with the governor’s office and both houses under Democratic control, the General Assembly passed extensive legislation affecting everything from LGBTQ rights to gun control and marijuana decriminalization.

Virginia lawmakers passed over 1,200 new laws in two months, a variety of them in the final days of the 2020 session, which expanded into Sunday evening to accommodate the backlog of legislation.

This session has been the first time since 1994 that the Democrats have controlled both chambers of the General Assembly along with the governor’s office. The House passed 746 of 1,732 bills introduced, while the Senate passed 543 of 1,096 bills introduced, excluding resolutions, according to the Legislative Information System. The number of bills sponsored in the House led to long sessions in both chambers and left the Senate grappling with an approaching deadline. 

In eight weeks, starting with a vote to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, Democrats worked to overturn close to 30 years of Republican dominance over issues such as gun control, reproductive rights, and voter rights.

They also passed new measures such as empowering localities with the authority to remove or contextualize war memorials and adding LGBTQ protections from discrimination in housing and employment, as well as a ban on conversion therapy for minors, becoming the first Southern state to pass such legisation. 

Seven out of eight major gun control measures supported by Gov. Ralph Northam are on the way to the governor’s desk for his signature. The legislation includes bills that limit handgun purchases to one per month, a background check on all firearms sales, and extreme risk protection orders, also known as the red flag law. 

House of Delegates begins on Sunday March 8, 2020 after lawmakers agreed to an extension of the session the night before. (Photo by Chip Lauterbach/Capital News Service)

Other legislation that passed in the homestretch included decriminalization of marijuana, but efforts to legalize marijuana were squashed, to the dismay of advocates. The decriminalization bill does away with the criminal penalty for simple marijuana possession, instead instating a $25 civil penalty for a person caught with not more than 1 ounce of marijuana. The Senate amended the bill from the original amount of not more than a half ounce.

“For far too long our approach to cannabis has needlessly saddled Virginians, especially African Americans and people of color, with criminal records,” Attorney General Mark Herring said in a statement. “Those days are over.” 

Herring, who pushed for the legislation, said there were 29,000 marijuana possession arrests in 2018. He also said decriminalization is an important first step toward legal, regulated adult use. 

Lawmakers reached a compromise to increase the minimum wage, with a bill that gradually increases the wage to $9.50 in 2021, $11 in 2022 and up to $12 in 2023. Following these raises, the measure is to be brought before the General Assembly for a future vote that must pass by 2024 in order to guarantee that the wage can reach $15 by 2026.

Democrats also pushed through an amended bill that allows access to collective bargaining for public employees — such as teachers and firefighters — in localities where local governments choose to participate. Sens. Bill DeSteph, R-Virginia Beach, and Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, criticized these policies, which they said create hurdles for enterprises. 

“We’ve just crushed the small business atmosphere,” DeSteph said in a video posted on Facebook. “CNBC had us as the No. 1 place to do business. We’re going to be in the 20s after this. It’s a very sad day for the commonwealth.” 

Freshman Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, who defeated one-term incumbent Glen Sturtevant in November, reflected back on her first session.

“It’s been incredible, I have immersed myself in all the issues and critical pieces of legislation that we have had,” Hashmi said. “We have been able to pass some very important bills this year, for immigrant rights and for education, focusing on teachers and higher education, I’ve really enjoyed the work and am looking forward to coming back next year.”

In the House, Democrats held 55 seats to the Republican’s 45 seats. Democrats ushered changes that Del. Lee Carter, D-Manassas, felt will be instrumental in improving the lives of Virginians.

“With the partisan change in both chambers, the question coming down here was: ‘What kind of majority are we going to be?’” Carter said. “Whether we were going to be the type of majority that stood unequivocally for working people, against corporate interests, and decided to make lives better for the people that desperately needed it, or if we were going to be a majority that was content to merely not be as bad as the Republicans.”

Carter said that he was happiest with the outcome of his bill that capped the price of insulin at $50 for a month’s worth.

“I introduced the bill with the cap at $30, the Senate put it at $50,” Carter said. “I’m hoping that the governor will put it back down to $30 or even lower, so we can get some relief to those people who have health insurance but their deductibles and copays are too high for them to be able to afford their insulin products.”

Senators entering chambers waiting for Saturday’s session to begin. (Photo by Chip Lauterbach/Capital News Service)

Del. Danica Roem, D-Prince William, looked back on her third session in the General Assembly with pride, joking that she was able to pass 13 bills for the 13th District. Roem was pleased that her bill, HB 1024, which would establish a statewide cold case database, passed the Senate on the final day of this year’s session.

“This will allow reporters, as well the public in general, to look up every missing persons case, unidentified persons case, and every unsolved homicide in the state that is at least five years old,” Roem said. “This is a huge win for government accountability and transparency.”

Some legislation that moved through the House met resistance in the Democrat-majority Senate, where moderate Democrats sided with Republicans. Three moderate Democrats tipped a Senate panel vote to continue HB 961, the assault weapons ban sponsored by Del. Mark Levine (D-Alexandria), until the next session. 

On Saturday, citing concerns of minority profiling, Senate Democrats helped vote down HB 1439, which would have made not wearing a seatbelt in any seat of a vehicle a primary offense. 

Some Republicans also advanced legislative reform. Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin, passed a measure that will remove suspension of a driver’s license for nonpayment of fines. Stanley also supported a bill granting tenants the power to make repairs on their property and deduct the costs from their rent, with conditions.

Speaker of the House Eileen Filler-Corn issued a statement saying that Democrats were celebrating a “historic, legislative session.”

“This General Assembly session has been historic in the extraordinary progress the House of Delegates has made for Virginians in every corner of the Commonwealth,” Filler-Corn said. “In November, voters called for swift, impactful action to make their communities safer and more prosperous. We have delivered on that mandate.” 

Multiple House and Senate Republicans did not respond to a request for comment. 

Written by Chip Lauterbach, Capital News Service. Top Photo by Chip Lauterbach, Capital News Service.

It’s Official: Conversion Therapy Is Now Illegal In Virginia

Marilyn Drew Necci | March 5, 2020

Topics: conversion therapy, General Assembly 2020, Patrick Hope, Sam Brinton, Scott Surovell, Trevor Project, Virginia Department of Health

Governor Northam signed a bill outlawing the practice on Monday, bringing years of struggle by LGBTQ advocates to a victorious end.

Virginia has officially become the 20th state to prohibit conversion therapy for minors, and the first in the American South. House Bill 386, introduced by 47th District Delegate Patrick Hope, passed both houses of the General Assembly with some bipartisan support, and this week it crossed Northam’s desk and made it into Virginia law.

“This issue is personal for me, as a pediatric neurologist who has cared for thousands of children,” Northam said in a statement released to accompany the signing of the bill. “Conversion therapy is not only based in discriminatory junk-science, it is dangerous and causes lasting harm to our youth. No one should be made to feel wrong for who they are — especially not a child. I’m proud to sign this ban into law.”

Advocates were equally positive about Virginia’s passing of the ban on conversion therapy.

“As a survivor of this dangerous and fraudulent practice, I can’t fathom just how many young LGBTQ lives may be saved with these critical protections from conversion therapy,” said Sam Brinton of the LGBTQ youth suicide prevention group the Trevor Project in a statement. “At The Trevor Project, we hear from LGBTQ youth in crisis every day and we know that those who are subjected to conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide. This bold action will send a message to all LGBTQ young people in the great Commonwealth of Virginia that they are loved and deserve support.”

The new law prohibiting conversion therapy for minors will go into effect on July 1, but advocates have been working toward it for years now. Before Democrats gained control of both houses of the General Assembly earlier this year, bans against conversion therapy had repeatedly been proposed within both the Senate and House Of Delegates, but repeatedly failed to pass, and were often not even brought to a full floor vote in the House Of Delegates.

However, progress against this harmful practice did occur even before the General Assembly changed hands, as three different boards regulating mental health professionals in Virginia — the Board of Social Work, the Board of Psychology, and the Board of Counseling — all issued guidance prohibiting the practice in 2019. As well, multiple cities within the state, including Richmond and Virginia Beach, passed resolutions in 2019 asking the General Assembly for a ban on conversion therapy for minors.

Del. Hope’s bill was not the only conversion therapy bill introduced this year; in the state Senate, 36th district Senator Scott Surovell introduced a similar one, which also received significant support. The two bills were combined during reconciliation between the two houses of the General Assembly.

“Conversion therapy is a dangerous, destructive practice,” said Del. Hope in a statement. “We should be supporting and celebrating our LGTBQ youth, not putting them in harm’s way.”

Top Photo by Landon Shroder, RVA Mag file photo

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