Cincinnati to consider ban on reparative therapy for LGBT youth

Nearly a year after the death by suicide of local transgender teenager Leelah Alcorn, Cincinnati again stands to become a national leader in LGBT rights, with debate scheduled Monday on a measure that would ban reparative or conversion therapy for LGBT youth

City Council Member Chris Seelbach said Thursday that at Monday’s meeting of the council’s law and public safety committee, he will propose an ordinance that would impose a $200-a-day fine on a therapist or counselor practicing the therapy that aims to “change” lesbians, gay men, bisexuals or transgender people from their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“I feel very confident that I have the votes” for passage out of committee Monday, Seelbach said. The full council would then take up the ordinance Wednesday, and Seelbach expressed confidence in winning there as well.

Passage apparently would make Cincinnati the first major U.S. city to ban reparative or conversion therapy. The Movement Advancement Project, an LGBT organization in Denver that tracks legislation nationwide on reparative therapy, has no record of a city passing an ordinance that would ban the practice.

Cincinnati has pioneered other official moves to embrace LGBT citizens, including offering health benefits to transgender city employees and setting aside a City Hall bathroom as gender-neutral.

Nearly a year ago this month, Leelah Alcorn, a Kings Mill teenager, ran onto southbound Interstate 71 and a truck hit and killed the teenager. A day later, a suicide note appeared on Alcorn’s Tumblr social-media page and quickly exploded around the world.

In the note, Alcorn said her religious parents did not accept her gender identity and had placed her in “Christian therapy” to change her. Thousands of LGBT youth and adults held vigils in Cincinnati and around the globe to memorialize Alcorn.

MORE COVERAGE: The death of Leelah Alcorn and its impact

A petition drive to the White House for “Leelah’s Law,” to ban reparative therapy, drew more than 100,000 signatures. In April, President Obama said he was in favor of a nationwide ban on the practice. In May, a bill was introduced in Congress. Four states – California, New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois – and the District of Columbia have already banned reparative or conversion therapy.

Democratic State Rep. Denise Driehaus has introduced a bill in the Ohio General Assembly that would prohibit the therapy.

Reparative or conversion therapy once was an accepted therapeutic practice but in the past 20 years, professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have forbidden it. Reparative therapy “potentially can lead to severe emotional damage,” in the words of the National Association of Social Workers.

Seelbach, the Cincinnati City Council’s first openly gay member, said that he was subjected to reparative therapy at 18. “It’s the most vulnerable time in your life, when you’re that age, trying to come out, worrying about your friends, and then having to be sent to a doctor who tells you that, no in fact, you aren’t gay, and there are ways to change who you are. It’s incredibly damaging. I know firsthand.”