By Dari Kotzker
NJ Today
Strong emotions on both sides were on display at an Assembly committee meeting today about a bill designed to protect minors from being forced into controversial treatment — therapies to change their sexual orientation. The legislation pertains only to licensed professionals, not religious leaders. Some mental health professionals spoke on the effects it has on young people.
Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst Jack Drescher testified, “after a lot of time, energy spent, many feel worse when treatment fails, which it fails in most cases, leading to increased depression, increased anxiety and even suicidal thoughts, feelings and attempts.”
And those who experienced the therapy firsthand revealed the repercussions
LGBT advocate Ryan Kendall said, “At 16 years old, I had lost everything. My family and my faith had rejected me and the damaging effects of conversion therapy, coupled with this rejection, drove me to the bring of suicide.”
Troy Stevenson, Executive Director of Garden State Equality, described conversion therapy as a form of abuse being inflicted on children, saying “it’s gotta stop, it’s wrong for a licensed therapist to try and take a young person and change something immutable about their character and turn them into somebody that somebody wants them to be.”
Conservative groups and a group of self-described “former homosexuals” opposed the bill, telling members of the Women and Children’s Committee that the option to have this therapy is a parental right.
Christopher Doyle, Director of International Healing Foundation, told the committee that passing the legislation would marginalize thousands of people who have changed their sexual orientation from gay to straight, and that he is one of them.
Holding up a poster, he said to the panel, “This is my family, these are my kids, my wife. I formally lived a gay life. I have changed. You’re going to marginalize my family?”
Gov. Christie has publicly said that he does not believe in conversion therapy. Jacob Rudolph, a high school senior, who came out to his peers in January, started an online petition to pass the bill and is encouraged by Christie’s past comments.
“Christie is already aware of the petition. It already has, I think, 115,000 signatures and counting, so it’s still actually increasing even as the hype of it has gone down,” said Rudolph. “But the fact that he’s aware of it, and the fact that he even made a statement of being in support of the bill and being against anti-gay conversion therapy is absolutely huge.”
The bill was released from the Assembly committee and a Senate committee already approved the bill back in March, so it now awaits a full vote in both houses. The sponsors of the bill are hopeful it will be posted by the end of June.
Related: Assemblyman Optimistic Bill Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’ Will Become Law