Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam
Virginia’s Gov. Ralph Northam on Monday, March 2, signed legislation making Virginia the 20th state — and the first southern state — to protect LGBTQ minors from conversion therapy. The bill goes into effect July 1.
Conversion therapy, which allegedly turns gay people straight, has been widely condemned by every leading medical and mental health organization in the U.S.
The other 19 states to have banned such so-called therapy are (in the order in which the bans went into effect): New Jersey, California, Oregon, Illinois, Vermont, New Mexico, Connecticut. Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington, Hawaii, Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine and Utah. The District of Columbia and more than 60 municipalities have adopted similar laws.
According to an estimate from the Williams Institute at UCLA Law, more than 350,000 LGBTQ minors have been subjected to so-called “conversion therapy,” which studies have linked to these youth being more than twice as likely to experience depression, and nearly three times more likely to attempt suicide.
— Tammye Nash