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Blog
The President Joins Our Fight
Nine months ago, NCLR launched our #BornPerfect campaign to end the use of conversion therapy on LGBTQ youth in five years. At the time, we thought it was an ambitious goal. We could not have imagined then the speed with which this movement has already grown or the impact it has already made. Thanks to the denunciations of these dangerous practices by mental health professionals, the tenacity of lawmakers and LGBTQ state equality groups, the support of faith leaders, and, most importantly, the...Blog
The Cost of Awareness
The suicide of transgender teen Leelah Alcorn has prompted widespread media attention, including a focus on her description of how being sent to conversion therapy increased her sense of isolation and rejection. Now more than ever before, it is clear that there is an urgent need for more public discussion and education around the harms caused by conversion therapy. But some aspects of the recent conversations have been troubling. I’ve spent the last several years working with survivors of...Blog
The Human Element: Making Conversion Therapy in the U.S. an International Human Rights Issue
There we were. Around the illustrious circular United Nations briefing tables at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, among the 70 human rights advocates from across the United States, the largest delegation in the history of the U.N.’s Committee Against Torture (CAT). Together, as a leader of the National Center for Lesbian Right’s (NCLR) #BornPerfect campaign, I had spent a sleepless few days working around the clock to make Committee members aware of the dangers of convention therapy,...Blog
NCLR Urges U.N. Committee Against Torture to End Conversion Therapy
This Tuesday, I will walk into the historic Palais de Nations in Geneva, Switzerland to meet with representatives of the United Nations and the U.S. Department of State as part of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights’ #BornPerfect campaign to protect LGBTQ youth from conversion therapy, the dangerous and discredited practice of attempting to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity through everything from talk therapy to exorcism to “orgasmic reconditioning.” Under the Convention...Blog
