Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage defied LGBT activists by vetoing a bill that would have banned therapists from counseling people with unwanted same-sex attraction, arguing it was “too broad.”
The Left defines it as “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy,” but that’s a smear. All such therapy does is provide an avenue for men and women who do not wish to have same-sex attraction to seek the treatment they desire. In an era where words like “choice” are thrown around in support of any cause, bans on such therapies are clearly an affront to people’s free choice.
Bill LD 912 would have forbid people from “advertis[ing], offer[ing] or administer[ing] conversion therapy to individuals under 18 years of age.” Such therapy was defined as a “practice or treatment that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The bill gave exceptions for clergy while threatening to suspend or revoke the licenses of medical professionals, school guidance counselors, or school psychologists.
Gov. LePage vetoed the bill as “bad public policy.”
“This is so broad that licensed professionals would be prohibited from counseling an individual even at the individual’s own request,” LePage said of the bill in his veto message.
LePage also said that such a bill would curtail religious liberty and that state law already prohibits any medical practice that would subject people to physical or mental abuse. He also called the bill’s proponents hypocritical for previously opposing an anti-genital mutilation bill.
“Legislators who could not stand up and outlaw the permanent mutilation of young girls’ sexual organs by laypersons in unsanitary conditions with razor blades now are concerned with outlawing conversations, of which there is also ‘no evidence’ that it is happening in Maine,” LePage summarized. “That is a disgusting double-standard.”
Matt Moonen of the LGBT lobbying group Equality Maine denounced LePage for choosing “petty politics over protecting kids.” Human Rights Campaign national field director Marty Rouse decried the decision as “inexcusable.”
“With this inexcusable decision, Governor LePage has become the only governor in the nation to veto legislation protecting young people from this abuse, solidifying his place in history’s hall of shame,” Rouse complained.