The Republican Party of Texas has advanced a plank of the party’s platform that supports “reparative therapy” for homosexuals. Gay Republican groups are outraged.
Reparative therapy, sometimes called "conversion therapy," is intense psychological counseling for men and women in an attempt to change their sexual orientation.
Cathie Adams is the executive director of Texas Eagle Forum, a tea party group that advanced the resolution that opposes any effort to ban reparative therapy, which has been done in other states.
“I have a very good friend in my own precinct and a few years ago he called me and my husband and said by that by the grace of God he wanted to be delivered from this lifestyle and this is the kind of therapy that helped him,” Adams said
Adams said her friend wrote the resolution and asked her to advance it at the state party convention. The resolution was added as a plank to the preliminary platform and will have a final vote on Saturday, the last day of the 2014 Republican State convention.
Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director Gregory T. Angelo said most mental health groups have disavowed this type of counseling.
“We are most definitively against reparative therapy," Angelo said. "The American Psychological Association the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association have all come out and said, in essence, 'It is snake oil.' "
California and New Jersey have passed laws banning the practice of reparative therapy but Angelo said in Texas there has been no discussion of banning the practice.
Angelo and the Log Cabin Republicans are hoping to block a final vote on the plank concerning conversion therapy.
