By unanimous vote, the City Council passed an ordinance this afternoon banning the practice of gay “conversion therapy” on minors.
In arguing for passage of the bill today, Council member Gonzalez, its sponsor, repeated her heartfelt comments from last week that being LGBTQ is not an illness, and LGBTQ people are not in need of a “cure.”
But the most solemn — and most overlooked — comments came from Council member Juarez: “Conversion therapy is the 21st century version of what happened to my people.” Juarez, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, was referring to the forced assimilation of native Americans into white culture, including the horrific process of taking native children from their families and forcibly enrolling them into boarding schools designed to “civilize” them.
History has a way of repeating itself.
Here is my previous report on this bill.