Denver’s Office of Human Rights and Community Partnerships has proposed banning conversion therapies aimed at changing the sexual orientation of minors.
The proposal will be presented to a City Council committee Wednesday, according to Mayor Michael Hancock’s office. It will target state-licensed therapists with practices in the city and county who claim that being gay or transgender is a mental illness. The proposal comes following a recommendation by Denver’s LGTBQ Commission, according to the news release.
“These terrible practices that target our youth, simply for being who they are, are dangerous and immoral,” Hancock said in a statement. “We’re going to make sure that they never happen within our city.”
In conversion therapy, counseling and psychotherapy is used in an attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation. The American Psychiatric Association opposes the practice, saying same-sex orientation does not need to be changed and that efforts to do so risk harming individuals.