Conversion therapy is slowly becoming a thing of the past in Colorado as the CO Senate recently approved a bill that would bar licensed practitioners from attempting to use “curative” therapy on LGBTQ minors, according to Denver Rite.
Other states and some territories have already banned conversion therapy for minors. Most recently, Puerto Rican governor Ricardo Rosselló announced that he will sign an executive order to ban the harmful practice in Puerto Rico. The amended bill will now make its way back to the House, which approved the bill in February. The bill is expected to get passed in the House as well, and if it does, it will go to Jared Polis who will need to sign it for it to become law. Seeing as how Jared Polis made history by being the first openly gay governor in the United States, there is a good chance that he will sign it.
Stephen Fenberg, the mayor of Boulder, said in a release by One Colorado, an LGBTQ advocacy group, that “there is nothing to ‘fix,’” and that he is proud, after many years of trying to get the bill passed, that Colorado will finally be able to protect young LGBTQ people from bigoted practices. He should be proud of this bill getting passed because not only is it the right thing to do, it may set an example for other states to follow suit and ban conversion therapy as well.
This bill being approved in the Senate is a great step in the right direction, as Colorado has made a great transformation from being one of the most anti-LGBTQ states in the country to it being one of the most accepting. A few months ago, the Denver City Council voted unanimously to ban conversion therapy for minors in the city, which shows that many Coloradans are not in favor of trying to “cure” LGBTQ people. The fact that there is bipartisan support of this bill leads me to believe that more and more people are coming to their senses and are learning that there is no need to fix LGBTQ people because we are not broken.
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h/t: Denver Rite