Credit: PA Internet News Service
Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order at the Capitol in Harrisburg Tuesday to direct state agencies to make sure taxpayer funds don’t go toward conversion therapy.
The Democratic governor, who leaves office in January 2024, signed the order that “directs the Department of Human Services, the Insurance Department and Department of State and other appropriate agencies to explore and implement all options to ensure state funds, programs, contracts, and other resources are not used for the purposes of providing, authorizing, endorsing, reimbursing for, or referring for conversion therapy, to the extent permitted by law.”
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Wolf said to reporters when asked that he didn’t believe state resources were currently going toward conversion therapy, but the review will find out for sure.
The order additionally directs state agencies to discourage conversion therapy and promote “evidence-based best practices for LGBTQIA+ individuals that is actually supported by the scientific and medical communities.”
What is conversion therapy? WebMD offers this definition: “Conversion therapy is any emotional or physical therapy used to ‘cure’ or ‘repair’ a person’s attraction to the same sex, or their gender identity and expression. Providers claim these therapies can make someone heterosexual or ‘straight.’ But there’s no evidence to support this.”
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Wolf called it “junk science that actively harms the people it supposedly seeks to treat.”
“This discriminatory practice is widely rejected by medical and scientific professionals and has been proven to lead to worse mental health outcomes for LGBTQIA+ youth subjected to it. This is about keeping our children safe from bullying and extreme practices that harm them,” he said.
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A total of 13 percent of LGBTQIA+ youth nationwide reported being subjected to conversion therapy, and 83 percent of those subjected to it were under age 18, according to a peer-reviewed study from The Trevor Project.
The governor’s office cited a study that found youth who took part in conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report attempting suicide.
Wolf said Pennsylvanians can do something simple to help LGBTQIA+ youth.
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“We can stand up and tell LGBTQIA+ youth that we hear them and we accept them exactly as they are,” he said.
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