Ban Conversion Therapy in Anchorage
On Tuesday, July 28 the Anchorage Assembly will be taking public testimony on Anchorage Ordinance 2020-65. This ordinance would amend the Municipal Code to ban conversion therapy in the Municipality of Anchorage with a fine of $500 if a facility is found to be providing, applying, or using sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts with a minor. Native Movement supports the ban of conversion therapy.
Written comments can be submitted via email to:
Testimony@anchorageak.gov by 2:00 p.m. on July 28.
In the subject line use: 14.P. Ordinance No. AO 2020-65.
If you'd like to provide testimony via phone:
email Testimony@anchorageak.gov by 2pm on July 28 with your Name, Phone Number, Agenda Item Number/Title for which you wish to provide testimony and Subject Line: Phone Testimony. When the Assembly reaches your agenda item, the Clerk will contact you at the number you have provided. You will have 3 minutes to provide testimony on each item you wish to speak on.
What is conversion therapy?
Conversion Therapy, or "reparative therapy," is any of several dangerous and discredited pseudoscientific practices where therapists attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Treatment relies on and amplifies the youths already present shame and may include physically painful stimuli to associate their identity with the negative stimuli. Every major medical and mental health association in the United States, Canada, and countries of the European Union, as well as in many other countries, have condemned the practice of “conversion therapy.”
The practice has been denounced by the American Psychological Association since 1998 and reiterated and expanded on their statement in 2013: The American Psychiatric Association does not believe that same-sex orientation should or needs to be changed, and efforts to do so represent a significant risk of harm by subjecting individuals to these forms of treatment.
The colonizing history of psychiatric providers treating LGBTQ2S+ people as “abnormal” hinged on the notion that sexuality was something which could, and should, be changed. The idea of queer and gender expansive experiences as disorders that could be “treated” was then exported throughout the world from the 19th century on through oppressive institutions. Indigenous cultures around the world, including Alaska Native and Native Americans, recognize genders beyond the Male-Female binary. Indigenous Peoples who transcend the binary have traditionally served important roles in our communities. Conversion therapy instills feelings of rejection, disappointment and depression. It fractures healthy relationships and feeds shame.