No research has ever been published in the peer-reviewed literature that demonstrates the efficacy of conversion therapy efforts with gender minority youth or adults. On the other hand, conversion therapy has been found to result in depression and suicide, among other severe, negative outcomes.

Would you let a physician try out a medical procedure on you or your child, if that procedure had never been shown to work, but had been shown to have detrimental outcomes?

We must also consider what could happen if we set a precedent of protecting medical treatments that are widely known to be harmful under the first amendment. It could leave room for a doctor who genuinely thinks that shooting your kid in the head seems like a really great way to cure your kid’s headache to be protected in doing so, under the first amendment.

It’s time for Virginia to ban the ineffective, unethical and damaging practice that is conversion “therapy”.