FLORIDA: North Bay Village Becomes State’s 8th Town To Ban Ex-Gay Torture As Statewide Bill Languishes

Via press release from the South Florida LGBT rights group SAVE:

On Tuesday night, North Bay Village voted to enact its own local ban on so-called conversion therapy. At the urging of SAVE, the Village, located just outside of Miami, became the latest jurisdiction in South Florida to adopt such a ban.

“This year we’re hitting the ground running in the fight to defend LGBTQ equality,” said SAVE Executive Director Tony Lima, after the successful vote at the North Bay Village Commission. “Thank you to the Commission and to Mayor Connie Leon Kreps, a longtime ally of SAVE and the LGBTQ community, for showing leadership in sponsoring and unanimously passing this critical proposal.”

In January, SAVE hailed the introduction of HB 273, a bill that would ban the abusive and discredited practice of so-called LGBTQ conversion therapy statewide, by State Representative David Richardson of Miami Beach in the Florida State House. That bill awaits consideration and markup. The moves are the latest in SAVE’s campaign to outlaw so-called conversion therapy in Florida, which was spurred by the state legislature’s failure last year to pass an identical ban.

North Bay Village joins Miami, Miami Beach, Wilton Manors, West Palm Beach, Boynton Beach, Riviera Beach, and Lake Worth in banning ex-gay torture. SAVE stands for Safeguarding American Values for Everyone.

RELATED: North Bay Village, population 6700, was created in the 1940s with landfill dredged from Biscayne Bay and later became nationally known for nightclubs favored by Hollywood’s Rat Pack. (Dean Martin owned one of the clubs.) The streets of Treasure Island, the larger of the two, take their names from the Robert Louis Stevenson novel.