Texas GOP Keeps Ex-Gay Torture In Platform

The Texas Observer reports:

A Texas GOP committee rejected an effort Wednesday to remove support for so-called ex-gay therapy from the party’s platform, according to Jeff Davis, president of the LGBT group Log Cabin Republicans of Texas. Instead, the panel tweaked some language in the plank but left it mostly intact.

At the party’s state convention in Dallas, Davis told a temporary platform committee that virtually all of the major medical and mental health organizations have come out against reparative therapy, from the American Psychological Association to the American Medical Association and the American Counseling Association.

Unswayed, the committee instead adopted new language submitted by “ex-gay” activist Jeremy Schwab [photo], the author of the original plank, Davis said.

Schwab’s language replaces “Reparative Therapy” in the heading of the plank with “Counseling and Therapy,” and replaces “reparative therapy” in the body of the plank with “sexual orientation change efforts,” Davis said.

Schwab himself is a former member of Log Cabin Republicans.