NYC Considers Comprehensive Ex-Gay Torture Ban

The New York Daily News reports:

Conversion therapy that aims to turn gay people straight would be banned in New York under a new bill in the City Council. The proposal — sponsored by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, and being fast-tracked to a hearing Monday — would make it illegal for anyone to charge a fee to perform therapy to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It goes beyond legislation to ban the practice for minors that has passed elsewhere in the country by prohibiting it for adults as well.

“The idea that you can change a person’s sexual identity though some kind of conversion therapy is just barbaric, just ridiculous,” Mark-Viverito told the Daily News. In New York, Gov. Cuomo has signed an order prohibiting health insurance companies from covering gay conversion therapy. State legislation to outlaw the practice for minors has passed the state Assembly several times, most recently in April, but it’s never made it through the Republican-controlled Senate.

Under the proposed law, ex-torture practitioners would be fined $1000 for every instance of charging their victims.