The state’s powerful rules committee struck down a rule today that would have banned therapists from performing conversion therapy on LGBTQ patients. The decision, which passed on a six to four vote after a four hour public hearing, allows therapists to continue to try and change the sexual or gender identity of their patients.
The Joint Committee of Administrative Rules oversees rulemaking by state agencies, and all rules must be approved by the committee before they can be fully implemented.
The state’s Family Therapy and Social Work Examining Board is an arm of the Department of Safety and Professional Services, and works to license and regulate therapists and social workers across the state.
In 2020, the board introduced a rule barring therapists from promoting or participating in conversion therapy. Under the rule, therapists who performed conversion therapy could be subjected to a fine, as well as losing their license.
But shortly after it was introduced, the rules committee put a temporary block on the rule, allowing therapists to continue to perform the practice with LGBTQ patients.
That temporary ban only lasted until the end of the legislative session, and so the rules committee met again last year to block the ban. When the legislative session came to an end at the beginning of this month, the rule technically came back into effect, and today the rules committee met to block the ban once again.
Conversion therapy is defined under the rule as any intervention or method that has the purpose of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
GLAAD, a national LGBTQ advocacy group, says that conversion therapy is a dangerous practice. They point to research from San Francisco State University, LGBTQ youth who undergo conversion therapy were more than eight times more likely to attempt suicide, and nearly six times more likely to report high levels of depression, compared to LGBTQ youth who are shown acceptance of their identity.
The practice has been banned in 20 states, and has been denounced by dozens of organizations such as the American Psychological Association, the World Health Organization, and the American Medical Association.
Marc Herstand is with the National Association of Social Workers, which has also denounced conversion therapy. At a public hearing today, Herstand lambasted the committee for trying to block the ban once again.
“This is an extremely harmful practice that causes major mental health and suicidal ideology among young people and people who receive this therapy,” Herstand says.
But the Republican-controlled committee insisted today that their decision is not based on the merits of conversion therapy, but instead on the authority the Social Work Examining Board has to enact such a rule.
Republican state Senator Stephen Nass of Whitewater, who chairs the rules committee, says the decision to ban conversion therapy belongs to the legislature.
“The legislature has their legislative duties, and the board regulates ethics,” Nass says. “This gets into a policy decision, and that’s where we get a disagreement. If we allow that to happen, this can go in, and other policies in the future. This will set a precedent, and I don’t know where it will stop.”
The state legislature has had two opportunities to decide on conversion therapy. In 2021 the Republican-led rules committee put forward a bill to permanently block the conversion therapy ban, but that bill died in committee. Democrats also put forward their own bill that year to officially ban the practice, but that too died in committee.
Proponents of the ban say that, because the legislature failed to act on the practice one way or another, the decision on whether or not to allow conversion therapy in Wisconsin should be left to the board.
Democratic Senator Kelda Roys of Madison says that not only is she morally appalled by reversing the ban, but it also allows therapists to take advantage of parents of LGBTQ children who may not know that the therapist intends on performing conversion therapy.
“If this vote today suspends the rule, everyone here should be clear about the message that it sends to LGBTQ young people in this state, to families, that Wisconsin is a place that will allow harm to come to those children, that we will not stand up and protect consumers, and that we will go against all the science,” Roys says.
If the legislature takes no other action on conversion therapy this session, the decision to lift the ban on the practice will stay in effect until March 2024.
Photo courtesy: Priscilla du Preez / UNSPLASH
