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Gay conversion therapy is an attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. It’s most often pushed onto teenagers by religious parents who can’t accept their child’s sexuality and believe that it can be prayed away or altered through therapy.
These practices can include electroshock therapy and sometimes involve a variety of shaming, emotionally traumatic or physically painful stimuli to make their victims associate those stimuli with their LGBTQ identities.
Not only are these practices completely inhumane but studies show they are ineffective.
A 2007 report by an American Psychological Association task force found that “results of scientifically valid research indicate that it is unlikely that individuals will be able to reduce same-sex attractions or increase other-sex sexual attractions through [sexual orientation change efforts].”
Conversion therapy enacts a tremendous psychological toll on teens and has been shown to lead to depression, anxiety, drug use, homelessness, and suicide.
One of the most traumatizing elements of the therapy is that teen believe they are being rejected by their families who do not support their sexuality. These teens are eight times more likely to have attempted suicide. Nearly six times as likely to report high levels of depression and three times more likely to be at high risk for HIV and STDs.
Due to its overwhelmingly negative psychological effects, gay conversion therapy is banned in Switzerland and parts of Australia, Canada, and the U.S.
Germany has just joined the group of countries with bans on the practice. The country’s parliament passed a law making conversion therapy illegal for anyone under the age of 18.
Before the law was passed approximately 1,000 German teens were forced into conversion therapy every year in Germany.
Those who break the law can face up to a year in person or a €30,000 ($32,535) fine.
The parliament passed a strong bill so that it could stand during court challenges and let the LGBT community know that the practice is unacceptable.
“They should feel strengthened when the state when society when Parliament makes it clear: we do not want that in this country,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said.
Some critics argue that the law didn’t go far enough. Germany’s Green party believes that the law should extend to those 26 years of age. The Left Party believes it should be illegal for anyone 27 and under.
In the U.S., 21 states have laws that ban conversion therapy for minors in some form or another. Twenty-nine states have no law or policy. According to LGBTMap, approximately 50% of the country’s LGBT population lives in states with no laws or policies banning conversion therapy for minors.
The American Medical Association announced last November that it supports a country-wide ban on gay conversion therapy. “It is clear to the AMA that the conversion therapy needs to end in the United States given the risk of deliberate harm to LGBTQ people,” said AMA board member William E. Kobler in a statement.
Last year, Democratic Representative Ted Lieu of California introduced the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act of 2019 which would ban the practice throughout the entire country. It has 135 Democratic co-sponsors and awaits a vote in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Schedule day in the NFL this year is a bit disappointing depending on your perspective. To those fearing the worst for our general return to normalcy, knowing the 17-week NFL schedule that might not happen as expected as a strange bit of fan fiction betraying how we live in reality.
To those who want hope beyond rationality, though, schedule day is an exciting chance to visualize your team’s sterling record as you simulate the upcoming football campaign and your path to Super Bowl glory. And some teams truly do go all-out when it comes to announcing it these days. Take the Detroit Lions, for example, whose social team has certainly spent a lot of time in Animal Crossing: New Horizons to make some delightful jokes and references to the 16 games the Lions hope to play this season.
Big shout out to @animalcrossing for holding it down while we wait for football season. #animalcrossingnewhorizons #acnh #animalcrossing pic.twitter.com/RcvUKq91Cb
— Detroit Lions (@Lions) May 8, 2020
Each week on the schedule features something different happening in Animal Crossing, my favorite of which is using Blathers’ disdain for bugs and insects to disparage Washington.
Other fun moments include a Thanksgiving feast for the Lions’ home game against the Texans on Thanksgiving Day and a Tom Brady joke for the team’s game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Oh, and by not using Redd’s ship for a Bucs joke, the team very slyly referenced Viking ships and perhaps another moment the team was infamous for about a decade ago.
If you’ve played the game, watching them find little ways to reference teams and players using in-game animation and some gentle editing is really inspiring. For example, the crafting animation now looks like a Lions fan beating the hell out of a Green Bay Packers helmet with a hammer.
The team even put out some custom in-game Lions gear designs for fans, which is really going the extra mile here. Props to the Lions staff for knowing what gamers have been obsessing over in recent weeks and making a themselves a great excuse to play Animal Crossing during work hours.
Tonight on the WWE Friday Night Smackdown open discussion thread:
Universal Champion Braun Strowman and Bray Wyatt share a storied past and are on a brutal collision course at WWE Money In The Bank. What will happen when the two combatants come together just two nights before their title showdown?
Wyatt has been content with sending messages to his former family member from the comfort of his Firefly Fun House abode, but Strowman is tired of the puppet show. The Universal Champion invited the twisted Superstar to come find him and meet face to face this week on Friday Night SmackDown.
What message will Wyatt have in store for his former “Black Sheep” in person? (via WWE.com)
On tonight’s card: Strowman and Wyatt go face to face like a couple of silver spoons, Daniel Bryan and Drew Gulak team up with a mystery partner that’s definitely not Elias against King Corbin and Sami Zayn’s abandoned friends, Fire and Desire explodes, “Tamina has pinned the Smackdown Women’s Champion,” and Jeff Hardy returns to get kicked in the face.
As always, give a thumbs up to any comments from tonight’s open thread you enjoy and we’ll include 10 of the best in tomorrow’s Best and Worst of Friday Night Smackdown on Fox report. Make sure to flip your comments to “newest” in the drop down menu under “discussion,” and enjoy the show!