As a survivor of two-and-a-half years of parent-initiated conversion “therapy” at the hands of an LDS Family Services therapist in the mid-2000s, please acknowledge my righteous anger at the LDS Church’s last-minute attempt to sabotage Utah’s long-awaited regulation barring licensed psychotherapists from employing torturous efforts to alter the God-given sexual orientation and gender identity of God’s precious LGBTQ children.
Please join me in proclaiming that no one — not parents, not therapists, not high-level church leaders — has a “right” to subject children to this abusive, abhorrent and decidedly ungodly practice that destroys children’s self-worth to satisfy the selfish desires of weak-minded adults and cowardly religious systems.
To LGBTQ children everywhere, feel and know that you are beautiful creatures of value and worth, that you are children, even sons and daughters, of a Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother who will always have love for you just the way you are — whole. And with that, you are unstoppable.
Drew Walker, Salt Lake City