Ken Blackwell, tapped last week by President-elect Donald Trump to head domestic policy during the businessman's transition to the White House, has made anti-LGBT statements for years. Among them: Homosexuality is a sin, and gay people, just like petty thieves and fire-setters, can be rehabilitated.
The Ohio politician has long endorsed a controversial mental health practice known as conversion therapy or reparative therapy. The goal is to cure a person of his or her homosexuality, and in the case of transgender people, to reaffirm the gender into which they were born.
In the past, treatments have included everything from inducing vomiting to using mild electric shock while patients viewed homoerotic images. Since the 1990s, however, the therapy has been denounced by many medical and scientific societies and even outlawed in a handful of states. In 2015, the Obama administration expressed disapproval of the practice after Leelah Alcorn, a 17-year-old transgender teen in Ohio, took her life after being forced by her parents to undergo conversion counseling.
While Blackwell will be overseeing a wide swath of domestic issues facing the new administration, one big question facing the LGBT community is whether a Trump administration will promote the discredited therapy.
Looordttt I hope they give me my own room,perfume, personal products,with cable tv and warm water in the conversion concentration camp.Cause this is going from a 10 to 1000 REAL QUICK!!
Pro LGBTQ, they said. He's a liberal in disguise, they said. He'll fight for everyone's rights, they said. Stop overreacting, they said. Give him a chance, they said.