New bill to ban gay conversion therapy gives two fingers to Mike Pence by bearing his name
By Will Stroude
A New York official has decided to make a statement after proposing local legislation to ban gay ‘conversion’ therapy by naming the bill after one of the damaging practice’s most high-profile supporters – US Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
Legislator Patrick Burke has proposed that the law be named, the ‘Prevention of Emotional Neglect and Childhood Endangerment Law’ – aka the P.E.N.C.E. law.
“Mike Pence is probably going to have the most power of any vice president in the history of our country and he has openly advocated for conversion therapy,” Burke told news outlet WBFO.
“I want that to sink into people. I want them to realise it’s a serious issue of abuse of children, Flatly, whether they are gay or not, it’s abuse. Then you have a man who is going to have enormous power over all of us, who advocates for it.”
Pence, who served as Governor of Indiana before becoming Donald Trump’s presidential running-mate, has previously expressed support for the widely discredited practice of gay ‘conversion’ therapy, which can often involve abusive techniques including ‘exorcism’ and electro-shock therapy to ‘cure’ people of their natural sexual impulses.
The Washington Post reports that, “when he was running for Congress in 2000, Pence’s website declared that money set aside by the federal CARE Act, to help indigent HIV/AIDS patients, also be ‘directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior’.”
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