More details have emerged about the Republican Party committee meeting last month at which Tony Perkins is said to have tried to get the party to make support for gay conversion therapy part of its official platform.
According to The Daily Beast, the influential head of the conservative campaign group the Family Research Council made his play at a subcommittee meeting in Cleveland last month at which the party's official policies were debated. Sources told the outlet that Perkins read a proposal suggesting parents had the right to send their minor children to gay conversion therapy sessions. A Republican platform committee member from New York, Annie Dickerson, who is supportive of LGBT rights, immediately spoke up and called the proposal "outrageous".
A watered-down version of the proposal was included in the party platform reading: "We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children."
Dickerson told The Daily Beast: "It went from explicit to implicit recognition, saving face for Perkins and giving him, at least, a dog whistle to his community."
Rachel Hoff, the first openly LGBT member of the Republican platform committee, told the Beast: "It shows that there are segments – I'm sure a minority segment in the party – that want to overstep the bounds of the rules of government, politics, and the Constitution and reinforce this backward, harmful, damaging practice, which has demonstrated to lead LGBT individuals to become suicidal and kill themselves."
However, Perkins denied that the discussion had been about conversion therapy. "In the discussion of the amendment, there was no mention of 'conversion therapy,' and the therapy was a part of the overall amendment that addressed medical treatment and abortion," he said. "Whether intentional or not, reports have been misleading in portraying this as being all about homosexuality when it was an issue of parental rights.
"I am satisfied with the current language in the platform."
Gay conversion therapy, which seeks to re-orientate someone's sexuality from homosexual to heterosexual, is a controversial practice that is not accepted in mainstream psychotherapy.
