The president of a designated anti-gay hate group and frequent guest of Fox anchor Megyn Kelly has successfully pushed the Republican Party’s platform committee to add language supporting so-called “conversion” or "reparative therapy,” a harmful and discredited treatment, to the party platform.
On July 11, the Republican Party’s platform committee debated amendments to a proposed party platform ahead of the Republican National Convention. Among language approved by the committee -- which must be given a final stamp of approval by the full Republican National Committee next week -- is language endorsing “conversion therapy.”
Tony Perkins, the president of the anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council, proposed language to the GOP platform supporting “conversion” therapy, which Perkins said includes any “physical” or “emotional” therapy.
Perkins has been a frequent guest on Fox News’ The Kelly File, where anchor Megyn Kelly has described his organization's mission as “advanc[ing] faith, family, and freedom in public policy and culture from a Christian worldview” and having “strong Christian values.” Kelly has also told Perkins he is “the subject of attacks” over his opposition to marriage equality and lamented that it must be “alienating” for him to be criticized for his anti-LGBT beliefs.
According to The Dallas Morning News, the approved platform language “says parents should be allowed ‘to determine the proper treatment or therapy’ for their children”:
And taking a page from the Texas Republican Party's platform, Louisiana delegate Tony Perkins proposed language endorsing so-called “conversion” or “reparative therapy.”
The practice, which has been widely criticized by doctors and therapists, seeks to “cure” homosexuals through analysis and, oftentimes, prayer. The new platform language, which the committee approved, does not actually explicitly mention the practice, but says parents should be allowed “to determine the proper treatment or therapy” for their children.
After the meeting, Perkins said the language would extend to any “physical, emotional” therapy.
“Conversion therapy” has been repeatedly denounced by the medical community and experts as physically and emotionally harmful to patients. As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) notes, “A consensus of the vast majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other counselors and their professional organizations agree that homosexuality is a normal variation of human sexuality. Likewise, they condemn reparative therapy and other attempts to change sexual orientation.”
Perkins’ organization, the Family Research Council, has been labeled an anti-gay “hate group” by the SPLC since 2010, and Pekins himself has called pedophilia “a homosexual problem,” claimed that gay men “recruit” children into homosexuality, and endorsed a Ugandan law that would have imposed the death penalty for homosexuality.