AUGUSTA – The Maine House on Monday voted to sustain the governor’s veto of a bill seeking to ban the practice commonly known as “conversion therapy.” The vote was 79-61, largely along party lines. 

“LGBTQ youth do not have a defect or disorder. They do not need to be repaired,” said Rep. Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, the bill’s sponsor. “This practice has no scientific validity and has been shown to cause serious harms to patients — especially minors, who are often forced or coerced to participate.”

Thirteen states, including neighboring New Hampshire, have laws prohibiting the practice. LePage is the only governor in the country to have vetoed such a measure. Six governors who have signed similar legislation are Republicans and seven are Democrats.

Fecteau’s bill sought to prohibit licensed medical and mental health professionals in Maine from engaging in practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, also known as “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy.”

“Young people should know that they have leaders in their Legislature whose actions speak louder than the governor’s letter. That, if not today, soon bullying in the form of conversion therapy will not be condoned by the law,” said Fecteau. “Soon Maine will join Republicans, Democrats and Independents in other states who said ‘live and let live’ rather than ‘change or be gone.’”

“This bipartisan legislation would have protected Maine’s LGBTQ youth from a practice that amounts to nothing less than child abuse,” HRC National Field Director Marty Rouse said in an email statement Monday. “Governor LePage’s shameful decision to veto these life-saving protections and the House’s failure to override that veto demonstrates the critical importance of elections. It’s essential that fair-minded Mainers turn out to vote and ensure the lawmakers who represent them put these protections for Maine’s LGBTQ youth ahead of petty politics.” 

Every major medical and mental health organization has rejected conversion therapy as unnecessary, ineffective, and dangerous, according to a statement from the Maine Legislature House Democratic Office. According to the American Psychological Association, conversion therapy can result in depression, guilt, helplessness, shame, social withdrawal, hostility and blame toward parents, anxiety, drug use, homelessness, and suicide.

The American Association of Christian Counselors, a 50,000-member organization, removed conversion therapy as an accepted practice in its code of ethics in 2014, stating instead that “[c]ounselors acknowledge the client’s fundamental right to self-determination and further understand that deeply held religious values and beliefs may conflict with same-sex attraction and/or behavior, resulting in anxiety, depression, stress, and inner turmoil.”

At a public hearing on the measure earlier this year, Peter Michaud of the Maine Medical Association spoke on behalf of the organization in support of the bill’s passage.

“So-called ‘conversion therapy’ is not therapy,” Michaud said. “Instead, it is a coercive attempt to force a person to give up their personal identity or orientation and adopt something that is completely unnatural to them. It has no scientific basis whatsoever.”