A bill that will ban parents from seeking treatment for a child in an effort to change a child’s homosexual or bisexual orientation to heterosexual orientation will be in an Iowa House subcommittee on Wednesday morning.
Under the bill, parents would not be able to seek that kind of treatment for their own child. This ban would not apply to a clergy member or religious counselor who is acting “substantially” in a pastoral or religious capacity and not in the capacity of a health care professional or to a parent or grandparent of a minor who is also a health care professional but who is acting substantially in the capacity of a parent or grandparent and not in the capacity of a health care professional.
Any health care provider who would work to change a child’s homosexual or bisexual orientation to heterosexual would be subject to disciplinary action.
The bill also bans traditional “talk therapy” despite advocates justifying the bill by bringing up physically abusive horror stories.
Republicans on the subcommittee are Bobby Kaufmann and Joe Mitchell.
