Jennifer Nordstrom, senior minister at the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee, stood in support of the LGBTQ community.
One of our values as a society is the protection of the most vulnerable. That class of people includes children. So, it should not have been a surprise when the Milwaukee Common Council voted to ban conversion therapy for minors. Conversion therapy is intended to convert a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity. For clarification, conversion therapy is also known as “reparative therapy” implying that same-sex attraction is something to “repair.” In fact, in 2014, leaders of the infamous Exodus movement that preached conversion therapy have begged forgiveness for those they harmed in the pursuit of what has otherwise been condemned by real medical and mental health professionals as a dangerous pseudo-science. Besides, buttressing the local debate was the precedence of nine states and 35 cities that already ban conversion therapy. Maine’s ban is in the works.
The thing is, even with the ban, there is a religious exemption so churches are free to practice the mumbo-jumbo of exorcisms to chase out the demons they associate with homosexuality and continue to defy 21st-century reality. Remember the Wisconsin parents whose diabetic daughter died when they refused her medical care? Conversion therapy is based on that same thought process. Oh, and for killing their daughter, they got a mild six-month prison sentence spread over six years.
But what should have been a unanimous vote was not. What is especially egregious about the two opposition votes of Messrs. Bob Donovan and Mark Borkowski and the abstention by Mr. Russell W. Stamper II is that it reveals the trio’s refusal to recognize science. Rather, with cruel disgrace and without remorse, they sacrificed any semblance of leadership for the sake of a few votes. Ironically, this took place during Easter Week. Their betrayal had moral equivalence to the 30 pieces of silver.
The collateral damage of such things, like the tens of thousands of annual deaths by guns, seems to be the acceptable norm in our democracy where we’re supposedly guaranteed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Indulging any group whose twisted religious or constitutional beliefs cause specific and measurable harm to others should not be the role of government officials. Protecting their potential victims should be.
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. One might hope our lawmakers would take that to heart and place their credibility above ideology. Rather than waste precious time and effort encouraging quackery, they might better focus on Milwaukee’s many causes of child abuse: drugs, poverty, violence, poor education, neglect and sex trafficking.
March was also Women’s History Month. One woman who has recently made history identifies as bisexual. She is Emma González, a high school senior and survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre who is now a political activist fighting for sane gun control. A GOP candidate running for Maine’s House of Representatives, Leslie Gibson, made the mistake of calling her a “skinhead lesbian.” He has since dropped out of the race. Perhaps Messrs. Donovan, Borkowski and Stamper, as well as any others who waver when confronted by choices such as recently demonstrated, can find inspiration in the moral and civic bravery of this young woman and act as the public servants they were elected to be.
