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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Spin Control

WaLeg Day 100: Aversion therapy bill likely dead

OLYMPIA – A bill to ban therapies that try to change the sexual orientation of homosexual youths is likely dead for this legislative session.

Although both chambers gave strong support to some different proposals that would ban certain therapies, the Senate refused Tuesday to go as far as the House and voted down an effort to continue discussions.

“It’s disappointing,” bill sponsor Sen. Marko Liias said after the Senate refused to bring up the revised bill on a 22-27 vote. The issue is unlikely to be revived in this session, but will probably return next year, he said.

At issue, said Liias, D-Lynnwood, was the inclusion of conversion therapy, sometimes known as talk therapy, that was added to the proposed ban by the House.

The Senate had given unanimous approval to the original bill, which banned “aversion therapy” which can include physical therapies like ice baths or electric shock for therapists trying to change the sexual orientation of anyone under 18. The House added talk therapy, which some supporters said can be aggressive verbal sessions that are generally unsuccessful.

Liias said those practices don’t change a patient’s sexual orientation but can leave them with long-term psychological effects like depression. They’ve been banned in some states and should be banned in Washington, he said.

But opponents in the House said banning conversion therapy would infringe on free speech protections in the counselor-patient relationship, and if the counselor was connected to a church, on some religious freedoms. The new version passed the House on a slimmer 60-37 vote.

With only five days left in the regular session, the Majority Coalition of 25 Republicans and one Democrat had not scheduled the revised bill for a vote. Liias asked to have it reconsidered, with the hope of sending it back to the House with a note the Senate was not going to agree to the addition of talk therapy.

Majority Leader Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, objected, saying the bill is “significantly different” than the version the Senate originally approved.

Although he called the proposal “a work in progress,” Schoesler called for the members of the majority coalition to vote against Liias’s effort to give the House a chance to take the amendments out and send back the original bill.



Jim Camden
Jim Camden joined The Spokesman-Review in 1981 and retired in 2021. He is currently the political and state government correspondent covering Washington state.

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