Utah lawmaker's LGBT posts anger activists
1 / 2Rep. Craig Hall, R-West Valley City confers with Judiciary chair Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, during the House Judiciary Committee meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Tuesday, March 5, 2019. Hall watched lawmakers dismantle his bill to end conversion therapy and replace it with an alternative that he says would do nothing to stop the widely-discredited practice.
The Utah effort got momentum amid a national campaign to ban the practice this year. Fifteen other states have passed laws, and advocates in Utah said it would help combat an alarming spike in youth suicide. In 2013 comments reviewed by the AP and confirmed by two family members, Lisonbee wondered whether it was"possible that living a homosexual lifestyle may cause individuals to choose to commit suicide?"
Asked Thursday about the comments that have since been removed, Lisonbee didn't disavow them but said they came in an occasionally heated debate between members of her family over a story about same-sex marriage and the faith widely known as the Mormon church.Asked about the comment on suicide, she pointed to legislative testimony by a man who said he felt despondent about his attraction to other men until he underwent therapy that helped him meet and marry a woman.
But activists say therapists practicing conversion therapy generally don't use outdated, painful techniques, and her revisions still would have allowed practices they do employ to try to change behavior and feelings.
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