‘Irony’: Activists pushing LGBT ideologies want children to have only 1 option
County bars health care providers from helping confused kids, insists they be sent ‘on a pathway towards puberty blockers, hormones, and sex change surgeries’
LGBT activists are driving the transgender agenda forward in Ohio despite President Donald Trump’s mission to stop child sex-changes.
Cuyahoga County became the first Ohio county to ban healthcare professionals from helping gender-confused children become comfortable with their natural sex through therapy in an ordinance passed by the county council on Sept. 9. The ordinance defines “conversion therapy” as “any practice or procedure that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” considering such efforts to be unlawful behavior. The ban says healthcare providers who engage in so-called conversion therapy operate under the “erroneous assumption that non-heterosexual, non-cisgender identities are mental disorders” and that “gender identity can and should be changed.”
Transgender activists believe a mismatch can occur between the sex a person feels like and their biology, which can be corrected through harmful medical interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex-change surgeries.
Healthcare professionals in Cuyahoga County who help gender-confused children identify as their sex can now face civil penalties and investigation from their licensing board, under the ban. However, healthcare professionals can still assist minors attempting to “transition” or convert to another sex which Cuyahoga County does not consider to be a form of conversion therapy.
“Mental health professionals should not be barred from helping children explore and accept their biological sex as part of understanding their identity. This should never be labeled conversion therapy, and yet Cuyahoga County is erroneously doing just that,” Dr. Kurt Miceli, medical director of Do No Harm, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“If anything, efforts to change one’s sex arguably seem more akin to conversion therapy — an irony underscored by Cuyahoga County’s decision to explicitly exclude gender transition from its definition of the practice. Therapists and other healthcare providers must be able to utilize their trade to help confused kids, not automatically place them on a pathway towards puberty blockers, hormones, and sex change surgeries,” said Miceli.
Brandon West, a 23-year-old Ohio-based LGBT activist, took credit for the Cuyahoga County Conversion therapy ban in an online post calling it “my team and I’s Cuyahoga County conversion ‘therapy’ ban.” West is leading an initiative pushing for cities and counties across Ohio to implement similar “conversion therapy” bans and posted a draft of the Cuyahoga County ban on his website as a resource to guide local politicians interested in adopting similar resolutions. On his website, West wrote that one of the “main challenges” of the initiative is “those who believe conversion therapy should remain a matter of personal choice or religious freedom.”
West did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
“These speech restrictions are unbelievably unconstitutional and the idea of the government inserting itself into a counseling environment like this — is absurd,” Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue in Ohio, told the DCNF.
“There is no crisis of gay kids being abused by counselors in Cuyahoga County. This is a made up problem. What is real in Cuyahoga County is crashing literacy rates in the Cleveland Public Schools, is the violence in our communities, is poverty, is addiction. These elected officials in Cuyahoga County and the city of Cleveland, they have no answers to actually help the people in their community, so they pass things like these in order to pound their chest and show how virtuous they are,” Baer said.
Cleveland is located in Cuyahoga County and its City Council passed a similar so-called conversion therapy ban in October 2022.
The Supreme Court is set to address the constitutionality of conversion therapy bans in early October when it takes up Chiles v. Salazar. Kaley Chiles is a Colorado based Christian counselor who claims Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy has violated her First Amendment rights. The petition filed by Alliance Defending Freedom argues conversation therapy bans prevent children from receiving critical mental health services and describes how therapy helped a teen girl resolve her gender distress without medical interventions.
“The only conversion therapy actually taking place is the dangerous and disproven attempt to transition children into the opposite sex through chemical and surgical mutilation. Fortunately, Ohio has wisely banned this barbaric practice statewide,” Ohio state Rep. Gary Click, who sponsored the SAFE Act which banned pediatric sex changes in January 2024, told the DCNF.
“Children who experience mental health distress over their identities and orientation are entitled to the same type of proven and evidence-based care as children experiencing other types of body dysmorphia and eating disorders. Cognitive and dialectical behavior therapy has proven to be safe and effective in treating individuals experiencing mental and emotional distress. Politicians should avoid demonizing families and politicizing healthcare in opposition to families who are only seeking the best outcomes for their children through love, patience, and professional guidance,” Click told the DCNF.
Cuyahoga County noted in the ordinance that several major healthcare organizations which strongly support child sex-changes, including American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Medical Association (AMA) and American Psychological Association, also condemn the use of so-called conversion therapy in minors.
The APA, which has a membership of more than 170,000 psychologists, strongly encouraged therapists to “use gender-affirming practices when addressing gender identity issues” and supported sex-change medical interventions in a February 2021 resolution against Gender Identity Change Efforts (GICE). The APA defined gender identity as a person’s “internal feeling” of being male, female or a “blend” of both sexes. The resolution opposed GICE efforts, noting such attempts could cause “emotional distress” and “low self-worth.”
Cuyahoga County defended the ban in a statement provided to the DCNF.
“The ordinance does not restrict free speech or access to legitimate mental health services; it narrowly regulates a specific discredited practice deemed harmful to minors,” a representative from Cuyahoga County told the DCNF.
“The ordinance fully complies with Ohio and federal law. It does not authorize practices prohibited under state law. The intent is to protect minors from harmful and discredited practices while ensuring full compliance with existing laws,” a representative from Cuyahoga County told the DCNF.
Cuyahoga County has long been a hotbed of left-wing LGBT policies. In 2017, Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) was one of four social services agencies nationwide chosen as a site for federally funded research that aimed to develop and evaluate transgender ideology-based child welfare interventions. The interventions suggest parents and caregivers who do not affirm a child’s sexual orientation or gender confusion are unsafe. These interventions included trainings to help convince parents to embrace their child’s gender confusion and assist religious families in reconciling their faith with LGBT affirmation.
Emails uncovered by the DCNF revealed Cuyahoga County played a critical role in shaping an April 2024 Biden Administration rule which mandated that children in the foster care system that identify as LGBT be placed in homes that affirm gender ideology.
“We actually had actual conversion therapy, where children’s hospitals were jacking kids full of cross sex hormones and telling and pressuring and bullying parents into doing transgender medicine on kids, and these people said nothing about the SAFE Act that Gary Click sponsored to ban transgender medicine on kids. This is the worst type of political posturing,” said Baer.
“These aren’t serious people, but they’re having serious harm. And that’s what happens when you allow clowns into the county commissioner offices. They’re turning a blind eye to the violence in Cleveland, to the lack of jobs in Cleveland, to the drug addiction there,” said Baer.
