I live in a small city of 100000 people. We are fortunate to have mayors and councils who are agreeable and make sound decisions for the city. Most issues at council are settled by concensus.
However, last week an issue came up and the behavior was far from agreeable.
Most towns and cities in this area have passed motions to ban conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is a belief that ones sexual orientation can be changed by therapy. Now the believers of this idea play fast and loose with the term therapy. This therapy in some cases can be very abusive . There isn't evidence that sexual orientation can be changed . If you threaten and scare the hell out of somebody they may say that they change their sexual orientation but it's only words.
Now the intention of towns and cities banning conversion therapy is good but they do not have any way to enforce the issue.
So getting back to our council. They were definitely not on the same page on this issue. One or two of them were very much against a ban on conversion therapy. Things got nasty before they decided to call the thing off.
One of the members of council is LDS (Latter Day Saints (Morman) and they do not have any tolerance toward LGBT issues. Just the other day one of their colleges pushed a ban on same sex activities...holding hands in public.
So a council that prided itself in being inclusive fumbled the ball. I'm not happy with my city council
We are much stronger if we include people in our communities. We are better people if we reach out to others. We have to be able to accept differences from some people but those differences should not demand that everyone conform.
One of the things I spent a few years of my life was teaching aboriginal people. We had the mistaken idea that we could make indigenous people into nice little white people. Look at the disaster we made.
