This week the Republican Party of Texas released it’s finalized 2014 platform, which includes a line item addressing support for voluntary "reparative therapy" for gays and lesbians.
"We recognize the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle. No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to this type of therapy."
Texas GOP Chairman Steve Munisteri said the two-week delay in releasing the platform had to do with some clerical errors and nothing to do with controversy surrounding the document. But he did address the inclusion of reparative therapy in the platform, saying he doesn’t believe you can convert a LGBT individual to a heterosexual by simply talking to them.
“And I just make the point for anybody that thinks that may be the possibility: Do they think they can take a straight person to a psychiatrist and turn them gay?” Munisteri said.
Munisteri said he’s not the only one who opposes this plank in the party’s platform.
“My emails and phone calls to the office are running overwhelmingly opposed to that plank in the platform,” Munisteri said.
Munisteri said a group of Republicans at the convention led by his predecessor, Cathie Adams, were able to pass the reparative therapy resolution using a parliamentary trick.
“Because the way the platform works, once somebody calls the question on the platform it’s a parliamentary maneuver," Munisteri said. "The delegates are really forced to pass the platform as is, because if you don’t there is no platform.”
Munisteri said there is no way anyone can tell if a majority of Republicans statewide support the reparative therapy plank.
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