Label
Council President Steel
Title
Repealing Toledo Municipal Code Chapter 554 "Employment, Real Estate Discrimination", enacting a new Chapter 554, "Discrimination Prohibited" to include gender identity as a protected class and set forth additional prohibitions.
Body
SUMMARY & BACKGROUND:
The City of Toledo has a governmental interest in protecting all citizens from discrimination and protecting the physical and psychological well-being of all citizens, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals and in protecting its citizens against exposure to serious harms caused by sexual orientation change efforts. It is the desire of the Council to prohibit within the geographic boundaries of the City of Toledo the use of sexual orientation or gender identity change, including reparative and conversion therapy, which have been demonstrated to be harmful to the physical and psychological well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons.
The American Psychiatric Association in December 1998 published a position statement opposing any psychiatric treatment, including reparative or conversion therapy, based upon the assumption that a patient should change his or her sexual orientation. The American Psychological Association's Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation ("APA Task Force") concluded that sexual orientation change efforts can pose critical health risks to lesbian, gay and bisexual people, including, among other things, confusion, depression, social withdrawal, suicidality, substance abuse, self-hatred, high-risk sexual behaviors, and a feeling of being dehumanized. The American Psychiatric Association further published a position statement in March of 2000 in which it stated "Psychotherapeutic modalities to convert or 'repair' homosexuality are based on developmental theories whose scientific validity is questionable. Furthermore, anecdotal reports of 'cures' are counterbalanced by anecdotal claims ...
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