New York City to repeal ban on gay 'conversion therapy' amid legal battle
The New York city council is planning to repeal a two-year-old ban on “gay conversion therapy” to avoid a costly uphill legal fight. The city’s openly gay Council Speaker Corey Johnson introduced a bill to repeal a measure passed in 2017 banning the sale of “services intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” With a conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court makeup, Johnson doesn’t seem to want the law to be tested in the legal system. He vowed that the council would act quickly to repeal the law. Obviously I didn’t want to repeal this,” Johnson was quoted as saying. “I don’t want to be someone who is giving in to these right-wing groups. But the Supreme Court has become conservative; the Second Circuit, which oversees New York, has become more conservative.” The city's ban is being challenged by the conservative religious freedom legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has won nine Supreme Court cases in the last seven years. ADF’s law