Donald Trump adviser, who thinks AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality, shares support for traumatising conversion therapy
Donald Trump reportedly hired Ellis as he was impressed by her TV appearances (Facebook/Jenna Ellis)
Donald Trump legal advisor Jenna Ellis is coming under fire for retweeting an article that defends traumatising and harmful conversion therapy for LGBT+ people.
Ellis – who previously faced backlash for claiming that HIV and AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality – retweeted the article by Paul Dirks for The Public Discourse.
Dirks, who is a pastor, wrote in the article that a conversion therapy ban is currently being considered by the Canadian Senate – and went on to argue that such a ban would be harmful to LGBT+ people.
He bizarrely claimed that activists want to ban conversion therapy “in favour of experimental drug treatments and surgeries” for trans people – an unfounded claim that is not based in evidence.
Dirks went on to wheel out the harmful view, recently propagated by none other than Harry Potter author JK Rowling, that gay people are becoming trans as a kind of “conversion therapy”.
There is no evidence to back up this harmful viewpoint, but it is frequently wheeled out to argue against trans people having basic rights and freedoms.
Dirks’ article goes on to claim that people may become gay because of childhood sexual abuse – another harmful and untrue claim – and links queer identities to family dysfunction, because we’ve obviously never heard that one before.
“A compassionate approach to trauma requires that individuals ought to be able to access therapy, in order to explore the relationship of these adverse experiences to their sexuality,” Dirks concluded.
Donald Trump advisor Jenna Ellis retweeted the conversion therapy article to almost 200,000 people.
Ellis, who describes herself as a senior legal advisor to the Donald Trump campaign, happily retweeted the article to her almost 200,000 Twitter followers.
Needless to say, the article fails to mention any of the compelling arguments put forward by real, actual LGBT+ people about conversion therapy.
In short, conversion therapy is defined as an attempt to change a person’s sexual or gender identity. Despite advancements and changes in the way people understand LGBT+ identities, the practice is still relatively common across the world.
It has been banned in some countries, such as Malta and Germany, and conversion therapy for minors has been banned in a number of states in America.
Jenna Ellis retweeted the article (Twitter)
These bans were not implemented without good reason.
Conversion therapy has been condemned by most major psychiatric bodies and was recently called a form of torture in a United Nations report.
Meanwhile, a UK survey conducted last year found that one in five conversion therapy survivors later attempted suicide, while two in five said they had experienced suicidal thoughts.
Less than a third said they had gone on to lead “a happy and fulfilled life”.
None of these facts are enough, apparently, to sway conversion therapy advocates.
Jenna Ellis joined the Trump campaign in January.
Ellis, a former news pundit, was appointed to the Trump team in January.
She has made no efforts to hide her strongly anti-LGBT+ views and has a long history of tirades against “the homosexual lifestyle”.
Ellis is a vocal Christian who believes gay and bisexual men have higher rates of HIV because “we cannot escape God’s moral law and His supremacy.”
She has also claimed that Christians cannot follow God while they accept, condone, or participate in homosexuality.
This is not the first time she has made her views on conversion therapy clear.
She has actively worked against conversion therapy bans, testifying in 2019 at a Colorado House committee hearing against a bill protecting youth from the harmful and discredited practice.
None of these views preclude Ellis from a having role in Trump’s re-election campaign.
PinkNews has contacted the Donald Trump campaign for comment.
