Google resists pressure to pull LGBT “conversion therapy” app

This is used exclusively to injure LGBT folks. Sexuality is not something that can be channged at will, and attempting to do so causes immense harm. I can guarantee a good chunk of this app's audience are LGBT teens.

Look, I'm gay, and grew up in a very conservative area. While my parents were good, growing up closeted and seeing constant moral disapproval caused mental damage that took me some time as an adult to overcome. I was lucky.

I can tell you are straight. Please don't make assumptions about the damage that anti-LGBT rhetoric does.

Folks commonly confuse freedom of speech with freedom from consequences of speech. This shouldn't be legally banned, but companies are within their rights to not do business with these whackadoos.

They shouldn't do business with them if they value equality of humans. They don't allow apps that advocate racism. Anti-LGBT bias is no different.

It's hard to take that too seriously if you know the reality of how organizations like this operate. They know how to make themselves seems innocuous but they are a part of a larger system of psychological abuse and violence.

You can be against what someone is saying and for someone being able to say it.

I think that's lost on a lot of people, I'm glad you point this out.

The open letter also clearly states "LHM does not... assert its views publicly".

LHM preaches that sexual orientation can be changed through religious intervention.[1] What do you think conversion therapy is?

[1] https://livehope.org/2018/08/13/a-different-gospel/

Why should we trust them when they say that?

When I first saw this app in the news, I downloaded it to see how this "conversion therapy" app worked. I was expecting step-by-step instructions on how to go from gay to straight, but instead I got an app for listening to Bible verses and devotionals. It's as much a "conversion therapy" app as any other conservative Christian app. I deleted the app because I have no use for it, but the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot.

>There are no easy ways to get 3rd party apps onto a device.

FWIW, on Android, it's as simple as downloading a package and allowing installation from 'unknown sources'. It's a trivial and common process.

Conversion Therapy seems a lot like violence to me...

Although I do agree with you on locked down app stores being a bad idea.

Edit: also conversion therapy isn't really what this thing was anyway it seems.

On iPhone this is true, but it's easy as heck on Android. You can just download an APK from the Web and install it, or you can install a secondary repository like APKPure if you want a centralized source. Having done both several times, I'd say it is generally harder to install an app that isn't in your distro's standard repo on Linux than it is to install an app outside the Play Store on Android.

>At what point do these type of restrictions affect peoples' freedom of religion?

At the point they don't have any other options. They can teach their conversion therapy in person if they want. They can make websites. They can send out newsletters. They can write books. Why should Google, Apple, MS, or anyone else be forced to host this app? It's clear that the "community standards" don't allow for apps like this, because 139k people want it out and ~20 want the app to stay.

> They literally control big parts of the medium for the general public

Conversion therapy is not for the "general public." It's an anti-science and extremist form of homophobia with potentially serious consequences for the victims. And honestly, that's a charitable interpretation.

Honestly this is the exact sort of shit that should be pulled by any company with a backbone.

At the point that someone tries to block them from being distributed across public infrastructure like the internet.

As long as we're talking about Google's app store, we're limited to talking about Google's terms of service and the relative pressure from the outside groups to force them to either keep/remove the app or suffer bad PR from said groups.

I'm seeing that as well. For a while I was under the impression that "conversion therapy" was meant to refer to outdated and disproved forms of therapy like electric shocks that were now considered inhumane. But this app just seems like some religious reading to convince you not to be gay.

Seems like a matter of consistency more than anything. Google has already decided to make an app store that excludes things like overt racism. Seems like if you're going to exclude racism you should also exclude homophobia. Whether we should tolerate both these people is an interesting question, but not the issue in this case.

Conversion therapy does hurt people.

Intolerance of intolerance seems to go hand-in-glove with tolerance.

Bullies need a victim, but they also need most other people to look the other way.

These apps are mostly used on teenagers, with pressure from their parents and mentors. There's a fine line between bad parenting and bullying your kids, and there are certainly arguments about where that line is.

All I know is my kid has two friends who fantasize about coming to live at our house (or getting emancipated) because their parents are homophobes. Some people know what kind of adult they're going to be, others are surprised by it, but if you're into puberty and think you probably aren't cisgendered, then I'm confident that you aren't destined to be a poster child for heteronormativity.

At any rate, part of becoming an independent adult is learning to rely on yourself, on your instincts, on your own sense of right and wrong. If your parents spend your entire teen years telling you that you can't trust yourself, that's pretty fucked up.

> Does being liberal mean you are tolerant only if it suits your point of view?

Empirically, yes, it does. It's true that it shouldn't, as you seem to be implying, but people seem to like thinking their enemies are irredeemably evil monsters, and liberalism isn't magically immune to that.

Declaring yourself as 'Liberal' is a way to identify yourself as someone who believes in a series of popularized beliefs held by the American Left (in this context I think it is a US-centric topic). In Silicon Valley these beliefs are extremely popular thus there is a large benefit for a company or individual to project themselves as a strong member of the group. What we are seeing is a rational judgement by Google which goes against the mainstay belief of American Liberals that anything but encouragement of LGBT is evil and is a harbinger back to recent US history where LGBT individuals were repressed and actively persecuted.

I'm strongly against conversion therapy but if the facts I'm seeing are true I believe Google made the right decision because this app does not repress or actively persecute LGBT individuals.

Also for what it's worth, though it shouldn't matter, I am a liberal.

Offtopic: HN users use the downvote button as a way of hiding content they disagree with. It should instead be used to hide content that does NOT add to the discussion (or is hateful, or a few other valid reasons).

Seems somewhat more likely that this would do harm compared to astrology. There's a very real possibility that someone who doesn't know any better might take the concrete advice of the app. Most astrology apps aren't very specific about what they recommend you doing, and don't tend to recommend things that are clearly bad advice for everyone.

Thank you for a bit of sanity amongst the flames!