The Iowa Board of Medicine on Friday denied a state Youth Advisory Council petition that would prohibit Iowa doctors from practicing gay conversion therapy on minors, saying instead it would form a subcommittee to study the issue.

Multiple presenters told the board Friday that conversion therapy considers being gay as a mental illness and is damaging, and according to the Human Rights Campaign organization, is a set of “discredited practices that falsely claim to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.”

Homosexuality has been removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders.

The American Psychiatric Association states that it “opposes any psychiatric treatment such as reparative or conversion therapy which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states “there is no evidence that sexual orientation can be altered through therapy, and that attempts to do so may be harmful. There is no empirical evidence adult homosexuality can be prevented if gender nonconforming children are influenced to be more gender conforming. Indeed, there is no medically valid basis for attempting to prevent homosexuality, which is not an illness.”

Rejected LGBT youth who go through conversion therapy are eight times more likely to attempt to commit suicide, six times more likely to report high levels of depression, three times more likely to use hard drugs or alcohol and three times more likely to contract an STD, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Chuck Hurley, the vice president of The Family Leader Foundation, told The Associated Press the policy doesn’t address the people who want to seek therapy.

“I would encourage you to be very careful about limiting the therapy that’s available to parents and children who are struggling with perhaps a same-sex attraction or a gender identity confusion that they don’t want,” he told The Associated Press.

It’s one thing if the individual seeking conversion therapy is a fully aware adult, voluntarily entering a program of their choosing. It’s another if a 12-year-old is coerced into attending the therapy with the belief they will be ostracized from family and friends if they don’t get “cured.”

From a religious perspective, people have the right to believe whatever they believe and take whatever steps they feel necessary. If a family together decides that going to a religious leader with questions is the way to go, by all means.

However, looking at conversion therapy from a clinically scientific perspective, medically treating homosexuality as a “mental disorder” is not healthy, can emotionally damage a young person, and quite frankly, shouldn’t be legal. No matter what you believe, there is no scientific medical proof that this is a safe method for minors.