Following a public outcry, Google has removed an application that gave suggestions to people on 'recovery from same-sex attraction' from its Play store.
Google was suspended from a list of gay and transgender rights ranking by a one of the United States' top LGBTQ charities because of the app. Google was removed from its annual Corporate Equality Index by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The index creates ranking list of US corporate on the basis of the benefits offered to their LGBTQ staff.
The app in question, called the Living Hope Ministries, claimed to profess a conversion therapy for users because the markers of the app believed that being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender is a form of mental illness and therefore is curable.
The app was 'life-threatening to LGBTQ youth' because it supported and professed a controversial practice, HRC said. The therapy proposed also does not have any basis and support among the mainstream scientific community and many countries have already banned it.
A Texas-based non-profit, Living Hope Ministries, distributed the app.
It 'proclaims a Christ-centered, Biblical world-view of sexual expression rooted in one man and one woman in a committed, monogamous, heterosexual marriage for life', according to Living Hope's website. The app, which gives its users access to testimonials, sermons and devotions, has been downloaded more than 1,000 times from the Google Play Store.
Being gay as an 'addiction,' a 'destructive lifestyle' and a 'sin', Living Hope repeatedly claims.
“After consulting with outside advocacy groups, reviewing our policies, and making sure we had a thorough understanding of the app and its relation to conversion therapy, we've decided to remove it from the Play Store, consistent with other app stores,” a Google spokesman told the media in an email.
App designed by the Christian non-profit group Living Hope Ministries have already been removed from their app stores by Amazon, Apple and Microsoft.
'Keys to Recovery from Same-Sex Attractions', that offered advice such as 'accept that you must make sacrifices to be free and healthy' was one of the articles available on the app.
There has been no comment from Living Hope Ministries.
It aimed to help people 'struggling with same gender attraction', Living Hope Ministries said on its website.
According to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), a network of LGBTQ+ groups, Malta, Ecuador and more than a dozen U.S. states have outlawed the conversion therapy, which may even include hypnosis and electric shocks. Banning the therapy is also being considered by countries like Britain, New Zealand and Australia.
The Corporate Equality Index prepared every year by the HRC since 2002, ranks US corporate on the basis of the companies offering benefits equally to gay and straight staff and their partners, and offering full medical insurance for transgender people, among others.
Since 2006, the year that Google was first included in the list, it has always managed to get a perfect score of 100. The LGBT Center of New York's Stonewall Forever project has been donated $1.5 billion by Google since 2017.
(Source:www.dailymail.co.uk)
Google was suspended from a list of gay and transgender rights ranking by a one of the United States' top LGBTQ charities because of the app. Google was removed from its annual Corporate Equality Index by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The index creates ranking list of US corporate on the basis of the benefits offered to their LGBTQ staff.
The app in question, called the Living Hope Ministries, claimed to profess a conversion therapy for users because the markers of the app believed that being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender is a form of mental illness and therefore is curable.
The app was 'life-threatening to LGBTQ youth' because it supported and professed a controversial practice, HRC said. The therapy proposed also does not have any basis and support among the mainstream scientific community and many countries have already banned it.
A Texas-based non-profit, Living Hope Ministries, distributed the app.
It 'proclaims a Christ-centered, Biblical world-view of sexual expression rooted in one man and one woman in a committed, monogamous, heterosexual marriage for life', according to Living Hope's website. The app, which gives its users access to testimonials, sermons and devotions, has been downloaded more than 1,000 times from the Google Play Store.
Being gay as an 'addiction,' a 'destructive lifestyle' and a 'sin', Living Hope repeatedly claims.
“After consulting with outside advocacy groups, reviewing our policies, and making sure we had a thorough understanding of the app and its relation to conversion therapy, we've decided to remove it from the Play Store, consistent with other app stores,” a Google spokesman told the media in an email.
App designed by the Christian non-profit group Living Hope Ministries have already been removed from their app stores by Amazon, Apple and Microsoft.
'Keys to Recovery from Same-Sex Attractions', that offered advice such as 'accept that you must make sacrifices to be free and healthy' was one of the articles available on the app.
There has been no comment from Living Hope Ministries.
It aimed to help people 'struggling with same gender attraction', Living Hope Ministries said on its website.
According to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), a network of LGBTQ+ groups, Malta, Ecuador and more than a dozen U.S. states have outlawed the conversion therapy, which may even include hypnosis and electric shocks. Banning the therapy is also being considered by countries like Britain, New Zealand and Australia.
The Corporate Equality Index prepared every year by the HRC since 2002, ranks US corporate on the basis of the companies offering benefits equally to gay and straight staff and their partners, and offering full medical insurance for transgender people, among others.
Since 2006, the year that Google was first included in the list, it has always managed to get a perfect score of 100. The LGBT Center of New York's Stonewall Forever project has been donated $1.5 billion by Google since 2017.
(Source:www.dailymail.co.uk)