Public pressure has caused Google to drop the controversial gay conversion therapy app Living Hope Ministries from its Play Store.
Before being removed, however, the app was downloaded over a thousand times. Google’s move follows in the footsteps of Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft who have also axed the service.
Speaking to Business Insider, a Google spokesperson revealed that “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”.
Created by a US Christian group who goes by the same name, Living Hope Ministries actively encourages young people identifying as LGBTQ to go and seek conversion therapy.
In addition, the app also offers such services themselves – all designed around the belief that being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender is a mental illness that can be cured.
On its website, Living Hope Ministries describes itself as proclaiming “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 Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the app is “life-threatening to LGBTQ youth” for its support of the controversial practice and has “no support among the mainstream scientific community and is already banned in many countries and US states”.
[Source: Business Insider]
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