A Columbia city ordinance that bans conversion therapy will stay on the books for now.
On Tuesday, the Columbia City Council agreed to delay a vote over whether to repeal the ban amid pressure from Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson, who says the ordinance violates state law, and other GOP state lawmakers.
The vote to delay followed more than an hour of public comment, a majority of which urged the seven council members to keep the ban in place and prohibit the controversial practice that critics argue harms and results in trauma for LGBTQ+ youth by trying to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Only one person, a local orthopedic surgeon, spoke in support of repeal.
"Imagine the hope that we feel when we are encountered with these false premises of therapy that are going to fix us, and make us better and heal us, and say, 'You don't have to be that way.' But it was all a lie," said Dylan Gunnels, president of South Carolina Pride and a pastor, who spoke of his own conversion therapy experience. "And, today, I stand before you telling you that that therapy did nothing for me. All it did was harm me."
Any vote over the ordinance is unlikely to occur until after next week when the South Carolina Legislature meets May 28 to pass the more than $14 billion state spending plan.
That's because the budget now includes a measure that would strip the city of about $3.7 million in local government money if the ban remains.
Included in Tuesday's vote, Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann directed the city manager to hold certain local pots of money as the city prepares to draft its own budget before the next fiscal year starts July 1.
"There's a significant amount of money in the proviso (the budget measure), so we need to know where that lands. Until they confirm all that, that's where we're headed," Rickenmann told reporters Tuesday. "... We're just not going to fund anything until we know where our budget is, and we want to make sure we don't falsely advertise anything. That's why we're going to sequester it (the local money)."
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bruce Bannister, one of six budget negotiators, told reporters Wednesday that the funding measure in response to the city's conversion therapy ban stayed in the budget after requests for help by Columbia City Council.
"The city council members from Columbia were doing a very good job keeping us up to speed on avoiding a lawsuit and trying to resolve some stuff on a local level and asked for our help," Bannister, R-Greenville, told reporters.
Bannister declined to say who specifically on council asked for help.
Gov. Henry McMaster, who has line-item veto power, did not tell reporters Wednesday whether he'd veto the measure once the budget that starts July 1 lands on his desk.
"There are a lot of very important things that we need to be doing, and I would urge everyone to, let's stick to the very important things that we must get done and then we can think about other things," he said.
The city ban was passed in 2021, the first-of-its-kind ordinance in South Carolina.
More than 20 states ban conversion therapy.
South Carolina is among more than a dozen states that do not.
"The city relied on science not ideology and became the first municipality in South Carolina to ban conversion therapy for minors," Richland Democratic Sen. Tameika Isaac Devine, who proposed the ban when she served on city council, wrote in an op-ed for The State newspaper. "We did so because we believed — rightly — that every child deserves to grow up feeling safe, accepted and loved for who they are.
A year after the ban passed, state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, R-Spartanburg, requested an opinion from the state Attorney General's Office questioning the ban's constitutionality.
But it wasn't until this spring when Attorney General Wilson demanded the ban be repealed or else the city would face legal action.
In his April letter, Wilson called the ban unconstitutional and said it violates a 2022 state law that says no medical doctor, hospital or health care payer can be "civilly, criminally, or administratively liable for exercising the practitioner's or entity's right of conscience."
"Municipalities do not have the authority to regulate professions that require statewide uniformity, such as counseling and psychological therapy," Wilson wrote. "This ordinance crosses the line, violates the law, and must be repealed.”
Wilson and Kimbrell are both possible candidates for governor in 2026.
Matthew Butler, with the ACLU of South Carolina, called Wilson's letter nothing more than a scare tactic and said the ordinance does not in any way violate the First Amendment.
"No pastor is punished under this law. No parent is prosecuted. No church is silenced," Butler told the council Tuesday. "... What this ordinance does clearly and constitutionally is prohibit licensed mental health providers from using state-recognized credentials to inflict psychological harm on children in the name of treatment."
Any decision to repeal the ordinance will take two votes by Columbia City Council.
And that decision is likely to come well ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling over whether state and local governments can enact laws banning conversion therapy for kids.
The high court is expected to hear the Colorado case later this fall.
