Google removes an 'app' after months of protests from LGBT + groups | Technology
After months of protests from LGBT + groups, Google has removed from its digital store an application accused of promoting conversion programs for gays. The controversy broke out last December, when an NGO denounced the presence of the app on different platforms and recalled that the therapies of conversion of sexual orientation are condemned by the main health organizations in the world. Apple, Amazon and Microsoft eliminated the app almost immediately, while Google kept it available until this Thursday. A few hours before it was erased, the Human Right Campaign Foundation (HRC), the largest US defense organization of the LGBT + collective, had pointed out your annual report on the equality in the companies that the valuation of Google was suspended for not adopting a solution on the case.
In the application, developed by the religious congregation of Arlington (Texas) Living Hope Ministries, you could find sections with headlines such as "Keys to recover from same-sex attractions". On December 20, the association Truth Wins Out, committed for more than a decade in the fight against conversion therapies, launched a campaign on-line to ask the technologists to erase the app of your stores. "These programs do not work, they destroy lives", said the executive director of the NGO, Wayne Basen.
Unlike its main competitors, Google did not withdraw the app. Neither did he clear the doubts about how he puts into practice the equality policies for which he guarantees to bet. In the last three months, the protest campaign of Truth Wins Out added the support of more than 140,000 users on the Change.org platform and of a dozen American Democratic politicians. This Thursday, HRC published its annual report on the application of equality between workers by hundreds of companies. Among the 571 companies that obtained the 100% rating, there was not Google, which had taken it in the previous edition.
HRC explained in the document that the evaluation of the technological giant was suspended because during the preparation of the report the company distributed "an app that promotes the practice of conversion therapy". The organization said that these programs can cause "depression, anxiety, drug use and suicide," and that minors are "especially vulnerable" to them. The assessment of Google's equality policies, warned the report, would not be resumed until the company took action on it.
A few hours later, as the American media Axios first published, the Living Hope Ministries app was removed from Play Store. "After consulting with external advocacy groups, reviewing our policies and making sure we have in-depth knowledge of the application and its relationship to conversion therapy, we have decided to eliminate it from the Play Store, in line with other app stores," he said. declared a spokesperson for Google. In response to questions from this newspaper, company sources have added that no further statements are being made on the case.
Wayne Besne, executive director of Truth Wins Out, expressed his satisfaction with Google's decision in a statement on Friday. He also highlighted the company's delay in taking action on the matter. "You still can not understand why Google stubbornly defended the indefensible for months, when the hateful and destructive content of this application should have been evident," he said. "Hopefully this is a powerful message that products like that application are unacceptable and have no place in a decent and civilized society," he added.
In an email sent to EL PAÍS last January, Ricky Chelette, leader of Living Hope Ministries, denied that he and the other members of the congregation were therapists and that they considered homosexuality an illness. The organization, he added, "adheres to a traditional, orthodox view of sexual expression, embraced for thousands of years by Christians and Jews," and he and his companions are people who have dedicated their lives "to love people in conflict with their gender identity. " On that occasion, Chelette also stated that he considered the elimination of the digital stores app as a limitation "of a free and diverse exchange of ideas".
