UPDATE: March 29,Netherlands 2019, 6:27 a.m. EDT Google has pulled the app from its app store. In a statement to Axios, the company explains “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.”
Sometimes, you just need go viral to incite change.
Following a Change.org petition requesting that Google remove an app that promotes so-called "conversion therapy" that received over 140,000 signatures, the tech company has lost its endorsement from the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index.
The app from Living Hope Ministries is available on Google's app store, and seeks to “help homosexuals leave their destructive lifestyles” while calling homosexuality "a stomach-ulcer-of-a-life," according to Change.org. The app has been removed from Apple's, Microsoft's, and Amazon's app stores, says Axios.
Conversion therapy damagingly seeks to change person's sexual orientation or gender identity, and is banned in multiple U.S. states while being denounced by several medical organizations as harmful pseudoscience.
“Google being suspended from HRC’s Corporate Equality Index is the latest chapter in the ongoing effort to hold Google accountable for promoting ex-gay therapy,” Michael Jones, Change.org’s managing director of campaigns, said in a statement. “More than 140,000 people -- and make no mistake, that number is going to continue to climb -- are pleading with Google to stop hosting apps that call LGBT young kids broken, and encourages them to change their sexual orientation. Google simply cannot ignore the growing movement pushing them to do what’s right and remove ex-gay therapy apps.”
Google declined to respond to Mashable's request for comment.
SEE ALSO: Amazon removes books promoting misinformation on autism curesThe Human Rights Watch said in a statement to Bloomberg that Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc, will not get a new rating until the company stops making the app available to download on Android phones.
“We have been urging Google to remove this app because it is life-threatening to LGBTQ youth and also clearly violates the company’s own standards,” the Human Rights Campaign said.
Topics Activism Google Social Good
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