Senior White House Advisor Valerie Jarrett posted the White House website that the administration wants to ban the use of gay conversion therapy for LGBT youth.

“This administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors,” Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Obama, wrote in a post on the White House website tonight.

Conversion therapy is used by some mental health practitioners to change an individual sexual preference.

“The overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates that conversion therapy, especially when it is practiced on young people, is neither medically nor ethically appropriate and can cause substantial harm,” Jarrett wrote.

The White House weighed in on the matter after a petition was started following the suicide of a 17-year-old transgender person named Leelah Alcoen.

“Leelah explained how her parents had forced her to attend conversion therapy, pulled her out of school and isolated her in an attempt to change her identity,” the petition stated.

Write Jarrett, “Often this practice is used on minors, who lack the legal authority to make their own medical and mental health decisions.We share your concern about its potentially devastating effects on the lives of transgender as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer youth.”