Google Scraps Anti-Gay App After Outrage From Advocates

CHELSEA, NY — Google removed a conversion therapy app after pushback from LGBTQ advocacy groups and a local politician who represents where Google's New York headquarters is located in Chelsea.

The tech behemoth faced increasing pressure to remove an app from Texas-based Living Hope Ministries — which says its "mission" is to help those "seeking sexual and relational wholeness" and promotes a world-view in which sex should be between one man and on woman in monogamous marriage for life, according to its website.

Google officially removed the app late Thursday about three months after Apple scrapped the app, Axios first reported.

"Credit is due for finally acting — but Google now needs a serious internal audit examining why it delayed so long," said State Sen. Brad Hoylman, who slammed Google for the app in January and who represents Chelsea where Google's HQ is located.

"LGBTQ conversion therapy is child abuse," said Hoylman, the only out gay New York State Senator who also spearheaded legislation to ban conversion therapy for children earlier this year, after it languished for years until Democrats took control of the New York Senate.

"You don't take months to pull down a conversion therapy app unless something is deeply broken in your culture," Hoylman said. "Something is broken at Google. It's on them to fix it — the LGBTQ community is watching."

After Apple removed the application in December, Truth Wins Out, an LGBT rights group fighting conversion therapy tactics, launched a petition urging Google to scrap the anti-gay app, which LGBT advocates said referred to gay men as "sexually broken guys."

The petition for Google to pull the app garnered more than 142,000 signatures.

Human Rights Campaign then pulled Google from its corporate equality rankings, prompting Google to reverse course this week.

"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," a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

Truth Wins Out slammed Google for leaving the app online for months.

"We are delighted that Google finally back down and deleted a dangerous app that targeted LGBTQ youth with toxic messages of guilt and shame," executive director of Truth Wins Out Wayne Besen said in a statement. "It is still unfathomable why Google stubbornly defended the indefensible for months, when the hateful and destructive content in this app should have been self-evident."

Living Hope Ministries did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Google's removal of the app.

After Apple scrapped the anti-gay app, one Living Home Ministries member wrote to Apple of how he heard of the organization at 19-years-old from others who though "it'd be a good way to get cured from my gayness," the ministries member identified as Walker wrote in a blog post. He said the app helped with "healing," not "conversion," and asked the app to be added back to Apple's app store at the time.