A congressional Brazilian human-rights committee has approved a bill called by some a "gay cure" initiative.

The new legislation would suspend a 1999 prohibition from the Federal Psychology Council that prevented psychologists from offering any kind of "treatment" for homosexuality or considering it as a disease.

The president of the lower house’s Commissison for Human Rights and Minoroties, Social Christian Party pastor Marcos Feliciano, had been trying to get approval for the controversial proposal since April but had faced opposition and protests.

Congressman Joao Campos, the proposal’s author and a member of the evangelical bloc of the Brazil Congress’s lower house, said the 14-year-old prohibition restricted psychologists’ jobs and a person’s right to receive professional treatment.

The measure still has to be approved by two other committees, the chamber of deputies, and the senate.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. the group Exodus International announced this week that it would be shutting down operations after approximately three decades of trying to change gay people’s sexual orientation to heterosexuality through prayer and counselling.

Exodus president Alan Chambers apologized in a statement on June 19 for hurting people with the treatment and said: "I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents." In his statement, Chambers admitted his own "ongoing same-sex attractions".

The announcement came as California tries to ban any form of "gay cure" treatment that might be offered in the state.

On May 17, 1990, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its international list of mental diseases. And on May 17, 2012, the Pan American Health Association stated: "No rigorous scientific studies demonstrate any efficacy of efforts to change sexual orientation. However, there are many testimonies about the severe harm to mental and physical health that such ‘services’ can cause. Repression of sexual orientation has been associated with feelings of guilt and shame, depression, anxiety, and even suicide."