For months, the city of Columbia, South Carolina, has been steeped in a battle over conversion therapy in the state capital.

The Republican candidate for governor is for conversion therapy and threatened the city with withdrawing state funds over the issue. The Democratic candidate running for mayor of Columbia is against it; she called efforts to reinstate the debunked practice “a betrayal.”

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On Tuesday, the conversion therapy advocates won when the city council voted to overturn its ban, which has been in place since 2021.

The 4-3 council vote reaffirmed another vote with the same result a week earlier. That vote followed months of delayed city council action as activists flooded City Hall chambers urging officials not to repeal the ban, according to the Post & Courier.

The council’s reconsideration began in April with a letter sent by state Attorney General Alan Wilson (R), who’s running for governor in 2026.

Wilson argued the city’s conversion therapy ordinance violated state and federal law, and he enlisted the South Carolina Legislature to introduce a provision that would strip Columbia of $3.7 million in state funding if the council didn’t overturn the ordinance.

Since then, every city council meeting has been packed with LGBTQ+ advocates, licensed mental health workers, and ACLU members urging the council to resist Wilson’s raw power play aimed at riling his MAGA base at the expense of the LGBTQ+ community.

Wilson formally announced his run for governor on Monday.

In the end, current Mayor Daniel Rickenmann (R) and three other council members voted to lift the ban, citing the threat of massive funding cuts.

The loss in state money would be too significant, they argued, over an ordinance some claim was largely symbolic: over the life of the ban, no licensed counselors had been fined or reported in violation of the ordinance. Infractions could have earned counselors a $500 fine.

“For y’all to give in and capitulate without a battle of any kind is strange to me. Where is the outrage?” asked Dr. Isabelle Mandell at Tuesday’s meeting, reported by the South Carolina Daily Gazette. “You haven’t tried. You haven’t fought it.”

“The job now is just to get boots on the ground, spread the message that, ‘Hey, we need new leadership in these positions,’” said Justice Hills, who has shown up to every meeting since April to urge council members to keep the ban.

In a statement following the vote, Columbia’s LGBTQ+ Harriet Hancock Centerurged the community to persevere.

“Our work doesn’t stop with this vote,” the center’s director wrote. “For those who are asking, ‘What now?’ ‘What’s next?’ I encourage you to turn our anger into action.”

Four of the city council’s members are up for reelection in November.