According to today’s New York Times:
California has become the first state to ban the use for minors of disputed therapies to “overcome” homosexuality, a step hailed by gay rights groups across the country that say the therapies have caused dangerous emotional harm to gay and lesbian teenagers.
But some therapists and conservative religious leaders who promote methods that they say can reduce homosexual desire have condemned the new law as a violation of free choice. They say that it will harm young people who want to fight homosexual attractions on religious or other grounds and warn that it will lead more people to seek help from untrained amateurs.
One licensed family therapist and member of the association, David H. Pickup of Glendale, Calif., said in a recent interview that the ban would cause harm to many who want and need the therapy.
“If boys have been sexually abused and homosexual feelings that are not authentic later come up, we have to tell them no, we can’t help you,” Mr. Pickup said.
Gay and lesbian leaders, along with major scientific groups, reject such theories outright and say there is no scientific evidence that inner sexual attractions can be altered.
“Reparative therapy is junk science being used to justify religious beliefs,” said Wayne Besen, the director of Truth Wins Out, a gay advocacy group.
The California law is a milestone, but only a first step, Mr. Besen said, because the ideas in reparative therapy have been widely adopted by church ministries and others promoting the idea that homosexual urges can be banished.
Legislators in New Jersey and a few other states have discussed introducing similar bills to ban the use of the therapy for minors, Mr. Besen said.
ridicoulus!!! if someone is abused and have consequences because of it (surely not homosexuality , but sexually confused at maximum) , the therapist is allowed to CURE him from his sexual confusion. and that DOES NOT mean that he have to FORCE him through heterosexuality, but it means that he has to analyze , help the client to UNDERSTAND HIMSELF, to UNDERSTAND WHO HE REALLY IS. forcing someone through a particoular sexual orientation is FORBIDDEN and is an abuse of the psychologist profession.
I have often commented to my fellow therapists that it is not the role of the therapist to determine for a client what their client’s sexual orientation is. It is the role of the therapist to assist the client to discover and accept what her/his orientation really is. I agree with francesco t in this regard. If someone has been abused and confused, they deserve assistance in overcoming the effects of abuse and clarifying their sexuality. No client deserves to be further abused by a therapist who thinks it is god’s will they become straight. Reparative therapy is itself sexual abuse. Just as religious leaders and practitioners need to be held accountable for physically abusing children, they need to be held accountable for emotionally abusing children. Religion is no excuse for either form of abuse.
“…..conservative religious leaders who promote methods that they say can reduce homosexual desire have condemned the new law as a violation of free choice.”
Does this mean these religious leaders are now suddenly pro-choice or just when it suits their agenda? Their hypocrisy is showing.
Nothing but a bunch of self-contradictory crap.
The “I’m just stating my opinion” and “Let’s agree to disagree” lines are become more popular and even more tiresome. They are acting like they are sitting in an ivory tower and having a polite, purely theoretical debate. They aren’t admitting that this is about the lives of real people who are affected in very direct and drastic ways. In that case, no, there isn’t a nice debate to be had after which you can just disagree and do nothing.
Gah. Wrong topic. Sorry
So is Pickup unwittingly conceding that there are “homosexual feelings which ARE authentic”?
The ignorant misguided parents will just follow the carpetbaggers to another state that happily condones this nonsense…
[...] California, Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed SB 1172 that stops quack therapists from practicing dangerous “ex-gay” techniques on minors. This is [...]