California's Governor to ban Reparative Therapy ........... critics are upset

Jerry Brown’s Decision to Ban Conversion Therapy in Ca. Upsets Critics

Starting January 1, 2013, sexual conversion therapies, also called reparative therapies, will be outlawed in California for minors. Governor Brown calls this therapy unscientific with no basis in science or medicine, and they will now be “relegated to the dustbin of quackery.”

The law states that licensed mental health providers ”shall not provide minors with therapy intended to change their sexual orientation including efforts to “change behaviors or gender expressions of to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”



Often run by religious groups with names like Journey Into Manhood or People Can Change, these pray-away camps appeal to Christian thought that homosexuality is sinful. Conservatives, opposed to gay marriage and the “gay lifestyle” defend these organizations that believe that homosexuality is a “choice” and can be overcome. Is the theory political or scientifically based?

Wayne Besen, the director of Truth Wins Out, a gay advocacy group, believes that reparative therapy is junk science being used to justify religious beliefs that homosexual urges can be banished.

Nature vs. Nurture

Although the American Psychological and Psychiatric Associations disapprove of reparative therapy, it is still practiced by a handful of therapists who believe that homosexual desires result from early childhood wounds.

The director of the largest reparative therapy clinic in the world, Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinical in Encino, California , Joseph Nicolosi, argues that “all people are heterosexual but some have a homosexual problem, and some of these people attempt to resolve their conflict by adopting a sociopolitical label called ‘gay.’” If you unearth family trauma such as a distant father and an overbearing mother or child abuse, you, as sex –gay believers attest, can bring change not only in sexual desire, but maybe even a permanent cure

(see http://”Ex-Gay’ Men Fight Back Against View That Homosexuality Can’t be Changed.” New York Times, 11/1/12)

Last April, conversion therapy was dealt a blow by Robert L. Spitzer, author of a study eleven years old that purported that gays could change their sexual orientation. He said his study was invalid. In June 2012, the president of Exodus International, the largest Christian ministry for homosexuals, Alan Chambers, said that it was futile to try to change same-sex attraction and it seldom works.anyway: “99.9 percent of people Chambers has encountered in twenty years with Exodus were not able to completely rid themselves of same-sex attraction.”

Permanent Cure or Temporary Healing?

Some men who attend these retreats, and partake of reparative therapy, claim the switch works. Says “Jeremy S., 34, a corporate contract officer in Dallas, “ that from his teens until three years ago he lived as a gay man. It wasn’t working for me.” After two years of therapy with Dr. Nicolosi, Jeremy claims his attraction to men was” practically diminishing.” He has not had sex with a man for more than two years and does not think about it more than once a month, adding that his Catholic faith has also deepened.

However, gay rights groups say the therapies cause emotional harm which in some cases has led to depression, even suicide.and certainly anger, hopelessness, and guilt among its patients.

Lawsuits Already Filed: Violation of Free Choice

The lawsuits are being filed on behalf of therapists whose practices include reducing same-sex attraction and changing their sexual orientation, parents who have enrolled their children in reparative therapy as well as the teenagers who are undergoing it.

Does the law infringe on The First Amendment and equal protection rights of individuals to give and receive information that matches their personal and professional beliefs? Will it cause harm to those who claim they need and want the therapy?

What are the long-term effects of subjugating same-sex desires?

ENDS

Seeing local anti gay/buggery advocates such as Reverned Al Miller, Dr Wayne West and others pushing this passion without compromise approach steeped in the belief that gays can be changed and also on the heels of a local study by JFLAG released earlier this year - download the PDF HERE

The study also found many persons believed that conversion therapy of some kind was possible to change homosexual's orientation.

Here is the CVM TV Live @ 7 session on the issue in case you missed it.

We should continue to watch this new development in California given the Prop 8 matter and the US Supreme Court deliberations on the issue of gay marriage as a Federal matter for rights afforded to gay married couples, please see an important post on sister blog Gay Jamaica Watch: The US Supreme Court's Four Most Likely Moves On Gay marriage rights

Another story broke earlier as well that is one to watch

Men Sue Reparative Therapy Center Over Psychological Harm in the US

Four young men have taken the rare step of suing a facility that provides so-called "reparative therapy," and the individuals who run it, claiming that the techniques used to "cure" their homosexuality included ones that inflicted psychological damage. The suit was filed yesterday in Hudson County (N.J.) Superior Court against the organization known as JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing), which is located in Jersey City. The suit charges the organization with falsely claiming to be able to rid the men of their sexual attraction to other men through proven scientific techniques. According to the suit, these techniques were demeaning and emotionally damaging and included having to remove their clothing and beat images of their mothers. One of the defendants, Chaim Levin, now age 23 but 17 when he sought out JONAH's services, told the Jersey Journal, "It was so awful and so degrading and so wrong in so many ways."

Commenting on the suit to Psychiatric News, psychiatrist Jack Drescher, M.D., said, "APA has raised concerns about the potential harm done by trying to change a person's sexual orientation. Anecdotal reports of harm include worsening of depression, anxiety, and even suicidal ideation—not to mention individuals entering into heterosexual marriages with the unrealized hope that these would lead to conversion. Unfortunately, many of the individuals, like the defendants named in this lawsuit, are unlicensed and not subject to professional regulation or censure. Hopefully, if the plaintiffs' suit is successful, it will have a chilling effect on the proliferation of unlicensed individuals offering false hope to unhappy individuals struggling with their sexual identities." Drescher is president of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry and editor emeritus of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health.

In late September California passed a law banning reparative therapy in youth younger than age 18.

APA position statements on reparative therapy are posted atwww.psychiatry.org under "Position Statements." For a comprehensive review of mental health issues affecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals see The LGBT Casebook from American Psychiatric Publishing. (Drescher is a co-editor of the book.)
Peace and tolerance

Mr H