The “ex-gay” meme alive and infectious in Australia. But we begin with the latest on the subject matter in California.
LA Times: Brown appeals injunction against gay-conversion law
January 2, 2013 | 3:06pm
Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday appealed a court injunction that has blocked enforcement of a new law that prohibits providing gay minors with therapy aimed at converting them to being heterosexual.
The notice of appeal was filed on behalf of Brown and the Medical Board of California by state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which decided Dec. 21 to block the law that took effect Jan. 1 pending a decision on its constitutionality.
A small group of therapists and religious groups argued that the law infringes on their rights to free speech, but Harris has called conversion therapy “unsound and harmful.” [emphasis added]
The first Amendment argument could also be made in regard to driving, alcohol, cigarettes and a host of other minor-related regulatory laws.
The “free speech” that these therapists and religious groups argue for almost cost these parents the life of their son.
From Australia’s The Project news org.
Partial transcript:
Ben Gresham: Growing up I’d always been told that homosexuality is wrong. That if you are gay or lesbian that you can’t be part of the Church, you don’t get into heaven and that it’s a sin. … I would pray every night that God would take my attraction to other men away from me.
Narrator: But praying didn’t work. At just 16, he turned to a church leader for guidance. … The church helped Ben enroll in an online conversion program, aimed at turning him straight.
Phyllis Gresham [sitting with husband, Michael]: We had no idea, honestly, that Ben was going through the ex-gay program. He went to church meetings, we thought they were just church meetings. We do feel angry that the church did not notify us. Certainly if we had known what was happening we would have stopped him from doing them.
Narrator: Ben tried three conversion programs in three years, all failed. At 19, he tried to take his own life.
Ben: Because, for me, I couldn’t imagine a life without God. I couldn’t imagine a life without my faith, without my church, without my family, and that’s what I thought would happen.
Phyllis Gresham: It’s taken me a long time to forgive myself that I didn’t know what was happening.
Michael Gresham: Yeah.
—
Ben, like many gay kids, got the message that the state of being homosexual is sinful, and thus, are in an unwitting perpetual state of unrepentantce.
The anti-gay-ex-gay solution is a denial of homosexuality as a state of being for the promise of a virtually non-existent hope of becoming heterosexual.
Either look forward to hell, or look forward to a life of hell.
~~~
therapists and religious groups argued that the law [banning underage conversion “therapy”] infringes on their rights to free speech
And in doing so, they also argue that they should have the right to indoctrinate minors into the anti-gay-ex-gay lifestyle without the knowledge or consent of their parents.
A precise reason why ex-gay therapy should be X rated.
H/T: Flourish&Bloggs for inspiring this post.
I have just finished watching the story of Zach Stark & Love in Action. Being a Memphian my entire life I feel that I must have been blind and deaf to have missed this story. I wish parents & families would love their children unconditionally. My grandmother’s family turned their backs on their brother/son and rarely spoke of him because he was gay. I wrote him once I grew up and I expressed my love for him and the wrongness of our family’s actions. He had been with his partner for over 50 years at that point. The hardest part of being gay was his own family & that’s tragic. There are many things my children could do that would disappoint me, though being gay is not one of them. But nothing they could do would end the love & support I have for them in my heart. Yes we want to protect our kids from a hard life if we can but we should never do it at the cost of changing who they are! I wish I had been there with the protestors and feel horrible that anyone has gone through such a confusing experience where shame and fear are used, not love. I have such compassion for the ignorance of these families beliefs. The people who run these camps and profit from parent’s fear by adding more is hard to find any compassion for. Perhaps find compassion for the life they’re wasting in such a “ministry”. When they arrive for judgement day will the blood of these suicides be on their hands for God to judge? The stumbling blocks they were because teens & adults left the church thinking they would never be welcome? The Bible says if we are a stumbling block to others we will parish in hell. These “ministers” and counselors might need to take a hard look at their own lives and see if they’re working for or against their God.