While it's clear that this task force is leaving the question open-ended, it's my hope that their findings won't be anything but based on solid facts that sexual orientation and gender identity are things to be affirmed, not changed.
The 1997 policy says this clearly: that a person's homosexual orientation is neither a disease to be cured nor a disorder to be treated. I'll need to keep a very close eye on this one. The five points to be addressed are:
Quote1. The appropriate application of affirmative therapeutic interventions for children and adolescents who present a desire to change either their sexual orientation or their behavioral expression of their sexual orientation, or both, or whose guardian expresses a desire for the minor to change;
2. The appropriate application of affirmative therapeutic interventions for adults who present a desire to change their sexual orientation or their behavioral expression of their sexual orientation, or both;
3. The presence of adolescent inpatient facilities that offer coercive treatment designed to change sexual orientation or the behavioral expression of sexual orientation;
4. Education, training, and research issues as they pertain to such therapeutic interventions; and
5. Recommendations regarding treatment protocols that promote stereotyped gender-normative behavior to mitigate behaviors that are perceived to be indicators that a child will develop a homosexual orientation in adolescence and adulthood.
Numbers 3 through 5 are especially interesting since the story of Zack Stark, the Memphis teenager who was forced to go through the "Love in Action: Refuge" at the age of 16. This kind of coerced treatment for gay kids is clearly harmful, and does nothing more than confuse people even more than they already are.
Of course, I am particularly amused at the acrostic of Love in Action: Refuge. They prefer to just leave it at "LIA." However, the 'R' changes everything: LIAR.
Keep an eye on this one, folks.
