California lawmakers approve ban on sexual orientation therapy for minors
Saheli Chakrabarty
at 4:14 PM ET Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The California State Assembly voted 51-21 on Tuesday to ban reparative therapy intended to change sexual orientation in minors. The bill,SB 1172, authored by state Senator Ted Lieu, seeks to provide protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth from allegedly deceptive, harmful therapies, while also making adults aware of potential harms associated with such reparative therapies. The bill is supported by the National Association of Social Workers, California Chapter, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, California Division, the American Psychoanalytic Association and the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

It states two goals:

[To establish] that any mental-health treatment seeking to eliminate emotional and sexual feelings or desires for people of the same sex must first obtain informed consent from the patient prior to initiating such sexual orientation change therapy.

[To clarify] that minors are not able to provide informed consent for sexual orientation change therapy, regardless of the desire of the minor's parents for such therapy.

The bill is the first of its kind in the US.

Earlier in the year, the California Senate voted 23-13 to approve [SB 1172] that would ban psychotherapies aimed at changing the sexual orientation of minors.
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Link to text of bill:
http://sd28.senate.ca.gov/sites/sd28.senate.ca.gov/files/SB%201172%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

California State Assembly Approves Ban On 'Ex-Gay' Reparative Therapy
Posted: 08/29/2012 10:49 am Updated: 08/29/2012 1:22 pm
Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/29/california-state-assembly-ex-gay-reparative-therapy_n_1839553.html

The California State Assembly has approved a groundbreaking ban on so-called "ex-gay" or reparative therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation in minors.

Having approved an earlier version of the bill in May, the California Senate must now concur on amendments no later than midnight Aug. 31 for the bill to be sent to Governor Jerry Brown's desk.

"It's heartening to see the majority of the Assembly agrees that this kind of so-called 'treatment' essentially is psychological abuse of children," Democratic Sen. Ted Lieu of Torrance is quoted by CBS as saying. "Even the person who brought any legitimacy to this kind of psychological technique, Dr. Robert Spitzer, renounced his study and apologized to the LGBT community."

Ryan Kendall, who was subjected to "ex-gay" treatments by a licensed California therapist as a teenager [stated]:
"I wish the law had protected me and my family from this abusive practice when I was a teenager. I am lucky that I survived, but I will never be able to recover the years I lost to feeling worthless and suicidal because a state-licensed therapist convinced my family that being gay is a mental illness and that who I am is shameful and wrong."

The problem with so-called reparative therapy, based on the expert opinion of all of the major psychology/psychiatry groups, the experiences of its victims (who are still living), and all reputable studies is:

It does not work,
it inflicts terrible damage on vulnerable people, and
it wastes time money and resources that could be spent helping people.

Even the conservative church I grew up in tried it for decades, and for all their efforts of the experts in their social services division, and in their church run universities, they found the only measurable result was that they could consistently take gay and lesbian youth who did not have a porn habit, and addict them to masturbating to straight porn. They could also create a lot of divorces and broken homes if they succeeded in encouraging the gay and lesbian youth to marry the wrong sex.

As for seminaries, the ministry, military academies, liberal colleges, any of the places that some suggest 'create' or 'convert' straight or cisgender young people into LGBT people, no one has ever been able to show that anyone can be recruited or converted to a new sexual orientation or a new gender identity.

Some professions and some environments do seem to attract more closeted and open LGBT people, perhaps because certain personalities and sensitivities do seem to be more common among LGBT people than in the general population, and recent research is beginning to show what some of those positive differences tend to be in various groups, explaining why evolution has clearly not evolved us out of the human, or other animal, populations even with millions of years to work with.

There is a proven correlation, however, between supportive and "out" peers, and coming out of the closet one self. The more tolerant an environment, and the more role models of successfully happily living as ones true self exist, the more likely a suffering child is to escape from shame and despair and find acceptance themselves, whether that child experiences a difference in sexual orientation or in gender identity and expression.

Calling it sexual orientation gender therapy in itself is silly and shows a true lack of understanding of what GENDER is and what SEXUAL ORIENTATION is.

Hint: They are completely different

The VIOLENT ABUSIVE fear of the unknown is the most disgusting human attribute, and its unfortunate that its pandemic from weak minded person to another.