Expect Additional Therapy Ban Efforts

Clients’ Rights and Government Wrongs, Part 2

I am committed to continuing to work towards creating a policy that best protects and celebrates the identities of LGBT Californians and a model for the nation to look towards.
—California Assemblyman Evan Low, in the statement he issued on August 31, 2018, explaining that he was withdrawing a bill he authored, AB 2943, which would have banned therapy and counseling for all people wanting to overcome unwanted same-sex attraction—

Key points: LGBT activists will be back in full force to ban any and all therapy typically sought by individuals with unwanted same-sex attraction. Their appeals will be emotional and forceful, no doubt. Yet their words will lack credibility to anyone paying attention to people who’ve left homosexuality and who publicly affirm the changes they’ve experienced. Change is possible! Just ask the people pictured above! All of them are real people, by the way—not actors!

All the articles in this series are available here.

California Assembly Bill 2943, which would have banned all paid pro-heterosexual counseling and therapy for everyone in the state of California, met an unexpected demise on Friday, August 31. In the aftermath of this good news, how should Christians respond? This post is part 2 of a series of articles that seeks to answer this question.

• In our introductory article, we recounted what happened with AB 2943 against the backdrop of a growing number of bans nationwide on therapy for minors experiencing unwanted same-sex attraction.
• Last time, in part 1, we presented a five-point strategy for Christians and others who want to preserve religious liberty and clients’ rights. We also discussed the first item. Momentarily we will consider the second.

1. Be gracious, but also wary, informed, and involved.
2. Expect similar proposals in the future.
3. Don’t compromise!
4. Acknowledge that some therapy and counseling Is beneficial, and support it. Affirm the rights of clients to get whatever therapy, treatment, or counseling they want. Don’t buy “conversion therapy” rhetoric and propaganda.
5. Stop misrepresenting what the Bible teaches about homosexuality—and stop being taken in by misrepresentations.

What Legitimate Therapy Is, and Isn’t

It is critical for people to know what legitimate therapy is and is not. In part 1 we released a statement on pro-heterosexual therapy and counseling and the efforts that are underway to ban it in all its forms. The statement made these six points, among a few others.

1. Effective therapy for people experiencing unwanted same-sex attraction does not focus primarily on the attraction but seeks to deal with its underlying causes.
2. These causes often involve deep emotional wounds. When these are addressed and begin to heal, homosexual attraction often decreases, typically accompanied by a corresponding increase in heterosexual attraction.
3. Effective therapy respects the client’s own desires and objectives. Before therapy begins, therapist and client mutually agree on the goal or goals toward which they will aim.
4. Effective counseling and therapy never, ever shames or coerces a client.
5. People working hard to ban “conversion therapy” aren’t primarily interested in banning shock treatments or other coercive and manipulative approaches. Instead, they want to ban all types of change efforts that point people in the direction of heterosexuality. The Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg expressed it well. After noting that bills like AB 2943 don’t just outlaw harmful techniques, he exposed supporters’ real intent: “When pressed, sponsors [of therapy bans] must admit that they seek to outlaw ordinary talk therapy as well. What these laws and bills target is nothing more or less than a goal: ‘to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.’ This is extraordinary.”
6. Pro-heterosexual change therapy is a threat to the LGBT agenda because individuals who’ve experienced change from homosexuality to heterosexuality are living proof that people aren’t born that way and that change is possible.

Again, you can access a copy of the statement here. Why are these items important to know and understand? Because a tidal wave is coming, and people who love freedom and liberty need to prepare for it.

Among other things, we must realize that ban advocates will be back.

2. Expect Similar Proposals in the Future

Legislation with provisions similar to those in AB 2943 will be introduced in coming months. Evan Low himself indicated this in his statement. Read again the quote at the top from Assemblyman Low. The goal of the homosexual lobby to ban all kinds of pro-heterosexual therapy has not changed. Never mind that these efforts would deny people the freedom to pay for and receive therapy they want! Never mind that therapy bans trample on individuals’ rights in the context of a free market economy! Government has absolutely no business interfering! Where is the tolerance these people claim to uphold?

On April 28, 2018, California pastor Paul Chappell declared,

Politicians have no place telling a counselee what his or her counseling goals should be. If a person is struggling with an issue and wants help, since when does the government get to decide what that help looks like?

In fact, during the hearing in the California Assembly chamber, many people testified that they struggled with sexual orientation issues but that they changed, through counseling, to heterosexual relationships or to their biological gender and were thankful and glad they did. The testimony of these people, however, was completely ignored by our intolerant state legislature. If this bill is passed, it would make it impossible for people like those who gave testimony to receive the help they sought if any money were exchanged in the process.

If any group of people should have been heard and heeded in the debate, former homosexuals should have been! You can read some of the stories of once-gay individuals at www.oncegay.com. Their being ignored says a great deal about the determination of those behind AB 2943. Yes, they will be back, and in full force!

Find living proof that homosexuals can change at www.oncegay.com.

Emotional Propaganda

There’s more. Brace yourselves! Two new movies debunking “conversion therapy” and portraying its horrors are setting the stage for strong emotional appeals against all pro-heterosexual counseling/therapy practices, even legitimate ones.

Yet, even as therapy and counseling to overcome unwanted same-sex attraction is misrepresented, maligned, and even outlawed—right now in 14 states and 45 localities—“U.S. Doctors Are Performing Double Mastectomies On Healthy 13-Year-Old Girls”! The reason? Unbelievably, yet predictably, it’s “gender dysphoria (“transgenderism”)—the girls now identify as boys and therefore want to look like boys.” This is the kind of practice that ought to be outlawed!

We truly live in an upside-down world.

Will you do your part to set it right once again?

 

Copyright © 2018 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.

top image credit: California Family Council, used by permission