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Regardless of my personal feelings about the therapy, this was the right thing to do. Want to start an education campaign against the therapy, great. Banning it however is wrong, especially if the child wants it.
So you are perfectly fine with this scenario:
If a teenager goes to a state licensed therapist and tells them they want to be Superman, should the therapist be allowed to give the teen a cape and say "Sure kid! Now jump off the Empire State building and show me how you can fly". Because the child 'wants it'?
State licenced Therapists will be restricted from using so-called 'conversion' therapy on minors bacause all the major health organizations have stated that it is harmful, unneccessary, and ineffective treatment. This stance is based on evidence which is presented in the APA's 2009 report onSexual Orientation Change Efforts.
In the UK it's been banned completely for both adults and children.
Homophobic religious parents can still take their gay or lesbian children to see an unlicenced/non-registered, unethical, incompetent quack and spend thousands of dollars reinforcing the self-hatred that they have taught their children.
When the bogus therapy doesn't work, the parents might get lucky and their teen will commit suicide - which will save them the effort of disowning them and kicking them out on the street.
So called "Conversion' or 'reparative' therapy is pure quackery and only seems to be used by anti-gay religious conservatives. There is no scientifically valid evidence to support it.
Even Dr Robert Spitzer has retracted his 2001 study of religiously motivated 'ex-gays'. That's pretty much the only published study these people had to support their views - other than the Yarhouse study which doesn't actually show what they claim it does.
His study has been misrepresented by the 'pray-away-the-gay' groups to support 'conversion' or 'reparative' therapy. Dr Spitzer has now apologized earlier this year for all the harm that has been done using his study.
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The president of Exodus (Alan Chambers), one of the largest 'ex-gay' groups, has also stated earlier this year that 99.9% of Exodus members did not change their sexual orientation.
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A new study by conservative Christian psychologists on people in mixed orientation marriages has found that while sexual behavior can change, sexual orientation does not.
“Characteristics of Mixed Orientation Couples: An Empirical Study"
"While it was not a study of efforts to change, one could reasonably assume that if a group had participants who had shifted orientation very much, then this would be the group. However, that is not what they found"
Conservative Christian psychologist Dr Throckmorton says: "I think evangelicals need to face what evangelical academics are finding in research"
The whole 'ex-gay' house of cards is falling down.
I COMPLETELY support same sex marriage, all the legal rights etc.
I opppose ALL bullying..whether by religious folk, ignorant folk, and even the GLBT lobby with their silly outing crap.
I disagree with many of the things the GLBT lobby attempts to promote, like denying people legit info on causation, using stupid celebs to promote careless risky behaviour when more than half of HIV infections occur in gay men, not promoting access to therapy to at least assist with sex addiction, promoting dangerous activities in the name of tolerance (like Kevin Jennings, glsen and the fistgate thing).
Disagreeing with behaviour does not = hatred or bullying. These folks are victims of developmental problems that were caused by factors totally out of their control.
These people need love, support, kindness, assistance and guidance. It isn't their fault they've been denied crucial info and support that could have saved many lives.
Peace.
NARTH is an anti-gay hate group who has never done a scientific study in their entire existence, and who's scientific "advisor" was caught hiring a gay rent boy in Europe.
If they are your source of 'information' about gay and lesbian people then I can guarantee none of it of it has any basis in reality.
These people are so ill informed about gays, I really think they go to google, type in "Proof gays are evil", hit search, and things like NARTH or FRC are the first links that pop up so they think that qualifies as evidence.
Regardless of my personal feelings about the therapy, this was the right thing to do. Want to start an education campaign against the therapy, great. Banning it however is wrong, especially if the child wants it.
So if a child wants a lobotomy, we should allow it? Do you endorse all unsafe medical practices that have been proven ineffective and harmful?
Yup, and he confirmed it's the same poster when he said he was a Marine (Riverboat was a "Marine" too). Hopefully the mods ban him for making a sock puppet.
Nice try with spewing typical lies and ad hom smokescreens that dominate the media..of course no one is there to challenge your lies, so this becomes truth.
Firstly, disagreement with the GLBT lobby doesn't necessarily mean hate for glbt people. Many things glbt lobbies advocate harm teh very people they claim to help. NARTH, regardless of how many times you scream otherwise, is not a hate group, & their scientific studies have not only helped many people, but have been included in peer-reviewed journals, & backed up by European researchers.
If you cared to look for the truth, you'd know that Spitzer was practically forced to CHANGE HIS INTERPRETATION of his OWN study..but his data STILL shows that help can be obtained from people who WANT it. MANY Exodus members have changed their orientation, regardless of what that guy said. Regardless of whatever gay activists or researchers do in their private lives, if their stances and studies are valid/correct, you cannot dismiss them. I take what BOTH groups have to say seriously.
You probably already know that the many glbt activists on the APA board deliberately rejected peer reviewed evidence that change is not harmful, & used their unreliable data to make a statement that it is. You people are acting like 6 year-olds...denying the evidence or plain refusing to consider it, using your own distorted versions of truth and accusing anyone who contradicts you as haters.
WHy do many people so desperately want to belittle and deny someone's efforts to control something they perceive as objectively harmful to their bodies, and something rooted in painful past memories so that they can live their lives as they wish? No one ridicules a relapsed drug addict as a failure. No one is advocating forced therapy for everyone, as I know there are many people who are fine with it and are well adjusted (I personally know a few). It's called free will and self determination. People respect the perception of people who lead a glbt lifestyle but you want to remove rights/deny people who choose another path. Nice.
It's laughable that folks are comparing consensual therapy, which can include everything from reducing SSA to keeping them but reducing se addiction etc, to being as ludicrous as wanting to be Superman, but it's perfectly fine with little kids and adults undergoing "sex change" and hormone therapy despite the fact that sex is hardwired into one's DNA and cannot be changed. It also does not help gender disturbed individuals which is why John Hopkins previously stopped doing it (don't know if they started back).
So it's unthinkable to consider a person, who has a body biologically designed to heterosexuality, should want to work on the psychological issues that have been proven over and over to lead to homosexual feelings, but it's totally acceptable that a gender traumatized individual mutilate his/her body to imitate the other sex. I guess you people are of the stance that "born that way means designed that way...EXCEPT in the case of transgenders". OK. I suppose then you all deny the fact that, similar to glbt people, when their development/childhood is traumatized, it has been extensively studied and proved that all manner of psychological and social problems occur in both sexes...orphans, delinquents etc.
It's funny how you "wish" away the fistgate seminar, GIZMO. I know fully well what happened but I suppose the nature of it is quite acceptable to you, despite the many serious anatomical injuries that occur in gay men every year. I guess you want to 'wish away' Jennings past of simply telling a minor boy to 'wear a condom' when the boy told him of older men approaching him for sex? Or Dan Savage's career of promoting sex with young men and boys, & a whole host of S&M practices like coprophilia in his advice columns and to children?
And it is not MY OPINION that many people who have SSA are at risk for several health problems. They occur far higher in them, even in lesbians, whose domestic violence rate is higher than that of gay male couples, than in hetero couples. You dismissing that by saying "oh straight people get that too" is sadly an all too familiar tone of one in denial.
Besides having an HIV rate that has dramatically INCREASED close to 70% from 2002 to recently, active gay men suffer from all sorts of cancers and anatomical injuries at much higher rates than heteros. Even in an atmosphere like the Netherlands, where frenzied gay activist rants and religious bigotry are at minimum, mental health of gay men still suffers.
These people are so ill informed about gays, I really think they go to google, type in "Proof gays are evil", hit search, and things like NARTH or FRC are the first links that pop up so they think that qualifies as evidence.
Yep. And then people ask why a Master's degree is needed to be a reference librarian (what I do) - all other library duties aside, one reason is to have well-informed professionals who can filter out the crap, and guide you towards proper resources. If these anti-gay folks have library cards, which is kinda doubtful, I urge them to take advantage of our online resources. For the love of all that is holy, stop believing everything you find through Google searches! At the very least, I wish they'd research their sources before presenting them as "facts."
I love the Internet, but unfortunately it has turned the ignorant into wanna-be researchers... a very dangerous phenomenon, IMO.
Blah blah blah to the above post... you're the only one believing propaganda and lies, and as I just mentioned in my last post, research is what I do for a LIVING. So are you really going to try and convince me your research is better? LMAO, seriously.
The evidence is there, and you cannot prove this therapy is anything but harmful & ineffective. I have no problem with people trying it, if for whatever reason they believe it might work - but don't try and convince me they're getting anything positive from it, and really don't expect me to help fund this quackery. On their own dime, I couldn't care less what they do and don't honestly care if it's legal or not.
As for the "fistgate" nonsense, no you don't understand what or why that assembly happened (or the fact that it was voluntary). And what's wrong with telling somebody to use a condom? I don't know that whole story, but if everyone is consenting, the best advice IS to protect yourself. Or do you support encouraging the spread of STDs? First you guys whine about their disease rates, and then you whine about them receiving practical advice... reminds me of the abortion debate, where the strongest opposers also refuse to support comprehensive sex education and birth control availability. Can't have your cake and eat it too!
Bottom line, you cannot "pray away the gay," no matter how many hate-group-inspired (yes, NARTH really is a hate group) bogus studies you find. Can you find me somebody who did this therapy, and successfully rid themselves of gay tendencies for an extended period of time? I challenge you to do so! We used to have an "ex-gay" over on the religion board, who eventually confessed to having gay affairs while married to his wife. She knew about it too, but kept dreaming that their prayers would somehow wash it all away. How much do you wanna bet she's still dreaming, and he is still getting some on the down-low?
What scares me the most is that anyone who is for anti-gay therapy probably believes I need therapy for marrying outside my race.
A gay man can't help their attraction to men any more than I can help my attraction to dark skinned Latinas with large breasts.
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