As of January, it will be illegal in California for licensed professionals to counsel minors struggling with homosexuality, and adults seeking help must sign waivers acknowledging the futility of such counseling.
“Let’s get this straight. Being gay, lesbian [or] transgender is not a disease to be cured or a mental health issue to be treated.”For background, read 'Gay Kids' Can't Change, Says California Legislation and also read Most Homosexuals Who Want to Convert Report Change as well as Homosexuality NOT Fixed, Change Possible: Study
-- Congresswoman Jackie Speier, Democrat, San Francisco/San Mateo, CA
-- From "Congress implored to denounce sexual-orientation therapy" by Cheryl Wetzstein, The Washington Times 11/28/12
In a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday, Ms. Speier said she was introducing her Stop Harming Our Kids resolution to “bring us some reality checks” about sexuality.
Therapies aimed at helping someone go from gay to straight are “discredited” and “ineffective,” and minors should not be subjected to them, she said.
She added that she will investigate whether taxpayer funds in Medicaid or Tricare, the Pentagon’s health care system, have been used to reimburse therapists offering such counseling.
However, groups that provide sexual-orientation change efforts, teenage clients and people who say they have successfully changed their sexual orientations to become heterosexual are challenging the California law. Two lawsuits have been filed to block the law from taking effect Jan. 1.
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From "Bill attacks antigay therapy" by Lisa Keen, Bay Area Reporter (gay publication) 11/29/12
At a Washington, D.C. press event Wednesday, November 28 Speier introduced a resolution aimed at stopping "reparative therapy" operations from preying on young gay people.
Both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have raised concerns about the [counseling] efforts, saying there is no sound evidence that the practices work but that there is evidence they can pose significant risks of self-destructive behavior to the client.
[Speier said] "Any effort to change sexual orientation is not medicine, it's quackery, and we should not be supporting it with taxpayer dollars."
Speier said she also hopes her resolution will prompt other states to "take steps to protect minors from efforts that promote or promise to change sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, based on the premise that homosexuality is a mental illness or developmental disorder that can or should be cured."
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