Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) has authored a bill that would brand so-called gay conversion therapy as fraud under the state’s consumer protection laws.
Conversion therapy is a controversial treatment that attempts to change one’s sexual orientation through counseling, hypnosis or even electric shock treatment. The universally discredited practice is already illegal for children—a ban that was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2012 and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Introduced last month and pending referral, AB 2943 would expand those protections to adults.
The bill would make it illegal to advertise, offer or engage in treatment aimed at changing someone’s sexual orientation. It would also give people legal recourse by allowing them to sue practitioners.
Low, who is openly gay and chairs the California Legislative LGBT Caucus, cited a report by the American Psychological Association that found the practice “‘poses critical health risks’ and contributes to anti-LGBT stigma.”
“Study after study has shown that conversion therapy is ineffective, damaging, and counterproductive,” Low said in a press statement. “It is our duty to protect Californians from such deceptive practices that will expose them to physical and emotional harm.”
Low noted that conversion treatment has been denounced by the American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Counseling Association, National Association of Social Workers and American Medical Association “on the basis that it is not evidence-based and potentially harmful to the patient’s mental health,” and “contributes to social stigma by characterizing homosexuality as a mental illness, a view that has been discredited for decades.”
Equality California, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the Trevor Project and the National Center for Lesbian Rights support the legislative proposal, which is slated for a committee hearing on March 19.
According to the Bay Area Reporter, the conversion therapy bill is part of a legislative package tackling LGBTQ youth and health issues.
Low is also the lead author of a resolution that would offer a formal apology for the California's’s past discrimination and oppression of the LGBTQ community, which dates back through the whole course of state history. In San Jose, however, it was happening as recently as a few years ago when plainclothes police exclusively targeted gay men in a series of public bathroom stings.
I thought gender was fluid and that one could decide from one day to the next what their gender, identity, whatever. Why should the government stop you have having the choice to get help changing you identity?
Sounds like, you know, the f word…
> Conversion therapy is a controversial treatment that attempts to change one’s sexual orientation through counseling, hypnosis or even electric shock treatment. The universally discredited practice . . . .
Mr. Perez:
Could you provide some evidence proving your claim that “conversion therapy” is a “universally discredited practice”.
The last I heard, the scientific community still had no “universally” accepted explanation of what causes homosexuality or whether it is an immutable condition.
The “science” isn’t settled because science is NEVER settled.
Banning “so-called gay conversion therapy” as Evan Low proposes to do looks to me like political bullying of the scientific community.
What a joke. You know this is about advising or even coercing people in to shock therapy and you are complaining about “political bullying”. What a fool you are.
This politician submits a new libtard proposed bill almost each week. Why should this one be any different? This is the same idiot that introduced AB 21-65 in Sacramento. It would make the day of general elections in November a state holiday.
So wanting to ban advising people to undergo damaging shock therapy conversion is a problem to you and means others are “libtards”? “Nice” reasoning you got there.
Also, the enforcement operations by SJPD weren’t targeting homosexual males. Had there been lesbians or heterosexuals in the targeted area, they would have been held accountable as well.
The buzzword used in modern policing, “community policing” most directly means responding to complaints by the public. The citizens in the area of the park complained of sexual activity at the bathrooms- SJPD did their job without bias.
Had SJPD wanted to target homosexual males, there’s dozens of businesses within city limits that cater to anonymous sex. It would have been easier and more “effective” to do enforcement at those locations or even shut those establishments down.
Only in this area could such laughable lies be believed not only by a supposedly credible newspaper, but a judge as well.
Shock therapy causes brain damage and is universally discredited by people and professionals all over the world who are not paid off. I know people, of all sexual persuasions and identities, that have been forced ECT (shock therapy) and can no longer walk and talk properly. Stop your complaining, snowflake.