Ban on gay ‘conversion’ therapy to be challenged

LISA LEFF

Asso­ci­ated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Gay rights advo­cates are mak­ing plans to get other states to join Cal­i­for­nia in ban­ning psy­chother­apy aimed at mak­ing gay teenagers straight, even as oppo­nents pre­pared Mon­day to sue to over­turn the first law in the nation to take aim at the practice.

After months of intense lob­by­ing, Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill late Sat­ur­day that pro­hibits licensed men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als from using so-called repar­a­tive or con­ver­sion ther­a­pies with clients under age 18. Brown called the ther­a­pies “quack­ery” that “have no basis in sci­ence or medicine.”

Two New Jer­sey law­mak­ers already are draft­ing sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion, while groups that helped get the Cal­i­for­nia law passed are shar­ing research, wit­nesses and talk­ing points with coun­ter­parts in other gay-friendly states, said Geoff Kors, senior leg­isla­tive and pol­icy strate­gist for the San Francisco-based National Cen­ter for Les­bian Rights.

“There are lots of folks today who are look­ing at this, now that the gov­er­nor has signed it,” Kors said. “We’ll be reach­ing out to all the state (gay rights) groups, espe­cially in states that have had suc­cess pass­ing LGBT rights legislation.”

Two Chris­t­ian legal groups, mean­while, said they would sue in fed­eral court in Sacra­mento to pre­vent the law from tak­ing effect on Jan. 1.

The law­suits will be filed on behalf of ther­a­pists whose prac­tices include efforts to help clients change their sex­ual ori­en­ta­tions or reduce their attrac­tions to peo­ple of the same-sex; par­ents who have sought such ther­apy for their chil­dren; and teenagers who cur­rently are under­go­ing it, lawyers for the California-based Pacific Jus­tice Insti­tute and Florida-based Lib­erty Coun­sel said.

Lib­erty Coun­sel Chair­man Mat Staver said his orga­ni­za­tion plans to argue in court that the law infringes on the First Amend­ment and equal pro­tec­tion rights of indi­vid­u­als to give and receive infor­ma­tion that matches their per­sonal and pro­fes­sional beliefs.

“What this law does is tell minors that they can no longer receive infor­ma­tion about same-sex attrac­tions that they have been receiv­ing and that they find ben­e­fi­cial to them,” Staver said. “It also puts coun­selors in a sit­u­a­tion where they must present only one view­point of this subject.”

The law Brown signed states that men­tal health providers who use sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion change efforts on clients under 18 would be engag­ing in unpro­fes­sional con­duct and sub­ject to dis­ci­pline by their respec­tive state licens­ing boards.

Main­stream asso­ci­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing psy­chi­a­trists, psy­chol­o­gists and social work­ers have dis­missed repar­a­tive ther­apy in recent decades as being inef­fec­tive and poten­tially dan­ger­ous to the men­tal health of teenagers and young adults who are led to believe their inter­est in same-sex part­ners is wrong.

As orig­i­nally writ­ten, the bill intro­duced by state Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, also would have required ther­a­pists to warn adult patients of the practice’s risks and lim­i­ta­tions and to obtain their writ­ten con­sent before engag­ing in it.

Lieu dropped the informed con­sent pro­vi­sion, how­ever, after a num­ber of men­tal health asso­ci­a­tions in Cal­i­for­nia — includ­ing the Cal­i­for­nia Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion and the Cal­i­for­nia Asso­ci­a­tion of Mar­riage and Fam­ily Ther­a­pists — com­plained that it inter­fered with the therapist-client relationship.

Both groups, as well as the other lead­ing pro­fes­sional groups, ulti­mately endorsed the ban for juveniles.

Posted by AP News on Oct 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.