A bill which would ban therapies that
attempt to alter a young person's sexual orientation from gay to
straight was approved on a party line vote in the California Assembly
Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.
The proposal (SB 1172), sponsored by
Senator Ted W. Lieu, a Democrat from Torrance, cleared the Senate in
May.
“Being lesbian or gay or bisexual is
not a disease or mental disorder for the same reason that being a
heterosexual is not a disease or a mental disorder,” Lieu said
after his bill cleared the Senate. “The medical community is
unanimous in stating that homosexuality is not a medical condition.”
ThinkProgress.org
reported that witnesses supporting the legislation told committee
members that the bill “will literally save lives.”
The National Association for Research &
Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), a group which promotes the therapy,
called the measure “another triumph of political activism over
objective science.”
On its website, the group claims that
passage of the bill would “likely increase harms to minors
through its unintended consequences.” Parents, the group
explained, would be forced to seek out therapy for their children
from “unlicensed, unregulated and unaccountable religious
counselors.”
“The vast majority of anecdotal
accounts of harm to children from SOCE [Sexual Orientation Change
Efforts] seem attributable to these types of counselors and to
religiously oriented programs.”
The bill must first be reconciled in
the Senate before returning to the Assembly for a final vote.
Meanwhile, the Southern Poverty Law
Center (SPLC) has filed an ethics complaint against a licensed Oregon
therapist claiming he
attempted to turn a 22-year-old gay student straight without his
consent.
(Related: Dr.
Robert Spitzer regrets 2001 study supporting “ex-gay” therapy.)