California Bans Ex-Gay Therapy For Youths

I don't like the name, and I don't like the idea.

Ex-gay therapy; makes it sound like someone can go from being gay to being ex-gay in the blink of eye and thousands of dollars in therapy. Or, you could call it "reparative", or "conversion," therapy, meaning to "fix the gay" cuz we're broken and stuff, which is why we're gay.

Or, maybe we're born that way.

But, there are some folks, either through religious beliefs, family interference, or just plain self-loathing, who do not wish to be gay, and they seek out these therapies top repair themselves and make themselves ex-gay.

All well and good, if you;re a free-thinking adult, but what about the young person who, say, at age thirteen, or sometimes even younger, announces to their families that they are gay? How do they fit into ex-gay and "reparative" therapies?

Well, thanks to new legislation in California, and recently signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, ex-gay therapies for young people are over.

The law--authored by Senator Ted Lieu, and co-sponsored by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Equality California, Gaylesta, Courage Campaign, Lambda Legal, and Mental Health America of Northern California--goes into effect January 1, 2013, and it prohibits state-licensed therapists--not private practice therapists--from engaging in "reparative therapy" with minors who, oftentimes, are forced into therapies by their parents. Advocates for the bill say that conversion therapy often uses dangerous tactics that place youth at a high risk of depression and suicide. 

Ryan Kendall, one of two men, along with Peter Drake, endured ex-gay and "reparative" therapy, and spoke to the California assembly of his experience:

"As a young teen, the anti-gay practice of so-called conversion therapy destroyed my life and tore apart my family. In order to stop the therapy that misled my parents into believing that I could somehow be made straight, I was forced to run away from home, surrender myself to the local department of human services, and legally separate myself from my family. At the age of 16, I had lost everything. My family and my faith had rejected me, and the damaging messages of conversion therapy, coupled with this rejection, drove me to the brink of suicide."

When will people understand that gay folks are born gay, and that you cannot pray it away, beat it away, or repair it away. How many lives have been ruined because these young people are forced into therapies where they are told that they are wrong and bad and evil, and somehow broken, just for being gay?

Thanks goddess, at least, the state of California will no longer practice such a dangerous method.

via The Advocate