Posted on 05/07/2015 10:39:47 AM PDT by wagglebee
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 6, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- By declining to hear a challenge to a lower-court decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively solidified New Jersey's ban on "reparative therapy," or counseling designed to steer people away from their unwanted same-sex attractions. Republican Gov. Chris Christie signed the ban into law in August 2013.
The New Jersey ban applies only to minors. According to Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), noncompliance by parents could result in the state taking their children away.
The Human Rights Campaign, a powerful lobby dedicated to redefining marriage and normalizing homosexuality, recently decried reparative therapy as "a range of dangerous and discredited practices" that can "lead to depression, anxiety, drug use, and suicide." In February 2014, activists in favor of normalizing homosexuality demanded that the United Nations classify reparative therapy as a form of torture. Such accusations depend on the assumption that same-sex attractions are innate, unchangeable, and irresistible, despite a lack of evidence to support this theory and an abundance of evidence to the contrary.
But while reparative therapy has been panned in the media and the courts, not all therapists condemn the practice. The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity in conjunction with the NARTH Institute, for example, strongly advocated for Gov. Christie to veto New Jersey's ban in July 2013. In a statement released at that time, the group emphasized the ban's threat to personal freedom: "The freedom of a gay teen to choose a therapist that honors his or her goals and values is unchallenged. All citizens should expect equal treatment and protection from the law and lawmakers."
The therapists concluded: "The 'bumper sticker slogan' approach which so often characterizes media stories rarely improves the public's understanding of important psychological issues."
The NARTH Institute had joined two New Jersey therapists and the American Association of Christian Counselors in challenging New Jersey's reparative therapy ban, citing concerns about the state curtailing therapists' freedom of speech and religion.
Additionally, Mat Staver, the Liberty Counsel attorney who represented the New Jersey plaintiffs, claimed in a separate but related lawsuit that his client desired to repudiate his same-sex attractions. "Before states began passing legislation banning change therapy, the treatment was driven by the minor's desired outcome," Staver said. "Our client and his family were on the way to that desired outcome, until Governor Christie signed a law prohibiting further treatment. ... Governor Christie has no right coming into the therapy session of this young man and telling him what kind of counseling he can receive."
A federal judge dismissed the challengers' case in November 2013, deciding that "'counseling' is not entitled to special constitutional protection merely because it is primarily carried out through talk therapy."
Christie, who expressed reservations about interfering with "parents on raising their children," nonetheless signed the ban – "reluctantly," he claimed. Yet, Christie rationalized, "exposing children to ... health risks without clear evidence of benefits is not appropriate."
On the point of the state's involvement with how parents raise their children, the Alliance-NARTH statement stressed that "[a]ny society that grants the right to an adolescent to decide to terminate a pregnancy ... cannot rationally suggest that this same adolescent should not have the right to freely participate in conversational counseling to discuss sexuality." New Jersey currently has no parental notification or permission requirement for minors seeking an abortion.
Along with New Jersey, one other state has passed legislation to ban reparative therapy: California, under Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown, in October 2012. (The District of Columbia City Council passed its own ban in December of last year.) The Supreme Court refused in 2014 to hear the challenge to California's reparative therapy ban.
I don’t have the name handy but there were a couple articles on fr in the last couple days about it.
I have no issue with people choosing to stay with organized religion. But they really need to pay attention to what comes from the pulpit.
I never had to deal with that directly but the priest who replaced the one in the church I grew up going to ended up ‘reassigned’ after past ‘issues’ came to light.
There was no one specific issue that turned me off the church. Just a realization that we obviously had different values on a variety of issues. I am good with the theology. It’s the application that I’m far from fine with.
I regard the states losing their sovereign identity to the federal government to be a consequence of post Civil War traumatic “amnesia.”
Leviathan is always the enemy of human society.
Historically speaking, the mature socialist state consumes its human inhabitants, then goes to its grave.
You’re most welcome. Local Party members continue to try to get revenues from the federal government, tourism, questionably increasing property taxes and other sources of recirculating debt. There are agriculture and energy, but more production is needed for sustainable revenues. Hopefully, some of us will continue to be ready to manufacture some products of good value in small shops, when enforcement against new, local competition ceases (if the economy goes that bad).
As a young boy I remember an uncle of mine who had his own ideas as to sexual learning/experience for young men at puberty age. The idea was to place in a solitary room the young man with a good looking female who would give him appropriate visualization of the female body from nightgown to bare body. The girl/young lady was to incite/invite the boy to have some gay time(at the time gay meant fun and excitement). I don’t know the stats as to these events, but my guess is that many if not most of the young men did have a gay time and lived life as human creation was intended.
With apologies to Claire Wolfe, it is time to shoot the bastards!
My experience has been that maybe 10% of those who claim to understand and follow the Constitution actually do...
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Agreed. Imho, we have the best system in the world thanks to a perfect confluence of opportunity, courage, integrity and brilliance our Founding Fathers, but humans are flawed and many are corrupt and greedy.
Sorry about that.
“Gays” may only be 2% of the population (at most). But they are in VERY high places—the White House, the State Department, top executives of leading corporations (e.g., Apple), the media, etc.
They are doing all they can to destroy Christian civilization, and individual Christians (e.g., those bakers in Oregon). And “gay” propaganda has a leading role in the Russia-bashing (and Orthodox-bashing) that may lead us to WWIII!!!! I’m sick of even Freepers—and many other conservatives—parroting that propaganda!!!!
....eliminating the 17th Amendment will make things WORSE...
I agree!!!!
“If anything, eliminating the 17th Amendment will make things WORSE because candidates for Senate will no longer have to deal with primaries, they can cut deals directly with the party bosses in the state legislatures.”
I suspect you’re correct. That’s pretty much why the 17th passed in the first place.
Please bear in mind that the only specific power that the states have ever delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate with respect to intrastate issues is the power to regulate the US Mail (1.8.7). Everthing else that the feds do concerning intrastate issues is based on 10th Amendment-protected state powers which the corrupt feds have stolen from the states.
Thomas Jefferson had expressed it this way …
"The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign nations." --Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800.
Again, the ill-conceived 17th Amendment is a large part of the unconstitutionally big federal government mess imo.
We all slip sometimes, you just had the guts to admit it.
” I was raised RC and left over the crap there. Me and God do fine without middlemen.”
You sound like a carbon copy of my background. BC grad, but left and haven’t looked back. And I don’t need a “closer” to broker my confessions to God, either : )
If God is omnipresent and all aware as the Bible Teaches clearly, he was there for the sin when it went down. I see little point in having someone give a second hand account ;)
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