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California Becomes First State In Nation To Ban ‘Gay Cure’ Therapy For Teens California state Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, sponsored the bill to ban a controversial form of psychotherapy aimed at making gay youth straight. By James Eng, NBC News California has become the first state in the nation to ban therapy that tries to turn gay teens straight. Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed Senate Bill 1172, which prohibits children under age 18 from undergoing “sexual orientation change efforts.” The law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, prohibits state-licensed therapists from engaging in these practices with...

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - Governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill barring a controversial therapy that aims to reverse homosexuality in minors, the measure's sponsor said on Sunday, making California the first state to ban a practice many say is psychologically damaging. The move marked a major victory for gay rights advocates who say so-called conversion therapy, also called reparative therapy, has no medical basis because homosexuality is not a disorder. The bill's sponsor, state Senator Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Torrance, said in a statement that Brown had signed the bill. An announcement from the governor's office was expected on...

Gov. Jerry Brown announced Friday that he had signed a bill curbing regulatory oversight of phone calls made over the internet. The Democratic governor said the legislation, which is backed by AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., will encourage the growth of “innovative services that have become the hallmark of our state.” Members of the California Public Utilities Commission said SB 1161 would prevent them from regulating any telephone services, because land-line phones now use technology that sends voice signals over the Internet. Consumer advocates also opposed the bill, and said it would enable companies to skirt regulations that help...

Gun-toting demonstrators will not be able to openly display their unloaded rifles in California cities under legislation signed Friday by Gov. Jerry Brown. The governor vetoed a separate gun-related measure, however, that would have barred peace officers from selling to the public potentially unsafe handguns that are not available at stores. Two Assembly Democrats, Anthony Portantino of La Canada Flintridge and Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, carried the ban on open display of unloaded rifles, Assembly Bill 1527. The measure is a companion to legislation signed into law last year banning open display of handguns.

California college students hit with tuition increases in recent years will get a little financial help after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Thursday to create a website on which popular textbooks can be downloaded for free. Twin bills by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) will give students free digital access to 50 core textbooks for lower-division courses offered by the University of California, California State University and California Community College systems. Hard copies of the texts would cost $20...

In an abrupt announcement that caught state and local business officials off guard, cable giant Comcast announced Tuesday that it's closing all of its California call centers, including one in Natomas that employs about 300 workers. Why? That's the tricky question. Earlier in the day, citing the state's "high cost of doing business," a regional Comcast official said the company's Natomas, Livermore and Morgan Hill call centers will be shuttered on Nov. 30. Overall, about 1,000 jobs will be relocated to existing centers in Portland, Seattle and Denver. But hours later, after state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento,...

A new California law could expose young women who have abortions to additional safety risks because it allows unlicensed individuals to perform abortions under certain circumstances, according to pro-life advocates. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill into law over the weekend permitting nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants and midwives to perform abortions due to what Democrats see as a shortage of available doctors.

Jerry Brown fancies himself a futurist, exhorting us to act now to ensure a better tomorrow – with a bullet train and a more dependable water system his prime examples. Their merits notwithstanding, making decisions with long-term benefits is precisely what politicians should – but rarely – do. One wonders, however, how Brown squares his self-appointed role as progressive pathfinder with his regressive and potentially disastrous approach to the state's chronic gap between revenue and spending. While making some reductions in spending – although how permanent is questionable – the first two budgets that Brown signed during his second stint...

Gov. Jerry Brown, who will travel to Los Angles on Wednesday to sign legislation reducing public employee pension benefits, said today that the measure, though less sweeping than he proposed, is "the most that could be gotten" through his negotiations in Sacramento. "What I got was the most that could be gotten," the Democratic governor said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group's editorial boards. "Is it enough? No." The pension changes, approved by the Legislature despite opposition from labor unions and Republicans, will reduce benefits for future hires and require increased retirement contributions from current employees.

The California Senate passed a bill September 6 that would make it legal for non-physician medical professionals such as midwives to perform abortions under a statewide training program. The measure now awaits Democratic Governor Jerry Brown's signature. (Gov. Brown pictured to the left of the state seal, Sen. Christine Kehoe to the right.) According to LifeSiteNews.com, the bill (S.B. 623), introduced by Democratic State Senator Christine Kehoe, “extends a program run by the University of California at San Francisco [UCSF], in which nurse practitioners, midwives, and doctors’ assistants are trained to perform abortions without any further training in medicine. Kehoe...

Arguing for more revenues to bolster the state's finances, Gov. Jerry Brown called his November tax initiative "common sense" Thursday and blamed his predecessor for leaving California with an ongoing budget gap. Brown contended that his Proposition 30 would initially raise roughly the same $7 billion that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger eliminated by cutting the car tax and not raising taxes on out-of-state firms. The governor's Proposition 30 would increase taxes on high-income earners for seven years and sales for four years.

Labor unions wasted no time bashing the pension reform unveiled by Gov. Jerry Brown this morning as a unilaterally-imposed political exercise that needlessly guts state and local public employees' retirement for hundreds of thousands of workers. "This is far more than 'low hanging fruit,'" said Dave Low, chairman of union coalition Californians for Retirement Security in statement issued while Brown was still holding a pension press conference in Los Angeles just before noon. "This is the fruit, the branch, the tree trunk, and the roots." What particularly rankles labor leaders, however, was that none of this was bargained. "When you...

Media including the Los Angeles Times are reporting on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s tirade against California Gov. Jerry Brown this morning as he addressed California’s delegation to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.: “California made the bad choice by going with an old retread,” Christie told California’s delegation to the Republican National Convention here, a crowd that lapped up his message. “Let me tell you this – I cannot believe you people elected Jerry Brown over Meg Whitman. … Jerry Brown. Jerry Brown? I mean, he won the New Jersey presidential primary over Jimmy Carter when I was...

Gov. Jerry Brown spent much of last week trying to scare California voters into voting for higher taxes. Brown, speaking to community college students in San Diego, promised "real suffering by you and really our whole future" if voters reject his sales and income tax measure, Proposition 30. It's a somewhat disingenuous argument, albeit a clever one, rooted in the poll-tested assumption that education is the single most popular state program. ... Meanwhile, nearly 49 percent agreed with the opponents' argument against the measure, that the state wastes money on a bullet train and a legislative staff salary increase, while...

If the experts agree on the existence and causes of climate change, why do some public opinion polls find that only about half or less than half of the American public is convinced that emissions from human activities bear responsibility? A small but vocal group has aggressively spread misinformation about the science, aiming to cast doubt on well-established findings and conclusions. Their goal is to create confusion and uncertainty, thereby preventing meaningful action to remedy the problem. The same strategy was used cynically for decades by the tobacco industry after research showed that cigarettes caused cancer. In fact, some of...

The California Nurses Association, which antagonized Republican Meg Whitman with its relentless "Queen Meg" parody during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, is back for a second act - this time poking fun at wealthy people opposing Gov. Jerry Brown's November ballot initiative to raise taxes. The influential union, in a campaign to paint tax opponents as "bungling billionaires," will stage a skit on Tuesday at the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. The union promised reporters a "colorful event," with visuals including life rings and a model yacht.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is up with its second radio advertisement against Gov. Jerry Brown's November ballot initiative to raise taxes, comparing Brown's tax campaign to street robbery. "Hey, lady, hand over your purse or the schools get it," a voice at the top of the ad says. The ad, an issue-advocacy spot running statewide beginning today, comes as the Democratic governor begins in earnest to campaign for Proposition 30, his proposal to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners. The Democratic governor has characterized the election as a choice between higher taxes and...

In a pointed letter critical of Gov. Jerry Brown's tax rival, California's two U.S. senators along with state legislative leaders called Thursday for a cease-fire from campaigns backing the two multibillion-dollar tax hikes on the November ballot. U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, as well as Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, said in a letter to the California State PTA that the Proposition 38 campaign has "become increasingly negative" and "engaged in personal attacks against Governor Jerry Brown and Prop. 30." The PTA has joined wealthy attorney Molly Munger in backing Proposition...

California will issue driver's licenses to hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants once the Obama administration grants them work permits, the state Department of Motor Vehicles says. The state's decision is the opposite from Arizona's, where Republican Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday afternoon signed an executive order outlawing driver's licenses for anyone who benefits from the new federal deportation relief. The starkly different responses from neighboring states show that the benefits of the new federal directive could vary depending on where young immigrants live. The Obama administration left it up to the states to decide if they will issue...

Gov. Jerry Brown released an Internet ad the other day, asking voters to embrace his multibillion-dollar tax increase. But the word "tax" is nowhere to be found. The closest Brown or other speakers in the tightly scripted ad come to the T-word is "new revenues." Mostly, it touts Brown's efforts to cut state spending and declares – wrongly – that the state's credit rating has improved. "We've made progress, but we still have very serious budget problems in California," Brown says in the ad. "We simply have to take a stand against further budget cuts for schools or for our...