Free Republic

A Tampa city ordinance banning counseling for minors with unwanted same-sex attraction and gender confusion has been overturned in federal court. In a Friday ruling from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Judge William F. Jung issued an order granting summary judgment to Christian legal group Liberty Counsel in its lawsuit to invalidate an ordinance in the city of Tampa that prohibited voluntary talk therapy for minors experiencing unwanted sexual feelings and attractions and gender identity confusion. The group represented Robert Vazzo, a marriage and family therapist, and New Hearts Outreach Tampa Bay, a Christian...

[SNIP]The diminution of the Big Idea isn’t easy to accept,even for those willing to concede that there are major problems in their field.An ego depletion optimist might acknowledge that psychology studies tend to be too small to demonstrate a real effect,or that scientists like to futz around with their statistics until the answers come out right.(None of this implies deliberate fraud;just that sloppy standards prevail.)Still,the optimist would say,it seems unlikely that such mistakes would propagate so thoroughly throughout a single literature,and that so many noisy,spurious results could line up quite so perfectly.If all these successes came about by random chance,then...

Italy's "Festival di San Remo," the most important musical happening in my country which is seen on T.V. by millions of Italians, became the unlikely platform this year for a powerful ex-gay testimony. The singer, Giuseppe Povia, winner of the festival in 2006, presented a song entitled, "Luca Era Gay" (Luca was once gay) -- SEE VIDEO HERE. The title of his song, implying that some gays can change to heterosexuality, was sufficient to destabilize the Italian gay movement. Gay activists threatened to block the festival, and Europarlimentary member Vittorio Agnoletto asked for a European resolution to stop Povia from...

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle has called on the Federal Government to reconsider its decision allowing the Catholic Church to play a role in a new pregnancy counselling service. The welfare arm of the Catholic church, Centacare, will provide advice to the organisation contracted to provide counselling. The Health Minister has defended the decision, saying there will be safeguards to ensure pregnant women calling a telephone counselling hotline are not influenced in their decisions. But Senator Nettle says she does not accept the assurances, given the Catholic Church's stated opposition to abortion. "We have examples now where the Government provides funding...

SADDAM Hussein is receiving psychiatric counselling to convince him to start eating again after 12 days on hunger strike in a US military prison. Saying that the 69-year-old ousted Iraqi president was still refusing food but taking liquid nourishment, a US spokesman said such counselling was part of additional daily medical care for inmates who risked damaging their health by their actions. "Medical and mental health professionals counsel the detainees on the dangers," Lieutenant Colonel Keir-Kevin Curry said. "They try to convince the detainees to end their fast." Saddam and three co-defendants who last ate on July 7 are all...

DOCTORS with links to abortion clinics will be banned from providing taxpayer-funded counselling to pregnant women, under the Government's $51 million plan to cut the abortion rate. But Prime Minister John Howard hasn't ruled out allowing church-affiliated groups to offer counselling to women with an unplanned pregnancy, insisting the advice will be "non-directive". Just weeks after Parliament voted to strip Health Minister Tony Abbott of his veto powers over the abortion drug RU486, Mr Howard unveiled new pregnancy support measures today. They include a 24-hour advice hotline and a Medicare rebate for pregnancy counselling. The Government is determined to bypass...

FEDERAL Health Minister Tony Abbott is waging a new war on abortion by attempting to take millions of dollars off counselling services he believes encourage women to abort. Undeterred by his loss in the RU486 abortion pill debate, Mr Abbott has put a plan to Cabinet that aims to bypass all counselling services to women provided by abortion clinics. The plan, worth more than $50 million, would see the Federal Government directly funding church-affiliated groups such as Lifeline (an arm of the Wesley Mission) and Anglicare to provide alternate counselling. Mr Abbott believes counselling offered by abortion clinics is fundamentally...

Grief counselling a waste of time, say psychologists By Raj Persaud (Filed: 04/06/2005) Bereavement counselling - long considered by psychologists to be vital in recovering from the death of a loved one - may be a waste of time, according to a new study. The research challenges a belief that has been firmly held by psychoanalysts since Sigmund Freud proposed in 1917 that confronting feelings is the healthiest way to cope with bereavement. Many psychoanalysts have even argued that failure to express grief indicates - or may lead to - deep psychological problems. These days, bereavement counsellors often urge people...

Something happened to Richard Cote. And now, almost 11 years later, he wants to tell the world. And whether you believe Cote's story or not, one thing is clear: He's not alone. Reports indicate thousands of people have told authorities they were abducted by aliens. Last year, BBC News reported four million Americans believe it has happened to them. Amazon.com sells a book titled How To Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction. Type the words "alien abduction" into the Google search engine and you'll be rewarded with more than 85,000 hits -- including a service that offers Christian counselling to people...

In a matter of only a few decades, counselling has replaced fortitude as our culturally approved way of confronting misfortune. A large number of my patients ascribe their current unhappiness to the fact that they were not offered counselling at the time of an unpleasant occurrence, such as a surgical operation or the death of a friend or relative. Every form of human suffering, it seems, is susceptible to the magical powers of therapy. It is the superstition of our age. Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology, examines this curious, and by no means harmless, phenomenon in some detail. Only...

THE goalposts have certainly shifted in the marriage stakes in Ireland. Couples live together. They buy houses together. They have kids. And somewhere en route the majority get married. Marriage is no longer the gateway, but a step along the way. Nor is it forever. Statistics suggest that as many as one in 10 of married couples in the under-40 age group may be heading for divorce. Put more optimistically, and more accurately, they are in need of marriage counselling. We know what happened marriage, in broad terms anyway. The notion of personal happiness gained ground. Or to use the...