God Bless California

Conversion Therapy.

Reparative Therapy.

I'm sure lots of you have heard about the news story that ABC broke about this and what it has to do with the state of California.

Here's a tidbit from the story:

After months of intense lobbying, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill late Saturday that prohibits licensed mental health professionals from using so-called reparative or conversion therapies with clients under age 18.

Here's another one:  

Brown called the therapies "quackery" that "have no basis in science or medicine."

As strongly as I feel about how damaging this type of 'therapy' is, and was to my marriage and father of my children, it never occurred to me to ban it.  And for that I now feel like an idiot.  

Bravo, California.  

Here's a gem: 

Mainstream associations representing psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers have dismissed reparative therapy in recent decades as being ineffective and potentially dangerous to the mental health of teenagers and young adults who are led to believe their interest in same-sex partners is wrong.

If you aren't aware of the suicides, attempted suicides, and contemplated suicides of these human beings, you have not been doing your Googling.  

When Matt and I got engaged in October of 1996, he called each of his brothers and sisters and parents to give them the news.  It's how his family does things, especially before emails became common.  

When Matt decided in 2010 that he couldn't live the pretense any longer, and we began taking steps toward our divorce, in true Neves fashion, he called each immediate family member to inform them of the end of our marriage.  

One of Matt's actively Mormon brothers didn't understand.  He informed Matt that there is therapy for homosexual tendencies.  

"Yes, I know.  Been there, done that."

"Did you know they also have groups?  You can try group therapy!"

"Brother, did that, too."

"You went to group therapy?!"

"Yes."

"Well, what happened?!"

I think this ban that Cali Gov Brown has passed is in itself an important step in educating others about~

1) the ineffectiveness of the therapy to rid people of homosexual tendencies and gender confusion, and 

2) the effectiveness of the therapy's tendency to damage and further confuse individuals on a fatal level. 

As Matt's wife, once upon a time, while he and I believed that this therapy would someday 'straighten him out', it had similar effects for me.  I was in a state of limbo, or better yet, purgatory,  while I waited for it to finally work.  I waited 13 years.  

I am amazed by the story of a friend of mine whose wife was a lesbian.  During their marriage she tried some of this therapy with an LDS Family Services counselor.  Both he and his wife were so shocked and disturbed with the session that he told her "do not go back."  He would have rather seen her with other women, which is what happened, than subject her to this harmful therapy.  He loved her, so he saw his wife's cheating with women, though hurtful to him, as healthier for her than attending these reparative therapy sessions.  

Comments

  1. MOR straight graduateOctober 2, 2012 at 12:23 AM

    So so happy it paassed and was signed. I am another straight woman who was deeply wounded by this. Limbo, purgatory, misery, desert, unanswered prayer, soul destroying, useless, destructive. And I was 'just' the straight partner! It doesn't work. It never worked for anyone. Ever.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes! All it can do is make a young person hate him/her self and think that there is something wrong with them. It is awful. Gay is OK!

    ReplyDelete

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