This good bit of news needs only to be posted as is. It needs no further additions on my part:
On Saturday California Governor Jerry Brown signed a historic bill that will protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) minors from "reparative" therapies administered by mental health professionals aimed at altering sexual orientation or gender identities and expressions.
Senate Bill 1172, which the National Center for Lesbian Rights notes was co-sponsored by the NCLR, Equality California, Gaylesta, Courage Campaign, Lambda Legal, and Mental Health America of Northern California, and supported by dozens of organizations, is the first law of its kind in the United States and will become effective on January 1, 2013.
"Conversion" or "reparative" therapies, which can include a wide variety of techniques from counseling to shock therapy to -- in extreme cases -- exorcism, have long been used in an attempt to "cure" individuals of their homosexual and transgender orientations and identities. However, in recent years even those who once championed the idea that someone can convert to heterosexuality have admitted that viewpoint is flawed.
In April Dr. Robert Spitzer, author of a landmark 2001 study that claimed gay people could be alleviated of their homosexuality, admitted that, "In retrospect, I have to admit I think the critiques [of my study] are largely correct... The findings can be considered evidence for what those who have undergone ex-gay therapy say about it, but nothing more.”
SFGate.com notes that Governor Brown said, "This bill bans non-scientific 'therapies' that have driven young people to depression and suicide. These practices have no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery."
