In a new piece of legislation submitted before Friday’s deadline for new bill, California State Rep. Bonnie Lowenthal introduced Assembly Bill 2199, which would, 43 years after its creation, remove from the lawbooks a mandate the Department of Mental Health must “plan, conduct and cause to be conducted scientific research into the causes and cures of sexual deviation, including deviations conducive to sex crimes against children, and the causes and cures of homosexuality, and into methods of identifying potential sex offenders.” How quaint. [SacBee] [District]
California Might Possibly Discontinue Searching for Homosexuality Cure
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emb
Yay Bonnie Lowenthal! I know they’ve got bigger problems to deal with in Sacramento besides cleaning up Stupid Old Laws, but she’s my rep and she did a good (and unfortunately these days brave) thing.
Cam
With the budget of CA in a mess are have they actually been paying peoples salary for decades to try to cure homosexuality?!
Andrew
I’m quite fine with the rest of that bill, besides the gay thing.
B
No. 2 · Cam asked, “With the budget of CA in a mess are have they actually been paying peoples salary for decades to try to cure homosexuality?!” Mostly likely not, at least not in the last 4 decades, although some money may have gone into finding a cause for homosexuality, which is an interesting problem (a test case for figuring out how to associate genes with complex human behavior, not something as simple as eye color).
schlukitz
California Might Possibly Discontinue Searching for Homosexuality Cure
It’s been 25 years since the American Psychiatric Association (APA) voted to delete homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders. California doesn’t read the papers or watch TV?
And a state government’s opinion about homosexuality being an illness that requires a cure, is more knowledgeable and super-cedes the stated findings and official position of the APA?
That’s a little akin to saying that the Federal Government might possibly discontinue the policy of making blacks sit in the back of the bus…46 years after the passing of the Civil rights Bill, because they believe that blacks are really not equal, despite the passing of the law saying that they are.
Doh!
If such a mandate were still on the books as regards black people’s right to civil-liberties and epuality the black community would be out in the streets by the millions, as well they should be. And I would be right there beside them.
Who knew about this mandate…and how do people get away with this shit?
And now that I think about it a bit, didn’t we just read about some wing-nut who believes that all gay people should be subject to de-gaying” treatments? That’s akin to asking the makers of Porcelana to make a “whitening Creme” for blacks to use.
B
“It’s been 25 years since the American Psychiatric Association (APA) voted to delete homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders. California doesn’t read the papers or watch TV?”
http://www.ahajokes.com/laws021.html has a list of alleged crazy laws from Massachusetts that they haven’t gotten around to repealing, just to put things into perspective.