SACRAMENTO,
Calif. (AP) — California has become the first state to ban a controversial form
of psychotherapy aimed at making gay teenagers straight.
Gov. Jerry
Brown announced Sunday that he had signed SB1172 by Democratic Senator Ted Lieu
of Torrance. The law, which prohibits sexual orientation change efforts for
anyone under 18, will stop children from being psychologically abused, Lieu
said.
Effective
Jan. 1, the state will ban what is known as reparative or conversion therapy
for minors. The therapies "have no basis in science or medicine and they
will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery," Brown said in a
statement.
Mainstream
mental health organizations have disavowed such therapy, and a number of mental
health associations in California — including the state's Board of Behavorial
Sciences, the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists and the
California Psychological Association — supported the legislation.
Gay rights
groups have called the practice dangerous because it can put youth at higher
risk of depression and suicide.
"We're
grateful to Gov. Brown for standing with California's children," the Human
Rights Campaign said in a statement. "LGBT youth will now be protected
from a practice that has not only been debunked as junk science, but has been
proven to have drastically negative effects on their well-being."
The group
called on other states to follow California's lead on the issue.
Conservative
religious groups and some Republicans have argued that banning conversion
therapy would hinder parents' right to provide psychological care for children
experiencing gender confusion.
The Encino,
Calif.-based National Association for Research and Therapy on Homosexuality
said in August that the bill was a case of "legislative overreach,"
and Lieu's claims of harm to children were based on politics, not research.
 |
| Jeremy Marks: 'I began to think that perhaps we’d got it really wrong. ' Photograph: Lydia Goldblatt for the Guardian |
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