I got this letter from a left-wing PR group yesterday, asking people to come out to protest against “conversion therapy” – the controversial practice of trying to “convert” gay kids to being straight – and, I suspect, ban the practice:
Dear Rudolph,
OutFront Minnesota’s Lobby Day is this Thursday…Contact your legislators right now and tell them that no child should be subjected to dangerous and discredited conversion therapy…It’s those same conversations with legislators that will make the difference in whether we can protect youth from conversion therapy in Minnesota.
…
With pride and respect,
Marty Rouse
National Field Director
The thesis is that trying to use therapy to try to undo a key component of a person’s personality and identity can be traumatic, damaging and a bad idea deserving to be banned via the weight of government. Now, if someone voluntarily wants to give conversation therapy a try, I’m not sure where it’s the state’s interest…
…but let’s focus on the basic principle; dabbling in engineering peoples’ identities can cause all sorts of psychological harm. And psychology/psychiatry have known for decades (or as close as those two deeply inexact sciences ever get to “knowing” anything, anyway) that trying to force people to change their personality causes huge problems.
And just so we’re clear; I agree. I agree that forcing people to be someone they’re not causes long-lasting, terrible damage to the human psyche.
And that’s true whether you’re trying to “cure” homosexuality…
…or boyhood, which has been turned by our feminized academic establishment into a semi-treatable psychiatric pathology (subject to diagnosis by people with BAs in Education rather than MDs and PhDs) that needs to be wiped out.
So how about it? Should we treat all assaults against the human psyche as abuse? Or just the politically-incorrect ones?
I wonder why “anger management” classes are acceptable (and may even be ordered by a judge), but “orientation management” is not?
I strongly suggest that any person interested in the phenomenon of “sexual orientation” read what the APA has to say about it: http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx
Then try to determine why “orientation” is not a behavior.
So, how do you think so many of these folks BECOME gay in the first place? Weren’t they somehow “turned” gay by gay teachers or associates? How about we outlaw THAT; it’s only fair.
And you are correct. Why should the almighty State interfere in parents voluntarily seeking medical attention for their children? What about the many cases in which the therapy actually works? Maybe we should ban appendectomies?
I winder what make politicians think that they have expertise on this topic? Do they love the child more than his or her parents? Politicians do things to please various constituencies. Which constituency is asking for this ban? It’s not the affected young people or their parents.
One of the reasons why psychology is classed as a humanity is because it studies aspects of human behavior. Psychology is not a science because human behavior is not a matter of science. Psychology, like the rest of the humanies disciplines, does not accumulate knowledge the same way that a real science does. One generation of psychologists determines that homosexuality should be discouraged because it is associated with certain pathologies. The next generation of psychologists determine that homosexuality should not be discouraged, even though it continues to be associated with certain pathologies.
If a key component of a person’s identity involves having sex with underage but willing partners, who are we to try and erase it? Or those who prefer to wander around in an alcoholic/opiate/cannabinoid stupor? Or those who prefer to listen to the voices in their heads as they panhandle yuppies on the mall?
This was sorted out long ago, by that English fellow, George:
Masculine conversion is Goodthink, which is plusgood.
Homosexual conversion is Crimethink, which is doubleplusungood.
Using pre-revolutionary logic and wording to discuss it is OldSpeak as in: “OldSpeak unbellyfeel MinnSoc.”
Do try to keep up, won’t you?
.
Social engineering. Let’s go back in history and see whatever happened to all that tried and their effect on society.
2 legs good 4 legs bad
Ah, the utter contempt of conservatives for factual science continues unabated.
There is no attack on masculinity or feminizing of boys. That is crap. Expecting both boys and girls to conduct themselves appropriately to an academic environment.
Or is it your contention that boys are inherently savages and brutes who should not be expected to act like human beings in school?
You make a totally false equation here. Conversion therapy, inflicted on kids by parents who, if typical of conservatives, do not properly understand either reproduction or gender identity and sexual orientation, is harmful.
Academia is not.
More screeching hatred towards her fellow citizens from Dog Gone.
Dog Gone believes that homosexuals are “born that way.” This is not a scientific belief.
Dog Gone believes that “gender” is biological. It is not. “Gender” is a feature of language.
DG is a devotee of the work of John Money who figured prominently in her Womyn’s Studies classes at St Olaf. He of course was a peerless “scientist” by her lights.
To get a quick measure of the man here is one of his more famous quotes: “If I were to see the case of a boy aged ten or eleven who’s intensely erotically attracted toward a man in his twenties or thirties, if the relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual … then I would not call it pathological in any way”
The only psychological therapies that are banned are those that threaten the physical well being of patients. LSD therapy, for example.
If this ban succeeds, it may be the only banned therapy designed to make the people who are not receiving it feel good about themselves.
It took some digging, but I found out that there are only 70 people nation wide who offer “conversion therapy.” There are two in Minnesota.
http://www.splcenter.org/conversion-therapy
So this ban is actually an attack on two practices within the state of MN. This is not about protecting anyone, it’s about letting people like DG express their hatred towards people that do not think like she does.
if there’s only 2 in MN then doesn’t that qualify as a Bill of Attainder?
What is jail time for global warming ‘deniers’ other than mandatory conversion therapy?
Nearly every public opinion poll shows that a majority of people are ignorant about the details of how government, at all levels, works. The party ID of office holders, what power they have, etc.
Yet most people are very knowledgeable about how things that matter to them. How much money they make, what the things they would like to buy cost, What kind of raise (if any) they expect this year, the makeup of their favorite sports team.
American liberalism has evolved to the point where it’s adherents believe that your opinion matters most in the things you know least about and least in the things you know most about. You don’t know how to raise your kids, but you know how to raise everyone else’s kids.
PM; How right you are! Every time I watch Watter’s World on Fox, I am simply stunned at the outright ignorance of young people. Almost 90% of younger, college aged people, don’t even know who the VP of the U.S. is for God’s sake! These kinds of revelations prove two things:
1. Liberal/Communist brainwashing efforts of our institutions of higher learning(??), are succeeding.
2. This is the generation that is totally self absorbed, possibly dooming us all.
Of course, every time DG drops one of her loads of crap, she further proves the points.
“There is no police attack on Black men. This is crap. Expecting Blacks and Whites alike to conduct themselves appropriately in an urban environment.”
“There is no rape crisis on college women. This is crap. Expecting Men and Women alike to conduct themselves appropriately in an academic setting.”
“There is no liberal bias in Hugo nominations. This is crap. Expecting Liberals and Conservatives alike to conduct themselves appropriately in a literary setting.”
Hey, what do you know, Dog Gonning a complex social problem is easier than it looks!
While not definitively proven, there is a lot of evidence that suggest alcoholism is a genetic trait.
There are tens of millions of alcoholics out there, many of whom started drinking as children. Many manage to function adequately, and party on, many become overcome by their dependence and die, but many desire a better, happier life.
They check themselves in for conversion therapy…it’s called AA
It’s not easy, there are mental and physical effects to be overcome. Most of these folks don’t know how they will function if the primary ingredient of their social and personal lives is removed. Most have to stop associating with people they’ve known for years.
But millions manage to succeed.
What homosexualists are saying is that your average homo can’t stop buggering, and trying to stop is life threatening. It should be against the law.
What I hear is, drunken bums have more self respect and self discipline than homos.
Swiftee, a greater incidence of alcohol and drug abuse is one one of the pathologies associated with homosexuality. There are others, some of them behavioral, some not (lower birth weight, for example).
Here is what the APA says about what causes a person to have a particular sexual orientation:
http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/orientation.aspx
Set aside genetic defects or hormonal imbalance and you have social influence.
Gee Mingo, ya think that could be why homosexualists have been taking such interest in public school kids?
To invoke “factual science” and cite none of it is truly lazy and boorish.
So is saying something is “harmful” and not mentioning how it harms.
Did academia inflict this on you, Dog Gone, or were you born this way?
Swiftee wrote:
“Gee Mingo, ya think that could be why homosexualists have been taking such interest in public school kids?”
See Dog Gone’s comment. Not the words she wrote, but the attitude behind the words, the source of the hate.
Pondering the layers of meaning in this sentence from the APA is entertaining.
“. . . most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.”
Many people experience little or no “sense of choice” about many things they do during a typical day.
It is still true that typical American people do choose to do what they do, even when they choose to do it every single day.
There is one thing I have to thank DG for — after she made some absurd claim about a strong link between being left handed and being gay, I looked up the science on “handedness.” While there is no hard link between being left-handed and being gay (except, maybe, slightly, for lesbians), handedness is very similar to orientation. About as large a percentage of people are left handed as are gay, being left-handed is associated with many of the pathologies that are associated with being gay (underweight birth, greater tendency to contract diabetes, greater chance of being involved with the criminal justice system, etc), there is no genetic marker for handedness, it is difficult to measure handedness objectively, and of course people that are right or left handed experience very little choice about it. Populations where left-handedness is discouraged tend to have fewer left-handed members. Some features of handedness sometimes seems to be congenital, and some features seem to be learned behavior.
Fascinating, isn’t it?