The Presidential Inaugural Committee has selected the Rev. Luis Leon, an Episcopal priest in Washington, to deliver the benediction at President Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony on Jan. 21, replacing the Rev. Louie Giglio, the Atlanta pastor who bowed out after controversy erupted over an anti-gay sermon he gave in the mid-1990s.
The ex-gay meme alive and infectious in Australia.
But we begin with the latest on the subject matter in California.
LA Times:Brown appeals injunction against gay-conversion
law January 2, 2013 | 3:06pm
Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday appealed a court injunction that has blocked
enforcement of a new law [SB 1172] that prohibits providing gay minors with therapy aimed
at converting them to being heterosexual.
The notice of appeal was filed on behalf of Brown and the Medical Board of
California by state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals, which decided Dec. 21 to block the law that took effect Jan. 1 pending
a decision on its constitutionality.
A small group of therapists and religious groups argued that the law
infringes on their rights to free speech, but Harris has called
conversion therapy “unsound and harmful.” [emphasis added]
The first Amendment argument could also be made in regard to driving,
alcohol, cigarettes and a host of other minor-related regulatory laws.
The “free speech” that these therapists and religious groups argue for almost
cost these parents the life of their son.
Ben Gresham: Growing up I’d always been told that
homosexuality is wrong. That if you are gay or lesbian that you can’t be part of
the Church, you don’t get into heaven and that it’s a sin. … I would pray every
night that God would take my attraction to other men away from me.
Narrator: But praying didn’t work. At just 16, he turned to
a church leader for guidance. … The church helped Ben enroll in an online
conversion program, aimed at turning him straight.
Phyllis Gresham [sitting with husband, Michael]: We had no
idea, honestly, that Ben was going through the ex-gay program. He went to church
meetings, we thought they were just church meetings. We do feel angry that the
church did not notify us. Certainly if we
had known what was happening we would have stopped him from doing
them. Narrator: Ben tried three conversion programs in three
years, all failed. At 19, he tried to take his own life.
Ben: Because, for me, I couldn’t imagine a life without God.
I couldn’t imagine a life without my faith, without my church, without my
family, and that’s what I thought would happen.
Phyllis Gresham: It’s taken me a long time to forgive myself
that I didn’t know what was happening.
Michael Gresham: Yeah.
---
Ben, like many gay kids, got the message that the state of being
homosexual is sinful, and thus, are in an unwitting perpetual state of
unrepentantce.
The anti-gay-ex-gay solution is a denial of homosexuality as a state
of being for the promise of a virtually non-existent hope of becoming
heterosexual.
Either look forward to hell, or look forward to a life of hell.
~~~
therapists and religious groups argued that the law [banning underage
conversion “therapy”] infringes on their rights to free speech
And in doing so, they also argue that they should have the right to
indoctrinate minors into the anti-gay-ex-gay lifestyle without the knowledge or
consent of their parents.
A precise and additional reason why ex-gay therapy should be X rated.
