Against The Law In California To Obtain Ssa Therapy!

[Gabriela]

So if I beat the heck out of my boyfriend, that's only considered abuse because society says so? Or, rather, it's not considered abusive because he's a man and therefore stronger than me and society thinks only men can be perpetrators of domestic abuse? 

 

Abuse isn't just a social construct. 

 

The behaviors that we call abuse are not social constructs, which is all your example illustrates. But what we consider abuse and not abuse is socially determined, which your example also illustrates. Back in the day, if a man beat his wife, it was not considered "abuse". These days, if a woman beats her husband, it's not considered "abuse" by some because they hold to the (IMO erroneous) conception that only men can abuse their spouses.

 

Thanks for making my point. :-)

Edited September 1, 2013 by curiousing

[4588686]

I go off and beat myself all the time.  Some claim it's self-abuse.  But I disagree.  I think it's the only way I can make myself hard enough to surmount the many challenges life presents.  

 

 

Edited September 1, 2013 by Hasan

[Gabriela]

Gov. Christie here in NJ also banned "conversion therapy" a few weeks ago. I was glad to hear the news and glad California is on board.

Why? Because trying to force yourself to think, act or live as a heterosexual when you're not isn't just counterproductive, but it's also damaging.

 

The Church calls us to live out our sexuality in a healthy way that's integrated with the rest of who we are. That doesn't mean change our orientation, or try to suppress or ignore same-sex attraction, which is what this kind of therapy attempts to achieve. This kind of therapy flies in the face of what our faith teaches about how to live with SSA and how others with SSA should be treated.

 

 

 

 

Yes.

 

You seem to assume that every person with SSA is "born gay". Not everyone who experiences SSA has SSA "rooted in their brain chemistry" in the way I think you mean. There's a lot of debate about whether people are "born gay" and I've heard that there's some research to suggest that some people—but not all—are. It's certainly clear to me from my experience that not everyone who suffers SSA is "born gay". Some come to that orientation as a result of social influences and/or personal experience. The more we condone open homosexuality, the more people who never would have considered it come to consider it. If any of those teenagers out there seeking therapy are seeking it because they were not "born gay" but instead are feeling tempted because our society has begun to glorify that orientation, then they deserve therapy. Even if they're minors. (Though I agree that children, i.e., non-adolescents or any youth not yet capable of even understanding sexual orientation, should wait until they do.) If society is creating SSA in some of these people, then it's an injustice to ban them from seeking help for it.

[4588686]

You seem to assume that every person with SSA is "born gay". Not everyone who experiences SSA has SSA "rooted in their brain chemistry" in the way I think you mean. There's a lot of debate about whether people are "born gay" and I've heard that there's some research to suggest that some people—but not all—are. It's certainly clear to me from my experience that not everyone who suffers SSA is "born gay". Some come to that orientation as a result of social influences and/or personal experience. The more we condone open homosexuality, the more people who never would have considered it come to consider it. If any of those teenagers out there seeking therapy are seeking it because they were not "born gay" but instead are feeling tempted because our society has begun to glorify that orientation, then they deserve therapy. Even if they're minors. (Though I agree that children, i.e., non-adolescents or any youth not yet capable of even understanding sexual orientation, should wait until they do.) If society is creating SSA in some of these people, then it's an injustice to ban them from seeking help for it.

 

 

Tell me more about your libertarianism.  

[Didacus]

Hopefully, but until then the claim that we have a state health care system is false.  

 

If an adult patient wants it he or she can have it.  The APA has documented why they consider this 'treatment' abusive so the state has banned it for minors.  Minors also can't use Jameson Irish Whiskey to treat the hiccups.  

 

Can you show us where the support of the treatment being abusive comes from? 

From what I read, there is much evidence of the effectiveness of the treatment, and no detriment.

[Aloysius]

regardless of one's view on nature vs. nurture in homosexuality, most things that call themselves "conversion therapy"--especially the ones that are employed to teach teenagers--are absolutely abusive and harmful and should be entirely avoided, and by no means should we defend them.  perhaps an argument could be made about whether or not to illegalize them, but I find it entirely arguable that it could be considered child abuse--at least the disgusting kinds of "conversion therapy" that are most common.

 

there are possible respectable Christian psychological approaches that help people work through their issues in general with a psychologist who allows them the possibility that their attractions might change, open to helping them explore that as a possibility, but does not pressure it, allowing them to explore their potential future lives with the possibilities of chastity or eventually evolving orientations for Christians who so desire such things.  but that's really not what is generally being talked about when you reference conversion therapy approaches--you're usually talking about the people that prey upon fundie parents who basically want to bible-thump the gay away and end up screwing up a lot of people.

 

to sincerely advance the Christian sexual ethic in society, we need to repudiate any kinds of abusive therapies, and come up with understanding avenues to be available for people that offer an alternative from the you-were-born-this-way determinism without festering the harmful and abusive approaches.  generally both sides of the politically charged debates over homosexuality are harmful to young people growing up who experience homosexual attractions... what is needed is an alternative that can help open up avenues for the many people with SSA who do not want to accept the gay-determinism that is dogmatic in our culture but without creating damaging repressiveness.

[Aloysius]

regardless of one's view on nature vs. nurture in homosexuality, most things that call themselves "conversion therapy"--especially the ones that are employed to teach teenagers--are absolutely abusive and harmful and should be entirely avoided, and by no means should we defend them.  perhaps an argument could be made about whether or not to illegalize them, but I find it entirely arguable that it could be considered child abuse--at least the disgusting kinds of "conversion therapy" that are most common.

 

there are possible respectable Christian psychological approaches that help people work through their issues in general with a psychologist who allows them the possibility that their attractions might change, open to helping them explore that as a possibility, but does not pressure it, allowing them to explore their potential future lives with the possibilities of chastity or eventually evolving orientations for Christians who so desire such things.  but that's really not what is generally being talked about when you reference conversion therapy approaches--you're usually talking about the people that prey upon fundie parents who basically want to bible-thump the gay away and end up screwing up a lot of people.

 

to sincerely advance the Christian sexual ethic in society, we need to repudiate any kinds of abusive therapies, and come up with understanding avenues to be available for people that offer an alternative from the you-were-born-this-way determinism without festering the harmful and abusive approaches.  generally both sides of the politically charged debates over homosexuality are harmful to young people growing up who experience homosexual attractions... what is needed is an alternative that can help open up avenues for the many people with SSA who do not want to accept the gay-determinism that is dogmatic in our culture but without creating damaging repressiveness.

[Didacus]

As for being born gay, this page I think explains things very well:

 

http://www.campaignlifecoalition.com/index.php?p=Born_Gay%253F

 

There is NO DOUBT that homosexual tendencies can indeed change - that has always been the belief for over 150years up until the APA made a POLITICAL decision to say that gay was no longer considered abnormal.

See the videos embedded in the page, I think the doctor in those videos explains this very well as also, and furthermore has practical proof of the success to cure SSA.

[Aloysius]

That link just deals with the tired old arguments as to whether there is a "gay gene", which is pretty irrelevant for actual people who experience homosexual attractions, as either way the predisposition to same sex attraction almost certainly has a chemical basis in most people that experience same sex attraction (though by no means do all people who experience same sex attraction all have the same causes), and if there is no gene that makes one predisposed to it (which is not certain), it is very likely that events determining the development of brain chemistry in the womb lead to homosexual attractions later in life.  which would of course explain no 100% commonality among twins but still a higher rate of both twins being gay than the rate of gay people in the general population.

 

 As regards the psychological explanations... while I haven't had a chance to watch them, the thing is, so many people throw out wild and inconsistent generalized statements to blame same sex attraction on some series of events as if it could be categorized so simply.  It can't be, and most of those generalizations full of a wide array of people's issues, that people often politically latch onto, are like horoscopes for people with same sex attraction--they are able to fit themselves into this generically described set of symptoms.  Now, I think it is absolutely wrong to fail to account for events during one's development as being a part the reasons one has developed same sex attraction... but these things are unique, and the generic causes often given in talks by expert psychologists, I very much think are fortune-cookie nostradamus horoscope statements that draw people in who are desperately looking for some explanation.  you know, they had a bad relationship with their father, or anger issues, or their socialization growing up was stunted, some traumatic experience, failure to make enough friends of the same sex when they were younger, et cetera et cetera... they're things that are generic enough, and easily applicable to anyone whose hormonal makeup did lead to them acting differently than their peers, that they draw people in.

 

It should be noted that not everyone who develops same sex attraction is the same.  there is a broad spectrum, from people who have only experienced some same sex attraction as a phase in their lives, to people who have always only had deep seated same sex attraction exclusively, with no attraction to the opposite sex, and many people in between.  often people on the lighter end of the spectrum who eventually develop attraction to the opposite sex feel far too free to declare themselves success stories... but honest psychologists who have a Christian perspective should acknowledge that while some people might develop opposite sex attraction over the course of working out all sorts of things in their lives and finding out what they want, not everyone can.  the worst thing you can do is go to someone like that and tell them that if they just do x, y, and z therapy they can magically overcome same sex attraction--that kind of thing has severely damaged lives.  allowing people to be open to other possibilities in the course of therapy or spiritual direction can be a good thing, but trying to impose heterosexuality through psychological techniques has been shown to be pretty harmful to people in the long run.  I would urge people NOT to support things like that.

 

the Christian approach should invite and promote fulfilling avenues of chastity, while allowing the exploration of other possibilities but by no means attempting psycho-techniques to impose or force one into a certain kind of mold.  not everyone can healthily develop heterosexual attractions, and actively trying to develop heterosexual attractions tends to lead to psychologically unhealthy states that end up damaging lives.

[Didacus]

It tghink it would be worth while you watch the videos.

[Aloysius]

watched the first video for ya, the man seems sincere enough, but getting to his explanation, it is exactly what I expected (bad relationship with the father, domineering mother, bad peer relationships, sexual abuse, etc)... I personally know quite a few people who were taken in by explanations like these for a while, but eventually realized they had been fitting the pieces together from their lives out of a desperate hope for some kind of medical explanation, but that it was actually totally inconsistent, based on their experiences I always compare these kinds of explanations to horoscopes... I can't judge this guy's particular techniques, but the explanation he offers of the causes of homosexuality is not at all convincing... it's the kind of thing that draws in a certain kind of homosexual (and I don't deny that some of those factors may be involved, but he puts way too much stock in it as a clear-cut causal relationship and the evidence he refers to I think is pretty junky science, actually, having seen a bit of these studies myself)

 

the point about acknowledging homosexuals with sincere desires for change is an important one, one which gay-determinism activists are far too often dismissive of, or attribute that desire to family pressures or peer pressure and fail to acknowledge individuals can have their own agency in desiring something different... I am very much against gay-born-this-way determinism pressure on people who experience same sex sexual attraction, but the other side of the coin is the every-homosexual-can-change-their-orientation because we've got a medical cause and cure pressure that is also pretty horribly wrong and has resulted in many examples of hurt and damaged lives.

 

at one point he says we need to hear more of the ex-gay stories, and that's a point when I cringed the most.  NO, we most certainly do NOT need to hear more ex-gay stories.  If people do develop and grow past their same sex attractions, the absolute worst thing they could do for themselves, their wives, their families is to stand up as some kind of ex-gay poster boy trying to declare that every single person with same sex attraction can have the exact same experience as they have had--because no, not everyone has the same experience with same sex attraction, and also there's a reason there's a stereotype about those people being closeted--the more people tend to talk publicly about how ex-gay they are, very often that represents a person who's continually trying to convince themselves about it.  many public ex-gay figures have ended up going back into homosexuality leaving behind shattered lives because they were all too quick to capitalize on some precarious changes in their lives and become political poster-boys for the ex-gay movement.  anyone who does find themselves on a journey in which they find themselves able to develop heterosexual attractions and heterosexual relationships, in my opinion, is much better off emphasizing for themselves the profoundly personal nature of that journey and should by no means assume that everyone else who has same sex attraction would be able to experience that journey in the same way, and turning that profoundly personal experience into a public political statement is the best way to screw it up I think.

[CatholicsAreKewl]

It's not that it's not helpful. it's that it's harmful. Teenagers can get access to this hackery. They just have to wait until they are 18

Should we ban every bogus potentially harmful treatment? Mental trauma is one thing, people like Warhol and jobs dying because of their trust in the promises of dodgey alternative medicine is another.

[CatholicsAreKewl]

I go off and beat myself all the time. Some claim it's self-abuse. But I disagree. I think it's the only way I can make myself hard enough to surmount the many challenges life presents.

So many ban-worthy jokes I can make off of this post. I need to stop phatmassing at bars

[Gabriela]

Tell me more about your libertarianism.  

 

Exactly how do you see "it's an injustice to ban people from seeking treatment" as inconsistent with libertarianism? It's an argument for less government legislation of people's activities.  :think2: 

[4588686]

Exactly how do you see "it's an injustice to ban people from seeking treatment" as inconsistent with libertarianism? It's an argument for less government legislation of people's activities.  :think2: 

 

 

Well, it's certainly not inconsistent with the bastardized libertarianism that has existed in the US for the last few decades, which is really just neofudalism.  It is, however, inconsistent with the ideals of human liberation since you want to perpetuate individuals, in this case children, being shackled to illusions and oppressive fabrications (i.e. religion).  Less abstractly, as others have noted, these programs are abusive and cruel.  They take children who have nothing wrong with them, except that some fairy tale disproves, and teaches them to view their sexuality as evil or wrong.  

 

Doller doller bill, ya'll