Psychologist’s Response to Intrusive “Conversion Therapy Prohibition Act”

IFI is richly blessed by the supportive, encouraging, wise, impassioned, and eloquent email messages and Facebook comments we receive. Yesterday, we received just such a message in response to the call-to-action article about State Representative Kelly Cassidy’s (D-Chicago) anti-identity-choice bill, which is formally titled “Conversion Therapy Prohibition Act.”

We think IFI subscribers would be equally blessed by reading what a practicing psychologist with over fifty years of experience thinks of the legislation that professional politician and pro-abortion/pro-homosexuality activist Kelly Cassidy has proposed.

With the author’s permission, his letter is published here:

This legislation is an outrageous intrusion into the rights of families. I cannot begin to expand on the extraordinary self-imposed stupidity of persons espousing such thinking. (I do not use the word “stupid” very often, but I can think of no more expressive, all-encompassing word than “stupid” to describe my disgust for such people.)

Their ignorance of human psycho-sexual development is abysmal. There is no such thing as a “gay” gene. There may, in some cases, be a pre-disposition to what is called “gay-ness” (although the word “gay” seems an absurd distortion of language, given the relentlessly depressing medical and psychological outcomes experienced by its full-time participants). But in most instances, the choice (it is a choice) of a “gay” lifestyle results from a combination of factors, not from a single, universally determinant gene, as much of the gay community disingenuously preaches.

To suggest that counseling, freely chosen as an aid to the choice of a non-“gay” lifestyle, is harmful says that no one has the God-given, constitutionally-protected freedom to choose his/her behavior and to accept responsibility for such behavior. Such prohibitive legislation is utterly unconscionable.

Those who support the denial of client-and-family rights might also wish to recall that similar legislation was passed during the 1930s in Germany and is also entirely in sync with the dictates of Shari’a law prompting the stoning of women and the whacking off of hands. The next step could well be the banning of Alcoholics Anonymous by heavy-drinking legislators or the banning of certain religious teachings about marriage by divorced lawmakers.

One is stunned by the crass and punitive measures which militant “gay” legislators engender and, worse, by the further blindness of their colleagues who promote the advance of injustice in the cause of a sickeningly intolerant political correctness. The dimensions of this debate are a good example of how politics has overcome science and how evidence is diminished in the face of pressure, especially among ruling members of the American Psychiatric Association who knew better but caved to the politically correct flow from the “gay” culture—pressure which has devastated both common sense and our collective wisdom

Daniel Boland, PhD.

If passed this bill would prohibit parents from accessing any counseling efforts for their minor children—including teenagers—that may involve facilitating the construction of an identity that does not affirm homoerotic feelings or gender confusion. This disastrously written, fascistic (i.e., oppressive or dictatorial) bill would prohibit such counseling even if, for example, a teenager desires to construct such an identity.

This draconian bill even mandates that if a licensed mental health provider in Illinois were just to refer a teen to a mental health provider in another state in which such counseling is legal, the Illinois mental health provider would be subject to professional discipline. So much for autonomy, choice, parental rights, religious liberty, and free speech.

TAKE ACTION: CLICK HERE to contact your local state representative and urge him/her to protect the rights of minors to seek help for their unwanted attractions.  Ask them to uphold parental rights. Request that they vote “NO” on HB 217.

You can also call the Illinois Capitol switchboard at (217) 782-2000 and leave a message for your state representative.

Fighting back: Click here to donate to the Illinois Family Institute!