Like "Ex-Gay" Therapy in California, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania Will Be Relegated to the Dustbin of Quackery

California Is First State to Ban Gay ‘Cure’ for Minors

from the New York Times:

California has become the first state to ban the use for minors of disputed therapies to “overcome” homosexuality, a step hailed by gay rights groups across the country that say the therapies have caused dangerous emotional harm to gay and lesbian teenagers.

“This bill bans nonscientific ‘therapies’ that have driven young people to depression and suicide,” Gov. Jerry Brown said in a statement on Saturday after he signed the bill into law. “These practices have no basis in science or medicine, and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.”

The law, which is to take effect on Jan. 1, states that no “mental health provider” shall provide minors with therapy intended to change their sexual orientation, including efforts to “change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”

The law was sponsored by State Senator Ted W. Lieu and supported by a long list of medical and psychological societies, as well by state and national advocates for gay rights. Also speaking up for the ban were former patients who described emotional scars they said they were left with after being pushed into the therapy by their parents and finding that they could not change their sexual orientation or did not want to.

But some therapists and conservative religious leaders who promote methods that they say can reduce homosexual desire have condemned the new law as a violation of free choice. They say that it will harm young people who want to fight homosexual attractions on religious or other grounds and warn that it will lead more people to seek help from untrained amateurs.

The use of harsh aversion techniques, like electric shock or nausea-inducing drugs, to combat homosexual desires has largely disappeared. But during the last three decades, some psychologists have refined a theory of “reparative therapy,” which ties homosexual desires to emotional wounds in early childhood and, in some cases, to early sexual abuse.

These therapists say that with proper treatment, thousands of patients have succeeded in reducing their homosexual attraction and in enhancing heterosexual desire, though most therapists acknowledge that total “cures” are rare. But their methods have come under growing attack from gays who say the therapy has led to guilt, hopelessness and anger.

Reparative therapists, a small minority within the mental health profession, united in 1992 in the National Association for Research and Therapy on Homosexuality, based in Encino, Calif. The group did not immediately comment on the new California law, but its leaders have previously attacked the legislation as based on politics, not science, and said they would consider challenging it in court as an unjustified intrusion into professional practice.

One licensed family therapist and member of the association, David H. Pickup of Glendale, Calif., said in a recent interview that the ban would cause harm to many who want and need the therapy.

“If boys have been sexually abused and homosexual feelings that are not authentic later come up, we have to tell them no, we can’t help you,” Mr. Pickup said.

Gay and lesbian leaders, along with major scientific groups, reject such theories outright and say there is no scientific evidence that inner sexual attractions can be altered.

“Reparative therapy is junk science being used to justify religious beliefs,” said Wayne Besen, the director of Truth Wins Out, a gay advocacy group.

The California law is a milestone, but only a first step, Mr. Besen said, because the ideas in reparative therapy have been widely adopted by church ministries and others promoting the idea that homosexual urges can be banished.

Legislators in New Jersey and a few other states have discussed introducing similar bills to ban the use of the therapy for minors, Mr. Besen said.

Study Says: Homophobes May Secretly Be Gay Themselves

People, In A Homophobic Society, At War With Themselves

by Caroline May for The Daily Caller:


Denial can be a powerful defense mechanism. Apparently, homophobia is too — at least according to a new study from researchers from the University of Rochester, the University of Essex, England, and the University of California in Santa Barbara.

Their research concluded that the intense fear and repulsion college-age homophobes feel toward gays and lesbians is likely due to the fact that they see similarities in themselves.

“Individuals who identify as straight but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same sex may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves,” said lead author Netta Weinstein of the University of Essex, according to Science Daily.

The research, due to be published this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, took place in four different places in the United States and Germany, with an average of 160 college students in each location.

The researchers tested their subjects on their own sexuality and then measured the discrepancy between what the participants said about their own sexual orientation and how they reacted to timed tasks, including associating themselves with words and images they deemed as “gay” or “straight.”

Quickly associating himself or herself with a “gay” image and slowly associating with a “straight” one implied that an individual was gay.

The study also examined the participants’ upbringing and their own levels of so-called “homophobia.”

Those with discrepancies in how they defined their sexuality and how their sexuality was actually manifest in the study were more likely to be hostile to gays.

“In many cases these are people who are at war with themselves and they are turning this internal conflict outward,” said co-author Richard Ryan, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.

The study also found that people who grew up in supportive households were more likely to be in touch with their own sexual orientations.

“In a predominantly heterosexual society, ‘know thyself’ can be a challenge for many gay individuals. But in controlling and homophobic homes, embracing a minority sexual orientation can be terrifying,” Weinstein added.

Teens — Gay or Straight — More Likely to Attempt Suicide in Conservative Towns

Major Study of Oregon High Schoolers Probes Teen Mental Health and Social Climates

By Lindsey Tanner - AP Medical Writer:

CHICAGO — Suicide attempts by gay teens — and even straight kids — are more common in politically conservative areas where schools don't have programs supporting gay rights, a study involving nearly 32,000 high school students found.


Those factors raised the odds and were a substantial influence on suicide attempts even when known risk contributors like depression and being bullied were considered, said study author Mark Hatzenbuehler, a Columbia University psychologist and researcher.

His study found a higher rate of suicide attempts even among kids who weren't bullied or depressed when they lived in counties less supportive of gays and with relatively few Democrats. A high proportion of Democrats was a measure used as a proxy for a more liberal environment.

The research focused only on the state of Oregon and created a social index to assess which outside factors might contribute to suicidal tendencies. Other teen health experts called it a powerful, novel way to evaluate a tragic social problem.

"Is it surprising? No. Is it important? Yes," said Dr. Robert Blum of Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The study "takes our relatively superficial knowledge and provides a bit more depth. Clearly, we need lots more understanding, but this is very much a step in the right direction," he said.

Blum serves on an Institute of Medicine committee that recently released a report urging more research on gay health issues. Blum said the new study is the kind of research the institute believes has been lacking. The independent group advises the government on health matters.

The new study was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Previous research has found disproportionately high suicide rates in gay teens. One highly publicized case involved a Rutgers University freshman who jumped off a bridge last year after classmates recorded and broadcast the 18-year-old having sex with a man.

The study relied on teens' self-reporting suicide attempts within the previous year. Roughly 20 percent of gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had made an attempt, versus 4 percent of straight kids.

The study's social index rated counties on five measures: prevalence of same-sex couples; registered Democratic voters; liberal views; schools with gay-straight alliances; schools with policies against bullying gay students; and schools with anti-discrimination policies that included sexual orientation.

Gay, lesbian and bisexual teens living in counties with the lowest social index scores were 20 percent more likely to have attempted suicide than gays in counties with the highest index scores. Overall, about 25 percent of gay teens in low-scoring counties had attempted suicide, versus 20 percent of gay teens in high-scoring counties.

Among straight teens, suicide attempts were 9 percent more common in low-scoring counties. There were 1,584 total suicide attempts — 304 of those among gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

Hatzenbuehler said the results show that "environments that are good for gay youth are also healthy for heterosexual youth."

The study is based on 2006-08 surveys of 11th-graders that state health officials conducted in Oregon classrooms; Oregon voter registration statistics; Census data on same-sex couples; and public school policies on gays and bullying.

The researchers assessed proportions of Democrats versus Republicans; there were relatively few Independents. Information on non-voters wasn't examined.

Zachary Toomay, a high school senior from Arroyo Grande, Calif., said the study "seems not only plausible, but it's true."


The star swimmer, 18, lives in a conservative, mostly Republican county. He's active in his school's gay-straight alliance, and said he'd never been depressed until last year when classmates "ostracized" him for being vocal about gay rights.

Toomay said signs of community intolerance, including bumper stickers opposing same-sex marriage, also made him feel down, and he sought guidance from a school counselor after contemplating suicide.

Funding for the study came from the National Institutes for Health and a center for gay research at the Fenway Institute, an independent Harvard-affiliated health care and research center.

Michael Resnick, a professor of adolescent mental health at the University of Minnesota's medical school, said the study "certainly affirms what we've come to understand about children and youth in general.

"They are both subtly and profoundly affected by what goes around them," he said, including the social climate and perceived support.

An Urgent Message for the Franklin Area School District - Franklin, PA

Franklin High School Principal George Forster and the Franklin Area School District Board should be forced to watch this video every morning until they adequately address the bullying and discrimination that has plagued the area for far too long.

The Bullying of Seth Walsh: Requiem for a Small-Town Boy
By Bryan Alexander / Tehachapi

Time Magazine:

Eleven-year-old Shawn Walsh paid a poignant tribute to the brother, just two years older, he had lost. Gripping a microphone as he stood at the altar of the First Baptist Church in Tehachapi, Calif., Shawn joshed that his brother could be "a pain in the butt" at times but that Seth was "the best big brother in the world — no, the galaxy." Wearing a yellow (Seth's favorite color) plaid shirt, Shawn then, without mentioning the word, made a heartbreaking reference to bullying, the specter at the heart of his family's mourning for his openly gay brother. "I always wanted to protect him," said Shawn, as sobs broke out in the church. "I just wish people could have been nice to him like my mom taught me."


People were not always nice to 13-year-old Seth Walsh. Neither his valiant younger brother Shawn nor the rest of his family could protect him from what they insist was chronic teasing. Even before Seth came out as gay, family and friends say, he was perpetually picked on for his mannerisms and his style of dressing. The bullying turned Seth Walsh to suicide, one of a spate of such deaths across the U.S. in the past two weeks. (See what happens when bullying goes criminal.)

On Sept. 19, his single mother Wendy found him unconscious; he had tried to hang himself from a tree in his backyard after another apparent bullying incident. He lingered on life support for more than a week. His death has since shattered emotions in this rural community 120 miles (190 km) north of Los Angeles. Close to 600 townspeople crammed into First Baptist on Friday, Oct. 1, to remember the teen who loved Pokémon, adored french fries above all other food and had an obsession with disco music. The church was so crowded that Pastor Ron Barker had mourners sit on the floor along the entire length of the middle aisle so everyone could find room inside the church. Still, many mourners gave up trying to enter. "Seth had friends that even this building could not contain," Barker said, smiling even as he knew the crowds in the church were a clear building violation. "My prayer for today is that the fire people don't show up."

Seth's beautician mother Wendy, 44, did not speak at the service. ("It's hard," she told TIME afterward. "It's hard for everyone.") Wearing a black polka-dot dress, she occasionally wept into the shoulder of her father Jim, 65, who was seated next to Seth's two brothers (Shane, 17, and Shawn) and sister (Amanda, 18). But Wendy wrote a eulogy that the pastor read. It began with a story about Seth placing a freshly picked spring flower in offering to his late dog Kelly, whom the family had just buried. "After giving the flower to Kelly, he went back to the family of flowers and gave an offering to the flowers for sacrificing one of their own members," Barker read. "He was a blessing to us and all who knew him, a lesson to the world on how to treat one another." (See the case of Matthew Shepard.)

The pastor told TIME that the focus of the service was "going to be on Seth and his life, not on the bullying, and not on the homosexuality." But both subjects were clearly in evidence at the service. As part of a photo montage displayed on the white walls behind the altar, Seth was shown happily wearing a plastic tiara on his head. The next frame featured the word bullying with a red slash through it.

Seth's grandparents insist their grandson knew from an early age that he was gay. "Wendy did everything humanly possible to help him understand his world and to support him," Jim Walsh, a retired school principal, told TIME. "And so did his brothers and sister." But it was something young Seth had trouble accepting. "Initially he wanted to have a girlfriend," says grandmother Judy Walsh, a retired schoolteacher. "He wasn't happy with his orientation. He read the Bible a lot. This was not the way he wanted to live his life, but that's what he was dealt with."

Even before he came out, he was teased enough, his grandparents say, that he was homeschooled on two separate occasions. His best friend, Jamie Phillips, says Seth, who told friends he was gay last year, was harassed long before: "Since it was a rumor that went around, everyone thought he was gay." "He started getting teased by the fourth and fifth grade," says Judy Walsh. "By sixth grade, the kids were starting to get mean. By the seventh grade, he was afraid to walk home from school because he was afraid he would get harassed. As he was walking by a classroom, a kid yelled out, 'Queer.' Stuff like that."

The bullying took every form. "It was eye to eye, over the telephone, personal, over the Internet," says Judy. "He spent a lot of his life frightened." Seth's grandparents say the breaking point came after what they believe was a bullying incident in a local park on Sept. 19. After the incident, Seth appeared to be acting normally at home. He then showered and asked to borrow a pen from his mother to write. Then he said he was going to play with the dogs in the backyard. His horrified mother found him later at the tree and fought to save her child even though she suspected it was futile. "Wendy told me, when she put him on the ground, she knew his soul was gone," said Jim. The medical response teams did their best to revive him, heliporting Seth to the county's trauma center, where he remained on life support before dying Sept. 27.


Tehachapi police declined to discuss specifics of what they say is an ongoing investigation of the incident. Police Sergeant Kevin Paille did confirm that police were looking into possible instances of "bullying or hazing" centered on Walsh's sexuality. "We're trying to get a clear picture of the totality of the situation," he said.

The boy's death has left his grief-stricken family trying to find the positive in the tragedy. Jim Walsh points out that Seth's organs were donated following his death; a child in Los Angeles was saved after receiving Seth's heart. Meanwhile, the town has used the incident to preach understanding, this time with the nation as a stage. "We're just podunk Tehachapi," says Judy Walsh. "I don't expect to get calls from Ellen ... [she pauses to work on the name] ... DeGeneres or 60 Minutes. The biggest regret is that this didn't happen before Seth's death." As Wendy wrote in her eulogy: "Seth is doing what he always wanted to do — to promote love."

18 Municipalities in Penna. Prohibit Discrimination -- When Will Venango County Communities Join The List? Oil City, Franklin, What Do Ya Say?

Lower Merion Township Becomes 18th Municipality In Pa. To Ban Discrimination

by Cheryl Allison for The Main Line Times:

Lower Merion Township tonight became the 18th municipality in Pennsylvania to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.


The board of commissioners, following a public hearing on a third draft of an anti-discrimination ordinance, voted unanimously to adopt the legislation.

The measure affects discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

It also creates a seven-member local Human Relations Commission to receive, evaluate and investigate complaints, and potentially impose penalties – including fines up to $10,000 – in some cases.

For more than half a century, discrimination based on a number of other factors, including race, religion, sex, gender, age and disability, has been prohibited under Pennsylvania’s Human Relations Act. The law has not provided such protection based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and efforts to extend it to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens has so far been unsuccessful.

The state law, however, does not preclude local municipalities from adopting their own anti-discrimination ordinances protecting LGBT individuals, and, beginning in the 1980s with Philadelphia, 17 have done so.

The movement toward an ordinance in Lower Merion began this summer, when a 21-year-old Bala Cynwyd resident, Jason Landau Goodman, first asked commissioners in a public meeting to draft legislation.

Goodman also announced the formation of a new organization, Equality Lower Merion, supporting a local ordinance.

Over the past several months, three draft versions of an ordinance have been discussed, leading to tonight’s public hearing.

The ordinance has broadened in scope to some extent, in that it calls for the new commission to receive complaints of discrimination on any of the factors also covered by the state law. Any cases that cannot be resolved by initial mediation on factors other than sexual orientation or identity, however, are to be referred to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.

The Lower Merion ordinance lays out a progression of steps, beginning with mediation and ending with a formal public hearing and order, by which complaints of discrimination on the basis of sexuality may be resolved.

Public Officials Perpetuate Homophobia By Refusing To Speak Our Language

This may be more true in Venango County than nearly anywhere else on the planet!

by Robert A Bernstein:

After 20-some years as a non-gay activist for LGBT rights, I have been privileged to see a virtual sea change in society’s attitude toward homosexuality. But I can still be surprised, even shocked, by the residual tenacity of homophobia. And I’m often touched by evidence of the emotional pain it can still trigger.


A current example of the staying power — and know-nothingness — of homophobia is litigation in Nassau County, Fla., where the school board refused to allow a Gay-Straight Alliance in its Yulee High School. In its formal letter of denial, the district superintendent explained that the board was particularly disturbed by the use of the word “gay” in the organization title. The word itself, it seems, was sufficient to blind the board to the fact that the alliance’s mission is to promote understanding and mutual respect, and the well-being of a significant number of its teenage charges.

Such Neanderthal thinking is not confined to the South or rural areas. Almost by definition, by virtue of its high levels of education, income and social sophistication, Montgomery County, Md., is relatively low on the discrimination scale. But even there, homophobia can thrive. As recently as a year ago, for example, fundamentalist groups brought a legal action against the county’s sex education policies, espousing psychiatric treatment to “convert” gay youths.

Jill Karpf, a longtime librarian in the county schools, affirms that raw homophobia persists among significant numbers of teachers, officials and staff.

Karpf, recently retired, served in various elementary, middle and high schools. She recalls one incident that reflects both the persistence and the painful results of anti-gay feelings in a supposedly enlightened school district where — officially — sexual orientation is among the categories of banned discrimination.

A LONGTIME ACTIVIST on behalf of fairness across the board, Karpf filled her library windows and bulletin boards with posters targeting all types of discrimination. One, for example, stated, “In this classroom, all people are treated with respect,” specifically listing people of all races, national origins, ethnicities, ages, mental and physical abilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and spiritualities.

But Jill, though generally not explicit with her students, never concealed her own lesbianism from her colleagues. And at one school, when she requested that the guidance department put a poster in its office window for Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, she was called on the principal’s carpet for a tongue-lashing in the presence of another staff member with whom Jill had always been generally friendly. She also received a demerit on her record — never mind that the poster was a potential antidote to one of education’s presumed major concerns, teenage suicide.

A UNION INTERVENTION ultimately erased the demerit. But what had disturbed Jill even more than the demerit was the failure of the colleague present at her belittlement to speak a single word in her defense.

She would have been disappointed by the failure of any of her fellow staff members to speak up on her behalf. But in addition, this particular man, although married, was generally assumed by most of the staff to be a closeted gay.

When Jill confronted him to ask why he had remained silent, he was unable to answer. Rather, he choked up and tears filled his eyes.

The tears, of course, spoke more eloquently than any words. Whatever his personal predicament, whatever his reasons for marrying a woman or feeling compelled to remain in the closet, the tears told the story of the profound pain and confusion inflicted by cultural bigotry.

Perhaps, like the Nassau County School Board members, he was simply terrified by the mere mention of the word “gay.”

Jane Richey's Ongoing Attacks Against Gays & Lesbians Are A Threat To Venango County's Future

Jane Richey is Station Manager of WAWN, a radio station based in Venango County that is part of the AFA radio network. (The AFA, American Family Association, is an anti-gay extremist organization based in Tupelo, MS.)


On "Looking Through The Community Window," a weekly WAWN production, Ms. Richey (pictured at right) has devoted several recent programs to the promotion of "ex-gay" mythology, giving airtime to dangerous crackpots such as Regina Griggs of PFOX who stirs fear and hatred by claiming, on-air, that people become gay as a result of childhood molestation.

As long as this type of extremism continues unchallenged by local civic, business, political and religious leaders, Venango County will be viewed as a narrow-minded backwater to avoid rather than in which to invest, and its GLBT residents will remain at-risk.

What will it take to overcome the silence?

And who in the area actually supports this type of programming?

Well, for starters, there's WAWN's sponsor, Lighthouse Ministries of Franklin, Inc. and its board of directors:

Pastor David Hampson, President
Jane Richey, V. President
Sheryl Clinefelter, Secretary
Jackie Cokain, Treasurer
Bill Burwell
Ray Hudson
Pastor David Parker
David McCoy
Lee M. Richey
Jim Clinefelter
Jim Pankratz
Diane Gramley