APOSTGAYCY ISN’T REAL. SO LET’S BAN IT. Hope and Change? Not for Gays.

After Smith entered into reparative counseling, including weekend retreats called “People Can Change” and “Journey into Manhood,” he said his “homosexual feelings have nearly vanished.” At that point, married for eight years, he said, “In my 50s, for the first time, I can look at a woman and say, ‘She’s really hot!'”

The internet is replete with testimonials like Smith’s, at websites such as NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality), PeopleCanChange, Liberty Counseling and Recovery, and JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality). As to the last-mentioned, followers of American Thinker read here last week that tiny JONAH is being sued by a big, fat, rich whale, the Southern Poverty Law Center, for “consumer fraud.” . . .

This cruel philosophy is reflected in the California state law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2012, which forbids counselors and therapists from addressing unwanted same-sex attraction. Last summer, Governor Chris Christie saw fit to imitate California, making New Jersey the second state with such a law, prohibiting therapists from assisting minors with “sexual orientation change efforts.”

And just last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to re-hear a challenge to the California law, thus denying therapists their First Amendment freedom to speak about healing painful unwanted same-sex attraction. One of the dissenting judges said, “The Supreme Court has chastened us lower courts for creating, out of whole cloth, new categories of speech to which the First Amendment does not apply.  But that is exactly what the panel’s opinion accomplishes in this case.”

Earlier: Appeals Court Upholds Calif. Ban on Gay Conversion Therapy for LGBT Youth.