The following comes from an August 23 Pacific Justice Institute news release:
San Francisco, CA—A federal court of appeals this morning upheld restrictions on what some pastors can say to minors struggling with their sexuality and gender.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco again upheld California’s controversial Senate Bill 1172. SB 1172 bars licensed counselors from assisting youth who want to change or reduce same-sex attractions. The law also prohibits counseling that would steer youth away from gender confusion.
Pacific Justice Institute filed suit against SB 1172 in 2012 and initially won a preliminary injunction based on free speech. Eventually, the Ninth Circuit created a new approach to free speech that deemed what was said during counseling to be unprotected.
The case returned to the Ninth Circuit on religious freedom and privacy claims that had not been previously ruled upon by that court. PJI’s lead plaintiff is both an ordained minister and a licensed marriage and family therapist who oversees a counseling ministry in his church. PJI pointed out that the law would reach within the four walls of the church to prohibit what could be said during counseling by a pastor who is also an LMFT.
The Ninth Circuit today waved off concerns about state interference with religious doctrine, while declining to discuss legal authorities raised by PJI that have previously rejected state interference with church counseling.
PJI had also pointed the court to dozens of passages from the legislative record that directly attacked conservative religious viewpoints. According to PJI attorney Kevin Snider, who argued the case at the Ninth Circuit, “The court today simply rewrote legislative history to avoid the uncomfortable reality that the California Legislature unabashedly targeted religious beliefs with this bill.”
Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, commented, “We are deeply disappointed by today’s ruling because it represents a giant step backwards for religious freedom. A government that can tell a pastor what he can and cannot say during counseling is a government that can tell a pastor what parts of the Bible are off-limits. The court also reminded us today that this law lays the groundwork for further restrictions on parental rights.”
Same-sex attractions are aberrant. Homosexuality is a mental disorder. Gender confusion is also a mental disorder.
The California law prohibits true, responsible, needed counseling and treatment as well as violates freedom of religious exercise and speech.
Little by little, California is going to make Christianity de facto illegal to practice.
Little by little, California is replacing truth with falsehood, wisdom with foolishness, reality with fantasy, freedom with tyranny.
FIrst of all, homosexuality is not a mental disorder. No medical licensing bodies consider it a disorder. When you offer these little supposed pearls of wisdom, you are speaking as an unprofessional anti-science individual with no qualifications about mental health whatsoever.
Secondly, you can practice Christianity freer in California and in the United States than anywhere on earth. The problem is that you conflate the practice of bigotry with the practice of Christianity, but the two are not the same, thank God.
Homosexuality is a mental disorder, as the psychological and psychiatric and medical professions all affirmed prior to 1973.
The fact that medical licensing bodies today have been corrupted by non-scientific, non-philosophical ideological interests and erroneously consider homosexuality to be normal rather than aberrant and pathological does not change the truth of the matter.
It is not bigotry to treat males as men and females as women. It is not bigotry to treat people as what they are: it is wisdom.
Indulging people’s pathological fantasies about their sexual identities isn’t compassionate nor is it moral.
You are not representative of orthodox Christianity, thank God.
The New Atlantis Journal just published a report authored by Mayer and McHugh debunking the claims about homosexuality and gender confusion.
1) No evidence that homosexuals are born that way
2) No compelling biological explanations
3) It may be quite fluid over life
4) They are more likely to have been abused
5) They are at elevated risk for adverse mental health
6) No evidence that fixed gender identity can be independent of sex
7) Sex change surgery elevates risk of adverse mental health
8) No evidence that children should be encouraged to cross-identify
In other words, the supposed scientific consensus is bunk. Ideological interests are driving the movement and lying about scientific evidence.
Yet laws are being changed…
Good words Sawyer, though a correction: It is important to accurately label same-sex attraction (SSA) as an EMOTIONAL disorder, rather than a mental one. It’s a common mistake though, but an important one to recognize. There are such things as mental disorders, but in today’s usage this is more of an insurance company word. After extensive study of the late great Catholic psychiatrists Conrad Baars and Anna Terruwe who both embraced a Thomistic understanding of the human person and his emotions being as man’s “psychic motors”, I can’t overemphasize the importance of making this distinction, as it is very critical in the understanding and healing of SSA. There are many good books of theirs still in print, and also some great YouTube…
Even supposing you are correct, emotions are a type of mental phenomena, so emotions are to mental phenomena as species is to genus. An emotional disorder is therefore a species of mental disorder.
I would characterize the species as a disordered desire.
But whether the disorder is classified as an emotion or a desire makes little difference to the main point, which is that since both emotions and desires are species of mental phenomena, disordered emotions and disordered desires are both species of mental disorders.
Insurance companies don’t have a monopoly on the term.
YFC,
Your many posts prove that homosexuality is a mental disorder. No one is condemning mental disorders, but we cannot let someone’s particular form of mental illness tail, wag the teachings of the Church, or the world. That is what you are doing. When speaking to your doctor, or other doctors, no worthwhile or honest psychiatrist would ever allow you to diagnose yourself, or medically treat yourself, or when speaking to them refer to yourself as Your Fellow Psychiatrist. Reality is even more painful when the world and even more sadly, many, within the Church, erroneously validate those misconceptions too.
“you can practice Christianity freer in California and in the United States than anywhere on earth.”
Are you serious? The real bigots are those forcing others to violate their constitutional right to religious liberty.
YFC is so confused and has accepted what is NOT of God or the teachings of the Church. When the unethical, non-Christian world of psychology demanded that homosexuality become a “normal” part of society in the 70s and used persuasive language and unGodly doctor’s to do it, this is what is the consequence of those actions have become. We all know it was the gate-way of accepting other mentally deteriorating sexual behaviors that prey on the innocent. It is the worst type of indoctrination; equal to that of what Hitler did to youth. It would be so EASY to accept this garbage an use language that the LGBT community uses. But we all KNOW and ACCEPT the Gospel message, Teachings of the Catholic Church, and understand that many will “bow to…
Freedom of religion and freedom of speech are no more in our country!! When will God shake us up?
It is not a good idea for governments to allow people to peddle false promises and quack cures. That is why it issues licenses. If individuals are allowed to prescribe medicine that cannot heal, what is the point of the license in the first place?
The licensing boards are corrupt, YFC.
The boards are stacked with people of the same ideological view that has no basis in science and they are attempting to coerce society into accepting aberrant and deviant and disordered sexual inclinations as normal. One of the ways of doing that is to use their power and position to crush those who dare to disagree with them by denying them the ability to practice.
If you think the boards are objective and evidence-based, that’s your first error.
YFC, licensing boards are government monopolies established to control a profession. When captured by a particular ideology they will use the force of the gun to stifle any idea they deem to interfere with their agenda. They are not their to protect people from false promises or quack cures. They only serve those who control the board, the public be damned!
Are the teachings of Almighty God a “quack cure” or “false promise?” If one counsels another to avoid deadly danger or life-threatening behavior, is this wrong? The centuries have taught us that homosexuality is not good for humans and is seriously abnormal and sterile.
So, a pastor’s advice (in the Confessional as well) that has been given to us which clearly states, “Turn away from sin, and believe in the Gospel” is your perception (YFC) of quack advice? And so now, licensed professionals are now to advice the “terminally ill” which can include a diagnosed mental disorder, to use assisted suicide to “cure” the patient. Furthermore, the government is now using tax $$ to have an assisted suicide hotline to help you make the decision to kill yourself. Let’s go further, and just have relative expectations rather than laws to keep order…of course if you are a devout Christian, then there are mandates that restrict your beliefs in what the government “feels” is appropriate. My Jesus, have mercy…
The Hatred of Christianity is deeper than just the Judges, but reaches through the Clerks (who often sabotage appeals any way they can, like delaying them until After the death of Justice Scalia) to the core of the system.
Given that most homosex behaviors have a basis in Abuse, this is as harmful to those struggling with that disorder as any decision before it – and meant to trap people on one side of a fence.
As with Dachau (opened by the Homosex ‘SA’ storm troopers of Ernst Rohm), where so many Catholic Priests, Nuns and others died – we know who they want kept inside the fence will be targeted BAMN – by any means necessary.
Feminist Writer: Put Men in ‘Some Kind of Camp’ with ‘Wardens, of Course!’
https://www.mrctv…
Feminist Writer: Put Men in ‘Some Kind of Camp’ with ‘Wardens, of Course!’
https://www.mrctv.org/blog/feminist-writer-wants-put-men-some-kind-camp
Radical feminist activist, Guardian writer, and self-proclaimed “political lesbian” Julie Bindel has stated she wants to put men in “in some kind of camp” and hopes “heterosexuality doesn’t survive” women’s liberation.
In an interview with RadFem Collective… Bindel described her beliefs on issues such as political lesbianism, the “need” to dismantle gender, and whether heterosexuality will survive women’s liberation.
During the interview, Bindel was asked explicitly, “Will heterosexuality survive women’s liberation?”
“It won’t, not unless men get their act together, have their…
Soon – Libraries will be Forbidden to have copies of the Bible that fail to pander to the radical homosex agenda, like the heavily propagandized and censored school curriculum in CA Now.
Feminist Writer: Put Men in ‘Some Kind of Camp’ with ‘Wardens, of Course!’
https://www.mrctv.org/blog/feminist-writer-wants-put-men-some-kind-camp
Bindel elaborated on her plan for men, involving putting men in “some kind of camp” – and letting women check them out like library books:
“I mean, I would actually put them all in some kind of camp…
Women who want to see their sons or male loved ones would be able to go and visit, or take them out like a library book, and then bring them back.”
Bindel also revealed her hope that…
Unjust laws do not bind in conscience. I will happily and prayerfully counsel any of my gender-confused kids (if I ever come across such a rare creature) on the path of Christ.
This is a political Gag Order enforced by a few DEM-appointed judges.
It will give an excuse to Catholic gay priests to protest that their hands are tied as well as their tongues.
Actually, Shelly, the Chief Judge was a Reagan appointee, and another was originally appointed to the Alaska Supreme Court by Sarah Palin. But what do facts matter, anyway, when we can just make them up as we go along?
This needs to go the the Federal Supreme Court. Please support the effort!
As the actual cost of practicing authentic Catholicism rises – fewer and fewer people will practice AUTHENTIC Catholicism. There will be plenty of bogus versions, not at all costly to practice. Will I, personally, be willing and able to pay the price of the True Faith ??? Deo Volente
Ex-gay man: ‘Homosexuality is just another human brokenness’
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ex-gay-homosexuality-is-just-another-human-brokenness
Dean Bailey, 50, is not afraid to tell anyone he is living proof that ‘sexual orientation’ can in fact be changed. But he prefers to use the word ‘restored’ rather than ‘changed.
Bailey wrote about his entire journey in his 2011 book titled “Beyond the Shades of Gray.” Most of the book is available online at his website. He speaks publicly about his struggle with homosexuality, telling audiences that homosexuality is a “sexual addiction and dependency,” not a condition to be socially accepted and celebrated. “It is merely one of the many evidences of the broken, spiritual condition of our…
Homosexuality is abnormal, pathological and against the teaching of Almighty God, full stop. The declaration of God and Holy Church is good enough for me. One wonders, will the government force Jews to eat pork so as not offend the pork industry? How far will government go to regulate our lives? Lexington and Concord are heard faintly in the distance.
Homosexuality and gender confusion were considered as psychological disorders until a few years ago when the political correctness police got to the AMA and Psychological Association and these were dropped as psychological disorders. The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists homosexual acts as gravely disordered, in spite of what the Bishop of San Diego has to say. The latest research coming out of Johns Hopkins finds no scientific evidence that people are born homosexual, or lesbian, or trans sexual. It appears that nurture and not nature is still in play.
Except that the Church’s use of the phrase “intrinsically disordered” does not mean psychological or psychiatric malady. “Disordered” in the Church’s language means that the inclination is not ordered to, does not lead to, the goods of marriage, which are children and unity between husband and wife. It is a moral judgment, not a psychiatric diagnosis. We’ve been through this before. This misuse of the Church’s language is abhorrent.
Docs, others fight against forced ‘trans’ surgery
https://www.onenewsnow.com/legal-courts/2016/08/25/docs-others-fight-against-forced-trans-surgery?
Doctors, hospitals, and five states have filed suit in order to practice medicine based on the patient’s best interests and their own faiths, rather than on a politically charged agenda
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed the lawsuit over the Obama administration’s rule in the Affordable Care Act potentially forcing doctors to perform gender-transition procedures, including surgery, for transgender children
Becket Fund attorney Stephanie Barclay says the doctors want to treat patients based on their medical knowledge and what they consider the best interests of the patient
-…
St. Milton Friedman on Licensure:
NOT religious freedom…….A government that can tell a pastor what he can and cannot say during counseling is a government that can tell a pastor what parts of the Bible are off-limits. (from article) This is akin to child abuse for a minor that needs HELP from a trusted pastor. Pastors should fight, ignore it! Follow God’s law! This administration is openly hostile to Christians. HC will advance the war on all religions, except Islam (a protected group). The gates of hell are already gapping open before us. We need to VOTE THEM OUT before it is too late. May God help us all & deliver us from pure EVIL.
Sorry Jon, bu it was only in 1973 with the changing social norms and the development of a politically active gay community in the United States, that the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Thankfully, the thought police have not been able to force the Catholic Church to change its wording in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that homosexual acts are gravely disordered – and this in spite of what McElroy and Cupich might like.