California's Ban On Ex-Gay Therapy For Teenagers

In September, California's Governor Jerry Brown signed into law SB 1172 which banned ex-gay therapy for minors within the state. A laudable goal indeed. Regardless of ones views on the success, legitimacy or rights to exist of reparative therapy, there is just something rather disturbing about parents sending their kids to such therapists just because of who their children find attractive.

Whilst I will happily support the rights (on libertarian grounds) of LGBT people who freely seek to "change" or "control" their sexuality, I am personally deeply opposed to parents sending their children to such programmes or pressuring their kids into "volunteering" for them. These places have a history of sexual abuse against clients and a very low "success" rate (I'd argue nearly zero but that is just based on my own bias).

However I find attempts to legislate against it bizarre, simply because of the inconsistency. There are plenty of other forms of "therapy" that aren't just useless but harmful. Homeopathy, for example, has zero effect beyond a placebo and can cause real treatment to be delayed. Of course this only manifests itself on the public stage in those truly severe cases where a child actually dies, but I'm sure that parents who use homoepathy on their children are extending (if not worsening) suffering for minor ailments quite unnecessarily.

Or take "sex addiction" therapy. Is sending your heterosexual son off to "sex addiction" therapy because he likes to look at porn, jerk off or some other minor teenage transgression really "effective"? I doubt it. But I suspect plenty of Christian parents do send their children off to such, often Christian led, therapy or prayer sessions.

Why are LGBT kids more worthy of protection from heartless (and often stupid) parents than any other? The inconsistency is not lost on ex-gay proponents. Joshua Johanson, poster child for the Mormon ex-gay community, makes the point on "sex addiction" in this podcast. By banning ex-gay therapy for minors but ignoring other harmful therapies, we end up making such people look like martyrs.

Now I'm sure many who have fought for this ban are also opposed to the other forms of "therapy" highlighted above (along with many others!). They'd probably happily agree this is only a partial success. But sadly it may also be an illusionary one. A court is currently considering a legal challenge to the ban and has temporarily overturned it for those "therapists" leading the challenge. It will be remarkably easy for them to fight this ban as there still hasn't been sufficient academic study highlighting the harms of this therapy and this LGBT only approach allows them to claim religious persecution.

The lesson here may be pursue a broader protection for kids from their parent's stupid healthcare decisions (a tricky subject all round of course!) and creating a stronger body of evidence showing exactly how harmful these therapies can be. I must make it clear, I really am opposed to ex-gay therapy for kids. I just do not see how legislating for it alone helps protect them from it forever.

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World AIDS Day 2012

I, thankfully, have never experienced HIV/AIDS on a personal level. Yes, I've been tested but no one I know personally has been affected by this issue. However when I came out I did get to chat to several men who had been out on the scene in the 1980s and who lost many friends to this awful illness. We must all work together to try and defeat this virus so that no one needs lose any more friends.



World AIDS Day is about remembering what is important: AIDS awareness (take a quiz here to learn things you probably didn't know!), knowing your status (find your nearest HIV testing centre), and trying to make this a HIV/AIDS free world. Eradication is NOT impossible. We can end this. We need to educate people in how to prevent it and help those who have it.

Ultimately this all comes down to money. And that is something we can all help with. Please donate to the National AIDS Trust and/or the Terrence Higgins Trust.

AIDS is not a "gay disease" but in the UK gay men are still the most likely group to get it. 3000 gay men were diagnosed with HIV in 2011. That is the highest number ever recorded. It is vital we spread the message about safe sex and getting tested regularly.

We must never forget what HIV/AIDS did to our community. The following documentary and movie are extremely good at showing how devastating this illness was (and is). We must fight it, with all our might.

After Stonewall:



And The Band Played On:



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My Disappointment With Tim Farron Grows

When Tim Farron was first elected as Lib Dem President, there was a great deal of disquiet in the Lib Dem Twitter circles I frequent. This disquiet was especially strong with regards to his LGBT record. I didn't share this feeling, and I was quite happy to come to his defense. I even passed around this link from Stephen Gilbert to help allay fears about his history.

I was confident he would be a good counterweight to the Orange Bookers in the leadership and would keep them honest. And on that point he's been moderately successful. Unfortunately on other matters that disquiet some expressed about him has begun to erode my confidence in him as a person.

First up was his use of interns from CARE and his subsequent defence of them. This worried me because it seems quite clear that they 1) vigorously oppose Lib Dem policies on marriage equality and 2) there are rather serious concerns about their treatment of Labour MP, Ben Bradshaw (no friend of this blog!). I'm not saying he shouldn't have interns from CARE, I'm a great believer in freedom of belief religiously or politically, but I do have grave concerns about someone who takes CARE interns being Lib Dem President! But I kept my mouth shut, thinking everyone has their little quirks. Some MPs support Stonewall after all...

But then comes today's news. Tim Farron, along with Tory and Labour MPs, wants the ASA to allow organisations to state that people can be healed by prayer in their adverts. Again perhaps people should have this right, and they certainly should have the right to practice their rather optimistic beliefs. But if the ASA allows that, then what exactly is the point of the ASA? I thought one of their main tasks was to ensure false claims weren't made in advertising, but if prayer is accepted as healing people then what right does the ASA have to tell ANYONE that what they state in their adverts is false?

Is Tim Farron really suggesting we should do away with the ASA? And Daniel Furr makes an excellent point too:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and spiritual intervention in medical cases are a fine example. People who are sick and require medical treatment should see a doctor, not God.

Again, if Tim Farron wants to propose we allow anyone to claim anything that they believe to be true in advertising then that's his prerogative but it's left me unable to support him and I will actively support opposition to him. His attempts to amend the way the ASA deals with advertisement claims brings his beliefs, unfortunately, into conflict with rationality and reason. And I stand on the side of rationality and reason.

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NHS Moving Towards Removing Homeopathy Funding?

With the announcement of a Parliamentary committee's review of homeopathy (decision: homeopathy doesn't work any better than a placebo), we are now moving towards the possibility that the NHS will stop spending £4 million a year on useless treatments (perhaps they might spend it on cleaners/nurses/doctors?).

This is good news, very good news. Now we need the NHS to consider it's funding of chaplains in hospitals who, personally, I think should be funded by churches if they wish to preach in our public buildings.

Soon the NHS might keep it's nose out of faith issues, alternative therapies and start concentrating on actually treating the sick.

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Homeopathy: Money For Old Water

@Brumplum reminded me that today was the day of protest against homeopathic products being sold as medicine and being used on the NHS. See 1023.org.uk for more on the protests.

Whilst homeopathy has always been controversial and the subject of debate, it has recently become much more a topic of discussion following the lawsuit against Simon Singh by the British Chiropractic Society which has galvanised the sceptical community in this country and brought "alternative medicine" under much higher scrutiny.

Studies time and again have found homeopathy to have no greater effect than a placebo. It's time we seriously considered the morality of not challenging the sale and promotion of these sort of "therapies" in our shops and in our hospitals.

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Medical Madness

There are sound arguments against a nationalised health service. I might think they are a little redundant given the success of some nationalised systems, but there are reasonable, honest challenges to the entire idea.

So why have some of the crazier right wing Americans decided to invent the concept of "death panels" (which basically actually exist in some private healthcare providers!!) and Fox News dragged on Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP who doesn't agree with his parties stance on the NHS, to make an attack upon our NHS despite the American system NOT being the NHS and despite the NHS actually not being all that bad.

Why can't the Republicans, conservatives and others who oppose this new health care plan choose some reasonable people to represent them other than those who don't even know Stephen Hawking is British(and didn't turn out too badly!) and Sarah Palin who doesn't know much at all. I particular like her statement:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

We here in Britain have gone far further down the nationalised health care route than America WILL EVER go. Our children, our elderly and our disabled are treated BETTER than a healthy adult (for good reason!). We do not deny Down Syndrome children treatment because they may not be able to "contribute" to our society as much as others (and that is a pretty debatable position, as Palin says it's very subjective hence why we don't let Doctors do that!). Having a nationalised health service does not mean we live in a Communist state. We still have private healthcare too, my other half had his, botched, treatment for a tumour at a private hospital a few months ago.

Criticise, fight, do anything you want about these proposals but don't lie, distort or scaremonger. The issue is far too important than that.

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What A Joke!

So I think we all knew there were chapels in most NHS hospitals. Hey I even had a vague idea there might have been chaplains. But stupidly, thinking too highly of the religious perhaps, I thought they must be volunteers from the local clergy.

Thanks to the National Secular Society, led by it's ever wonderful President Terry Sanderson, I now know differently. We, National Insurance payers, are funding those chaplains. Taking into account salaries only the NHS pays out £32m a year. But, even more shockingly, that equals an average of: £48,953 per chaplain. So for spreading lies (given that there are at least 4 different denominations of the Abrahamic religions even the fundies have to admit someone has to be lying!) and offering false hope we pay these people double the national average wage!

NSS president Terry Sanderson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the £40m figure was equivalent to employing 1,300 nurses or 2,645 cleaners.

2,645 cleaners? Imagine what benefits that could bring to the health of the patients in NHS hospitals!!!!!! Yet again the NHS panders to special interests (need we discuss alternative therapies).

NHS guidance notes all patients have a right to religious observance and that trusts should provide both faith representatives and places to pray.

Well all patients should have the right to contact and be visited by their delegated representative of their faith in hospital. But to keep with NHS policy either you need to employ representatives of every faith in existence in this country or surely the NHS is playing favourites and discriminating against those not of one of the "endorsed" faiths.

Stop discriminating against Pastafarians!!