New California Law May Punish Pastors for Helping Others Leave Homosexuality
by Selwyn Duke
TheNewAmerican.com
Thursday, 07 June 2018
Could California pastors be charged with a crime for using Christian doctrine to help someone leave homosexuality? This could be the case if a new Golden State bill, AB 2943, becomes law. Making matters worse, some critics claim it could even be used to impede sales of the Bible.
California, 11 other states, and D.C. already ban “reparative therapy” — which seeks to eliminate unwanted same-sex attraction or feelings of “gender” identity — for minors. The new bill, however, applies to adults as well and would prohibit not just therapists but anyone from offering such aid. It’s gold-plated hypocrisy: The same people who allow a physician to help a person “change his sex” (not actually possible), a quality certainly inborn, want to make it a crime to help someone change his sexual feelings — in the thinking that they’re inborn.
Yet AB 2943 goes further still and prohibits efforts to change even behavior. As National Review’s David French explains, if, for example, “a sexually active gay man or woman sought counseling not to change their orientation but rather to become celibate, then the services and goods provided in that effort would violate this statute.”
The dire warnings about the bill have been portrayed as conservative scaremongering, but no less a liberal entity than the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board has also sounded the alarm, writing:
The problem is that AB 2943 isn’t a regulation of licensed healthcare professionals. Rather, and oddly, it’s an amendment to a state law, the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, dealing with fraudulent trade in goods and services. It would expand the definition of “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” for which consumers could sue to include “advertising, offering to engage in or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual.” And it would cover anyone who engaged in that practice.
Would that include churches or other religious groups that sold, advertised or even recommended books that propagated the idea that believers can use prayer to overcome “same-sex attraction”?
… Supporters of the bill scoff at this critique. A fact sheet provided by Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Silicon Valley), the sponsor of AB 2943, asserts that the bill “does not apply to the sale of books or any other kind of goods” and that the Bible “would absolutely not be banned.” Yet the bill itself makes no such declaration. And the existing Consumer Legal Remedies Act clearly applies to the sale of goods such as books, videos and other educational materials — including those sold by churches and other religious groups.
The aforementioned French, a very sober commentator writing at a quite tame publication, also makes the case that the bill would empower the government to ban certain Christian books.
The Rest…HERE
