The fact that conversion therapy is done primarily through words does not mean that it is automatically protected as speech under the First Amendment. Never have the courts treated the First Amendment as an absolute protection for speech, and indeed they have upheld many laws that restrict speech by professionals, such as doctors and lawyers. For example, the Supreme Court has said that once an attorney enters the courtroom, "whatever right to 'free speech' an attorney has is extremely circumscribed." Similarly, doctors may be sanctioned for their speech during treatment, such as when they express an incompetent or false medical opinion to a patient, or fail to provide adequate instructions or ask necessary questions.
With respect to therapists specifically, state licensing boards and courts already enforce a plethora of speech-based restrictions and requirements, including barring false, deceptive, or harmful statements. There is no First Amendment barrier to such regulations, and there is none to SB 1172. Just as a therapist cannot lawfully endanger a person with anorexia by telling her "you are too fat," or treat a condition such as "female hysteria" that has long since ceased to be recognized by modern medical authorities as a psychiatric disorder, so therapists in California cannot subject minors to dangerous practices based on scientifically false and discredited views about sexual orientation.
"His presidency spells the end of the Reagan realignment that had defined American politics for 30 years”- Time Magazine
"Many evangelicals loathe my use of the word Christianism, rather than Christianity, to describe the fusion of political power and religion to police the moral lives of others. They recoil at the echo of Islamism - although we know many Islamist parties, as in Turkey or Indonesia, that do not engage in terrorism, but merely believe in the fusion of church and state as emphatically as older American evangelicals do.
"That's why it's revealing to see a major figure in the American Christianist movement, Pastor David Dykes, - he opened the 2008 Congress with a prayer - openly advocate the execution of gays, and criminal penalties for exercise of free speech in defense of gays, in Uganda. If these people could, they would do the same here. The constitution protects us - especially our right to speech. But what these theocrats want is as undeniable as it is repellent in a free or humane society.
"More to the point, here is an alleged Christian demanding that those on the margins of society not be embraced, as Jesus practised, but be executed, as Jesus' Roman executioners did. It doesn't get more anti-Christian than that. To even associate the word Christianity with these sentiments is an attack on Jesus Christ."-- Andrew Sullivan
"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world."
Our entire life, with our final moral code and our precious freedom,consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.
Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has fallen increasingly under the influence of radical ideologues, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination of the welfare state - that is, the whole legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. From the beginning, however, these ideologues have had a big problem: The programs they want to kill are very popular. Americans may nod their heads when you attack big government in the abstract, but they strongly support Social Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid...
...The G.O.P. is lost and rudderless, bitter and angry, but it still controls the House and, therefore, retains the ability to do a lot of harm, as it lashes out in the death throes of the conservative dream.
We are not committed to this or that.--John Cage
We are committed to the nothing in between...whether we know it or not.
"If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.
"Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. But that’s unacceptable. As others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t 'too soon.' It’s much too late."
- Ezra Klein, writing for the Washington Post.
"It was a great lesson if you're having troubles in life. Just keep going. Keep trying. Someone will help you, and you're gonna win."
"Our lives begin to end the day we become 'silent' about things that matter."
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,Read today's statement from United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, including promoting the rights of the LGBT:
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, to continue...
Today, we pledge to live up to Eleanor Roosevelt’s inspirational example, for in far too many places human freedoms are still denied. As long as a family anywhere is tormented by a state-sanctioned killer; a peaceful agitator is hounded by a violent brigade; an artist is locked away for expressing what she thinks; an LGBT individual is harassed because of whom he or she loves; a community is beleaguered because of how it worships; a person with a disability is marginalized by those who ignore plain injustice; or a girl is threatened for having the audacity to pick up a book; all of our rights have been violated.
The United States is relentless in pursuit of a world that protects these rights. We fight for them at the United Nations, where we have made important strides, because we know that American leadership in the world can bring action against oppressors and hope to the oppressed. Our job is not done and the path ahead is fraught. But may we work together every day for the cause of human rights, so that our efforts can forge a world that respects our differences, protects our dignity, gives our children opportunities to pursue their dreams, and ensures that freedoms we have pledged to protect are universally enjoyed.That's something you would have never have heard from a Romney administration. Elections do matter! Gay people deserve equal rights and to be treated with dignity and respect.
We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.- Robert Pirsig
"When Thea and I met nearly 50 years ago, we never could have dreamed that the story of our life together would be before the Supreme Court as an example of why gay married couples should be treated equally, and not like second-class citizens. While Thea is no longer alive, I know how proud she would have been to see this day. The truth is, I never expected any less from my country."
- DOMA litigant Edith Windsor, 83
"Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count."
