New California Law May Punish Pastors for Helping Others Leave Homosexuality
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...