Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about a move by lawmakers in Britain and Australia to ban ‘conversion therapy’–the practice of helping homosexuals who want to leave that lifestyle. The laws being considered may criminalize such common practices as preaching, counseling, and even prayer. From a Biblical perspective, homosexual behavior is a sin. A homosexual in the church should be free to seek change if that is his desire. As long as no one is forcing change on the person, I don’t see how helping a person leave that lifestyle can be made illegal. However, Britain (I don’t know about Australia) does not have a First Amendment that protects free speech, so that could get interesting.
The article notes:
Arthur Goldberg, founder of the therapy referral service Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) objected to the term. “Conversion therapy is not even a term of art. It’s a misnomer. It’s a pejorative term that talks about emotional trauma and physical trauma,” he told PJ Media. JONAH did not recommend or carry out so-called “conversion therapy.” It gave people “references for therapy for underlying issues which may result in same-sex attraction,” yet a New Jersey judge shut it down on false pretenses.
As ex-gay leader Christopher Doyle explains in his book The War on Psychotherapy, “One of the strategies that far-left advocacy and gay activist organizations use to smear professional psychotherapists assisting clients distressed by sexual and gender identity conflicts is to intentionally conflate professional therapy with religious practice and/or unlicensed, unregulated counseling. They do this by labeling all efforts—therapeutic, religious, or otherwise—to help clients distressed by sexual and gender identity conflicts [as] ‘conversion therapy.’”
The tragic situation in England demonstrates that LGBT activists will not stop at banning “conversion therapy” in the talk therapy setting. Some are explicitly targeting “the pernicious power of prayer.” Christians — and free thinkers who value the ability to dispute the LGBT orthodoxy — need to be on our guard.
It is interesting to me that the group opposing this would include banning prayer. I take that as an acknowledgement that prayer works.