The Californian ban on conversion therapy targets all information on the issue disseminated in any form including lectures, books, therapy sessions or anything which can successfully be labeled as an exchange of money, therefore as an exchange of goods. This means that ideas have become a commodity, an article, and the law can now regulate their removal as it can for plastic waste, empty bottles and exploding hair spray cannisters. Ideas are no longer universal, but disposable waste products, like the wrappers of a lolly. It is built on the new pseudo-science of LGBT-psychology. In this article, we will give a critique of this development.

The bill ab2943 in California builds its logic on, and is supported by (if not to say devised by) a small in-crowd of activists, inspired by Jack Drescher, MD, and LGBT-psychologist, Judith Glassgold. The latter was the chairwoman, overseeing the controversial publication of the American Psychological Association in 2009 on therapy for same-sex attraction issues. Even before taking on the role of chairwoman and picking the members of the team exclusively from her LGBT activist circle, she was already staunchly against psychotherapy, according to her publications.

In 2007, she wrote a book on her professional views called “Activism and LGBT-psychology “. It was co-written by gay psychiatrist Jack Drescher. In the book he writes:

“Thus, this book is dedicated to Rochlin’s memory. The publication of two resolutions supporting same sex marriage by the major mental health organizations in the United States is an example of the new trend within mental health to apply science to social problems and to view mental health issues not as isolated personal phenomena, but as resulting from real-life conditions.

Recently, the role of discrimination, oppression, and other adverse social conditions has been seen as the root of mental health concerns of minority groups. Ilan Meyer (2003), writing about minority stress and mental health, notes that adversity brought about by prejudice and discrimination causes many of the symptoms that bring individuals into psychotherapy. The LGBT, feminist, and progressive movements have challenged mental health providers and the professions to pay attention to prejudice and its potential impact on treatment.”

Our view

Drescher writes that the trend to publicize resolutions to promote political issues on, say, same-sex marriage, is a trend in mental health care. But it is not a trend in the rest of mental health care at all, it is the trend of the two associations that he and Miss Glassgold have successfully infiltrated. It is his achievement (and Miss Glassgold’s), and he then generalizes this to imply that the whole health care of the USA endorses publishing partizan political statements.

These are deceptive and fraudulent statements, made by activists who have a clear own agenda, as published in their book.

We see Drescher insisting that we pay no attention to the mental condition of the client, but to the social circumstances causing him distress. The organizations that he and his colleagues have infiltrated, are being turned into political activist spearheads, following guidelines from LGBT headquarters and excluding all other political frames of reference. Board meetings have become political arenas, the battle for the definition of normality has been kindled in order to rage.

The mainstream psychotherapeutic community, in my view however, needs to reject this view. The aim of psychotherapy is to improve the coping strategy of the client, so as he/she can handle any distressing issue thrown at him. If you move to a different town, state, or country, you will be taking your (lousy) coping strategies with you. You cannot run away from your habits, prejudices, painful memories or learned traits.

So, social circumstances may be the client’s challenge, but they should not be the therapist’s chore. When the client achieves more healthy coping strategies, life becomes livable no matter what external environment he chooses to live in. And that life is HIS responsibility, not the therapist’s. He must live his own life, Daddy will not fix the toys. Fix them yourself, you are becoming a big boy now, remember?

Let me compare it to a garage. I go to the mechanic and complain that the shock absorbers need repair. The road to my house has a few holes in it, and that is when I noticed that the car needs fixing. “No, it doesn’t”, says the mechanic. “We need to fix the road. I’ll call the asphalt boys”.

And so it is with Drescher and colleagues. How can he make such a mistake? Quite simple. He is living in a bubble, a gay sect, a purely gay environment, a fishbowl, and that self-created virtual tiny tank exists thanks to us-them thinking. Us-gays, you-straights. I victim, you victimizer. I’m okay, you are not okay. He has created, and LGBT activism creates, a paranoid self-awareness.

This then is his world-view that he has IN ADVANCE, or as it is called in regular psychiatry: a priori. With this sack of stones on his shoulder, he enters psychiatry, looks at the world, and sees victimizers all around. But he had that world-view already before entering the room, or before doing his so-called research. And now he is calling for all professionals to repent their sins, straight guys that they are, and to help fight the demons that he believes he is seeing outside his fish bowl. But a fish bowls distorts all views by the goldfish. And the goldfish is not aware. After all, his bowl is life as he knows it.

Nicolosi and others make him aware of the fact that sexuality, the world, is bigger than you can imagine, especially if you have taken on the sectarian and restrictive gay label. And therefore, Nicolosi and his merry men need to be removed, so as a new science can emerge, a new scientific spirit built on the experiences of gay activist Rochlin, a fighter, a trooper for gay rights. We need to ban all Nicolosi’s thoughts, we need to ban all his books.

In 1933, we see a newspaper clipping, about the book-burnings of Germany.

“Germany will not be orphaned without men like Einstein”, declared Gerhard Krueger, leader of the Nazi students, who burned six van-loads of un-German books on the Opera Square here tonight. “This burning”, he said, “marks the birth of a new scientific spirit built upon the experiences of the storm-trooper”

“California will not be orphaned now that Nicolosi has died”, declared Jack Drescher, leader of the new LGBT radical-activist psychology, who banned and burned all the works of Nicolosi and his each and every follower. “This ban marks the birth of a new scientific spirit, built on the experiences of fighters like Rochlin”.

Conclusion

Do legislators in other states really feel that this is the way to go, when the ‘new spirit of Californian science‘ crosses state lines too,  begging the legislators to join in and appease them by incriminating and removing all dissident views from the free market place of ideas?

To be continued

Job Berendsen, MD