In August 2018, the ‘California MassResistance’ movement applied unprecedented pressure to stop the horrible anti-therapy bill AB 2943. That legislation, if it passed, would have treated all forms of therapy for unwanted homosexuality or gender identity conflict as a fraudulent business practice.
Furthermore, it would have forbidden the sale and distribution of any materials teaching people about natural marriage, biological sexuality, gender, and affirmation of Biblical morality. This was a sweeping piece of legislation that worried churches, professionals, and pro-family activists in general.
On the last day of the session, the author of the bill, Evan Low (D-Cupertino) pulled the bill from the floor. To explain his move, he announced that he would be re-filing the bill in the 2019 session. In this article, we show what makes his clock tick.
‘California MassResistance’ continued its relentless pressure on him at every event he appeared at. And it worked. When the February 22 deadline for filing bills for 2019 came, Low had not filed it. The radicalized LGBT lobby was livid. In August, he announced that he would instead be filing a non-binding “resolution” (not a bill) supporting the idea of a therapy ban. But so far he hasn’t filed that, either.
1. Why is Assemblyman Low doing this?
In his statement to explain his moves, Low writes,
“I spent the past few months traveling up and down the state meeting with a wide variety of faith leaders. I was heartened by the conversations. A number of religious leaders denounced conversion therapy and recognized how harmful the practice is while acknowledging it has been discredited by the medical and psychological communities. I left those productive conversations feeling hopeful. This bill intends to create a loving and inclusive environment for all”
The highly persecuted civil rights movement ‘Mass Resistance’ did a great job to resist the passing of this bill. The Woke lobby even tried to take down their website. To no avail. In the meantime, Woke activist Low does not appear to be willing to give up. This is worrying.
What is most troublesome is his alleging that “a number of religious leaders denounce conversion therapy” and that they apparently are aligning themselves with the fraudulent remarks placed by, what Low calls, “the medical and psychological communities”.
Those communities do not exist as a single entity; there are several organizations in this field and two of them have been hijacked by radicalized LGBT activists who proclaim to speak on behalf of the whole organization and on behalf of science (in this case, the American Psychological Association and the dwindling American Psychiatric Association, a collusion of extremists).
Their actions are highly controversial because they pour out far-left political statements. Members are resigning as never before, even the President of the organization himself.
Past president Dr. Nicholas Cummings of the Psychological Association denounced his own organization, saying:
“At the present time, the governance of the APA is vested in an elitist group of 200 psychologists who rotate themselves in a kind of “musical chairs” throughout all the various offices, boards, committees, and the Council of Representatives. The vast majority of the 100,000 members are essentially disenfranchised.
“At the 2006 APA Convention in New Orleans, I gave a speech, “Psychology and the APA Need Reform,” which was widely circulated on psychology list serves but has been totally ignored by the leadership of APA. It is not going to reform itself out of office!”
There are several opposing professional organizations to choose from. Their stances are far more scientifically based than these two hijacked, dwindling, and discredited organizations, even by their own president. (In the current Cancel Culture, by the way, Cumming’s Youtube interviews have been deleted as of 2020 as “hate speech”).
On Lifesitenews.com, we read:
NEW JERSEY, June 6, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – A renowned psychologist, Dr. Nicholas Cummings, who was a former president of the American Psychological Association (APA) has submitted an affidavit saying that he personally treated over 2,000 homosexuals for various conditions, while his staff counselled thousands more, and he knows of “hundreds” who successfully changed their orientation.”
Therefore, we have our doubts about this politician, Evan Low. Was there so much “denouncing”, “recognizing”, and “agreeing” going on, as he claims? Or does he just hear what he wants to hear?
If Low’ statement means that several religious leaders are willing to denounce scientifically based psychotherapy as a compromise to get Low to make an exception for religious counseling, then these leaders are letting a great number of people down.
The IFTCC Declaration makes no bones about this issue in paragraph 28:
“Concentrating only on pastoral rights and not the rights of people outside of the church will lead to a void of help for those not having a Christian faith. Many from no-faith and other-faith world-views seek to leave LGBT attractions, behaviors, and identities. Preserving Christian freedoms should not be at the expense of the rights of those seeking access to professional support outside of the church.
“Theologically, professional help that is scientifically informed, might be considered part of general revelation to mankind. Professional therapy may not be part of Christian beliefs for every Christian, but it is for some.”
2. The personal motivation of activists
In his statement, Low describes how his efforts to create a ban on therapy is based on very personal motives. This is what he writes in defense of himself:
“As a young person, I often found myself confused about my sexual orientation. I hid myself and my feelings because I was afraid of what others would think of me. This left me feeling very lost, scared, alone, and even suicidal. I wondered if I could change. Coming out was not an easy experience. Yet, I am grateful my community embraced me as I was, a gay man. Many fellow members of the LGBT community are not as fortunate and do not have the support I did and have been subjected to the harmful and fraudulent practice of conversion therapy.”
Is he implying that professional therapists make you feel even more “lost”, “scared”, “alone”, and “suicidal”? What on earth?!
When we analyze these statements closely from a psychiatric point of view, we see that he expresses many mental problems (“I found myself confused”) and that he resorted to avoidance strategies (“I hid”). Yet it never came up in him that he actually needed professional mental help. He never sought guidance and insights from a therapist.
He describes “feeling lost” (= estrangement), “scared” (= anxiety state), “alone” (= defensive detachments) and being “suicidal” (= depressive disorder). These pathological conditions alone merit 9 months of intensive psychotherapy. And every insurance company will gladly pay for it if he mentions all this during the intake. But, apparently, he never got round to doing it.
He then says “I wondered if I could change”, but never applied for professional help to sort this issue out.
And after becoming a grown-up man, he insists on a ban on therapy so that all other youths should never find that professional help either. It is as if he is saying:
‘I struggled through life without a professional who was helping me get to terms with this, don’t ask me how I did it. And I will see to it that no one else ever goes to therapy for these questions either. What is good for me, is good for you’.
It is as if he is saying: ‘My life is the norm, I am the norm’.
He says in his statement that “coming out” was not an easy experience, yet refuses to let us know what mental problems this led him to have. From a psychiatric viewpoint, coming out is a process of self-labeling and self-stigmatization. It is like getting yourself a tattoo for life. Then, he pronounces examples of homosexist proze: he stigmatizes himself as having a separate sexuality, leading to a sense of being a separate kind of person, leading to a sense of belonging to a group of separate persons, a culture of apartheid (“I am grateful to my community”). He longs for a parallel society: no integration but segregation.
3. No separate sexuality
A separate sexuality does not exist; since 2019 we know for sure after a major study on the genes of half a million people demonstrated no consistent persuasive findings. Same-sex attractions (SSA) have been proven to be exclusively a software issue, opposite-sex attractions (OSA) are a hardware issue with a software component to it.
In the Declaration, we read in paragraph 17:
“SSA is not a mirror image of OSA. For the respective populations involved, OSA is overwhelmingly fixed. SSA is overwhelmingly fluid and most often comes with opposite-sex attraction too. Persons with both-sex attractions commonly experience fluidity in sexual attraction feelings and behavior”.
Following through on his mental problems, he resorts to radical activists, (“I am grateful to my community”) and takes their fake and phony worldview of ‘being born that way’ as his own.
Well, that is his business as far as his own life is concerned. But he is a thug when he appears to insist ‘What is good for me, is good for you too. I shall use state law (read: state-approved violence) to see to it that you follow exactly in my footsteps’.
In this self-narrative, we see him inflating himself to godly dimensions. It is as if he is saying ‘I have transcended my woe and have become a new Savior: I am the light, I am the way’. His thoughts and feelings are not up for debate. In that sense, he has morphed into an authoritarian personality and his political outlook on life is totalitarian, lacking every form of self-criticism.
He lashes out at psychotherapy but has never experienced or sought any form of help himself.
4. Why do radical gay activists lash out in this manner?
Radical gay activism and the ban on therapy can be understood through ‘neurotic defense theory’.
On Flowpsychology.com, we read:
“Projection: This type of defense mechanism is where people attribute their own motives and feelings to others, especially those feelings that would cause guilt, such as sexual fantasies and aggressive thoughts. As an example, you might hate a certain person, but your superego would tell you that such feeling is unacceptable, so you tend to solve the problem by believing that he/she hates you.”
Low describes a great number of mental problems that he has, as does the notorious activist Samuel Brinton; they experience a bucketful of turmoil in their mind. Brinton says on Youtube that he was straight, then gay, then bisexual, then exgay, then ex-exgay, then transgender, then genderfluid, then gay again. According to his website, he is a keynote speaker for Google. And this Big Tech giant changes its algorithms for him accordingly.
Nowadays, he drills or whips masochist youths into being obedient puppies while he still hates his parents for the guidance they offered him. We call this inner turmoil. Needless to say, it is not normal or healthy. By the way, you can hire him for a sad speech about how he was allegedly beaten at age 12 or you can apply for a puppy-training course for a good beating yourself via his website (mind you, he is expensive).
But both do not want to pass as a mental case.
Therefore, activists find a way out: they project their turmoil onto the outside world, preferably psychotherapists whose findings dish out blows to their ego. The turmoil is displaced to the professionals and now these people are the source of confusion, pain, and strife.
Low and Brinton have cleansed their minds and removed the cobwebs from the attics of their soul and attributed them outwardly. Overnight, therapists are labeled as the source of problems. And hence, these nasty people can be, and should be, persecuted.
Therefore, the urge for radical activists to lash out at the hand that wants to stroke them can be seen as a compulsive avoidance strategy. They need to assign their mental hangups to others and a nationwide ban on therapy feels groovy. Sigmund Freud and his daughter, Anna, have demonstrated patterns of projection and displacement ever since 1894.
5. The malignant term ‘conversion therapy’
If you read Low carefully, you will sense a need for help but, at the same time, he is in a state of total denial. And his comments about “conversion therapy” (CT) are all from hear-say.
In the International Declaration, we read:
“The term ‘CT’ was first used by the American psychologist and activist Douglas Haldeman in 1991 who opposed, and continues to oppose, any therapy that offers insights in sexual identity doubts and conflicts. Citing this ill-defined ideologically inspired phrase, he is stirring up the crowds to agree to legislative bans on so-called ‘CT’ to impose restrictions, fines, and criminal charges. Any professional using standard psychotherapeutic and counseling approaches or pastoral care workers, who offer help to individuals voluntarily seeking support, are to be persecuted.
“The term ‘CT’ constitutes hate speech and is used to bully detractors. Advocates of so-called ‘CT’ bans use malicious language, such as ‘harm’ and ‘torture’ that misrepresents actual practices, to advance an ideological viewpoint, namely that you have no problems, you were just born that way.
“Radical activists are creating an atmosphere of taint-by-association, calculated to intimidate counselors and therapists into aligning themselves with only LGBT-affirmative therapies and political advocacy. Disallowing any but these practitioners to offer professional space, irrespective of an individual’s wishes, disregards human rights.”
5. Conclusion
Labels are as empty as they come. People have a personal right to conscience, sexuality, gender, and relationships. Care should not be a one-way pathway to deny all problems and to insist that a label is the solution for all inner turmoil, doubts, and pathology like suicidality.
In short, getting to feel comfortable with labels is never a replacement for exploring all aspects of your full sexual potential. Every unbiased psychotherapist needs to agree with this. Labels are a shortcut, and many clients of faith and non-faith do not find such a quickly obtained stigma satisfactory in the long run. They want more. ‘Glad to be gay’ is too superficial.
In fact, it is hollow rhetoric. Loud, I will grant you that, but huge hollow vessels always resonate loudly.
To be continued.
Job Berendsen, MD.
