SACRAMENTO, January 5, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – New legislation went into effect in California at the beginning of this year that repeals a 60-year-old law requiring state health officials to seek a cure for homosexuality.
Bill AB 2199, authored by Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, and signed into law by outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, quashed the section of the California Welfare and Institutions code that instructs the state Department of Mental Health to conduct research into the “causes and cures of homosexuality.”
AB 2199 was supported by homosexual activists who argued it was discriminatory to search for cures for a mental disorder that was delisted by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 and the World Health Organization in 1990.
A homosexual commentator at “the gay manifesto” said, “The laws in California are now aligned with every accredited medical, psychological and scientific institution in the United States who agree that homosexuality and heterosexuality are both normal, natural and unchangeable sexual orientations.
“The only organizations that do not believe that homosexuality is normal, natural and unchangeable are some marginalized and discredited registered Christian hate groups who push agendas of discrimination and violence against the gay and lesbian community,” he said.
One Christian social worker in Los Angeles warned that the new legislation will not only expand the spread of homosexuality, but lead to the silencing of dissenting voices.
“I do think it’s going to open up their comfort level, and I think it’s going to make it more acceptable,” said Veronica Esqueda in a OneNewsNow report.
Esqueda says she sees the homosexual lifestyle as a choice and that ones genetic gender is a gift from God. “Obviously, I am one that believes that it’s not an error – you are born the way God intended you to be.”
“I believe it is going to impact the conservatives, the Christians, and I think it’s going to basically have a discrimination [effect] against the conservative Christian believer,” she cautioned. “It’s going to be just another way to silence [their message].”