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SACRAMENTO, CA, August 2, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The author of a California bill that would forbid minors from seeking therapy to overcome unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction has admitted his intention was to undermine parental rights.

“The attack on parental rights is exactly the whole point of the bill, because we don’t want to let parents harm their children,” said State Senator Ted Lieu, D-Torrance.

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Senate Bill 1172 would ban anyone under 18 from receiving reparative or sexual orientation conversion therapy, even if requested by the teens or their parents. The bill would label the treatment “unprofessional conduct” and “therapeutic deception.” 

The bill passed the state Senate in June. It is now being considered in the state Assembly. 

After likening the therapy to allowing children to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, the 43-year-old Taiwanese-born legislator said, ““We have these laws to stop parents from hurting their kids. Preventive therapy hurts children, so this bill allows us to stop parents from hurting their children.”

“There is a widespread national attempt, and there has been for many years, to outlaw reparative therapy of any kind,” Dr. Michael Brown, the host of the nationally syndicated radio program “The Line of Fire,” told LifeSiteNews.com.

“The idea that a homosexual can change undermines the entire alleged civil rights nature of the gay activist movement,” he told LifeSiteNews. “Therefore, therapy for this is considered to be harmful and destructive.”

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“This is not a matter of forcing a child to do something against his or her will,” he said. “This is a matter of forbidding parents, professional therapists, and young people to have the right of choice.”

Opponents say Lieu has his science and his legal priorities wrong.

Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) attorney Matthew McReynolds warned LifeSiteNews.com months ago, “The logical implication from these two assertions is that the state is giving itself the power to take kids away from parents who do not affirm the kids’ sexual confusion.” 

That strikes legislators the wrong way. The Orange County Register reported that Assemblyman Donald Wagner, R-Irvine, said the legislature had no business intervening in “matters of medical decisions made between parents and children.”   

In claiming sexual orientation conversion therapy harms children, Lieu claims there is no proof that sexual orientation can be changed, and that psychiatrist Robert Spitzer withdrew the only study attesting to that method of treatment.

Dr. Brown told LifeSiteNews the science simply does not bear out Lieu’s contentions.

“There are actually decades of professional studies documenting the possibility of change,” he wrote in an online column for Townhall.com.  Many of these studies are detailed in his book A Queer Thing Happened to America. “Spitzer did not retract his study, nor did he discover that his findings were scientifically inaccurate after further research. He simply apologized for the study after suffering years of ugly and unrelenting attack from gay activists and their allies.”

“There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that people have been helped,” he told LifeSiteNews. “Also, there are plenty of therapies for someone with schizophrenia and other disorders that very seldom help, and yet people are allowed to have access to them.”

He said Christian leaders in the Golden State “should get involved, not just by contacting their senators, but also by making public statements to draw attention to the completely outrageous nature of this bill, and I believe as they do that it will not be too late to stop them from going forward.”

California Assembly members contact info.