I got an email from the Democrats that stunned me, guess it shouldn’t have, all things considered
the greater world out there is definitely getting way more medieval than my mind can absorb.
In any event, apparently conversion therapy is alive and well and some well-meaning folks are trying to stop it, or at least defund it, or something along those lines.
So’s here’s the letter:
Peter, Conversion therapy is a horrific, barbaric practice that is inexplicably still allowed in Colorado. And Democratic legislators are about to take a stand against it in the State House. This discredited process allows groups to use shame, psychological abuse, and intimidation to bully minors into rejecting their sexual orientation. It has been a plague on LGBTQ youth and causes lifelong trauma for people forced to endure it. To spread the word that we are doing everything we can to fight against it, please share our Facebook post with your friends to raise awareness on this issue. This bill has passed the House 3 times, and every year it has died in the GOP-controlled Senate. If you want to take even more action, sign our petition and we will send your legislator your message that you will stand up for LGBTQ youth. Finally, a different kind of fundraising ask than usual: consider donating to the Trevor Project, an organization that provides suicide prevention and crisis intervention to LGBTQ youth, and also provides resources for parents and educators to foster healthy environments for all LGBTQ young people.I did a little fishing and found this
HB17-1156 Prohibits Conversion Therapy Mental Health Provider Concerning a prohibition on conversion therapy by a licensed mental health care provider. SESSION: 2017 Regular Session SUBJECT: Health Care & Health Insurance The bill prohibits a licensed physician specializing in psychiatry or a licensed or registered mental health care provider from engaging in conversion therapy with a patient under 18 years of age. A licensee who engages in these efforts is subject to disciplinary action by the appropriate licensing board. 'Conversion therapy' means efforts that seek to change an individual's sexual orientation, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex. http://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb17-1156
Conversion therapy has no place in Colorado Author: Daniel Ramos - August 22, 2017 - Updated: August 31, 2017 https://coloradopolitics.com/conversion-therapy-no-place-colorado/ For the past three years, legislators in Colorado have worked to ban conversion therapy, a dangerous and discredited practice where licensed mental health professionals try to change a young person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. For the past three years, I’ve sat next to — and listened to — survivors’ saddening and terrifying stories in committee hearings. For the past three years, Republican leadership in the Colorado Senate has blocked this legislation from reaching the Senate floor for debate and a vote. And in those past three years, seven more states have passed laws to ban this practice, bringing the total to nine states plus the District of Columbia, with many cities across the country following suit. An additional 20 states have attempted to ban conversion therapy in the past year alone, with varied results.It's so easy for folks like me, who've never had a sexual-identification conflict, to dismiss all this. For instance, admittedly when the gay marriage thing started rolling, I rolled my eyes. But, it didn't take too many stories, before I had to stop and realize, well hell this really is really really important for them. Think about it a little. Didn't take much of that to realize, well hell yes and why not. What threat is non-traditional marriage to my own affairs. This is the same thing. What right does anyone have to force their morals onto some else. What right? God told them? What a minute? No one knows God, its beyond human abilities to comprehend, personal shadow plays is the best we can do. We have our notions of who God is, but to pretend we Know God, if you do that, it's nothing but your EGO run wild. So back to, who the hell has the right to force sexual orientation conversion therapy onto someone else? How is it we've stood by and allowed all this unhinged politically driven religious fanaticism ? ----------------- Gosh how one thing leads to another. But I figure I ought to justify my opinion with some evidence, or at least a peek at how we allowed this to happen....
Jimmy Carter’s evangelical downfall: Reagan, religion and the 1980 presidential election Jimmy Carter ushered in an era of progressive evangelicalism. But the religious right made sure it was short-lived RANDALL BALMER 05.25.2014•12:30 PM https://www.salon.com/2014/05/25/jimmy_carters_evangelical_downfall_reagan_religion_and_the_1980_presidential_election/
Shocked at evangelicals' flocking to Trump? Blame it on Reagan By RANDALL BALMER - OCT 05, 2015 http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-oe-balmer-evangelicals-politics-do-not-match-their-faith-20151005-story.html Among the more bizarre developments of the campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination is Donald Trump's apparent popularity among evangelicals. Several polls show Trump garnering a plurality — though not a majority — of evangelical votes. Pundits, religious and otherwise, have been shaking their heads about this. Some evangelicals claim the polling is faulty — because it has to be! Devoted Christians, the thinking goes, shouldn't embrace a thrice-wed blustery billionaire who, until very recently, supported abortion rights. How, after all, can Trump's race-baiting rhetoric about immigration be reconciled with biblical injunctions to welcome the stranger? In one of the more amusing commentaries, Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention claimed that evangelicals had suddenly abandoned biblical values in their fondness for Trump. "To back Mr. Trump," Moore wrote in the New York Times, "these voters must repudiate everything they believe." Moore's lament that evangelicals have forsaken "the conservation of moral principles and a just society" in their love affair with Trump may be good theater, but it's colossally bad history. The evangelical repudiation of the faith for a mess of political pottage is not a recent phenomenon. It can be traced at least as far back as the 1980 presidential election, when evangelicals deserted Jimmy Carter, one of their own, for Ronald Reagan. Whereas Carter advocated racial and sexual equality, cornerstones of a "just society" and articles of faith for 19th century evangelicals, Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Reagan opened his 1980 general election campaign in, of all places, Philadelphia, Miss., the site of the brutal slayings of three civil rights workers by the Ku Klux Klan 16 summers earlier. In his speech at the Neshoba County Fair on Aug. 3, Reagan proclaimed his support for "states rights," coded language employed by a generation of Southern segregationists. Carter, who painstakingly brokered the Camp David accords, moved American foreign policy away from the reflexive dualism of the Cold War toward an emphasis on human rights, and he understood that if the United States was to have any meaningful relationship with Latin America, the Panama Canal treaty must be renegotiated. Although he restored the defense spending cuts enacted by his Republican predecessors, Carter believed that the most effective military weapon was the one never deployed. He remains proud of the fact that no soldier died in combat during his presidency. ...The Republican marriage with the faith-based, greed-driven, power-hungry evangelical movement - now there's a worm-hole of history gone bad.Randall Balmer is a religion professor at Dartmouth College and the author of "Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter."