tweakabelle
Posts: 7522
Joined: 10/16/2007
From: Sydney Australia
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Kirata
Hi dc,
The question of whether or not a minor is mature enough to make such a decision can only be answered on an individual basis. But as to whether the motivation is coming from the parent or the minor, that is the first thing any competent professional would seek to determine. The "pray away" crowd, not so much. Yet laws like the one in California do not apply to ministers and lay religious groups. So really, what is there to defend about such an empty and utterly useless piece of legislation? Pretty much zip. It's just political theater.
As to the question of the maturity of minors more generally, is an 8-year old girl mature enough to decide she's a "boy" and be put on puberty-suppression drugs in preparation for sex reassignment surgery? Is a 13-year old girl mature enough to evaluate and understand the potential emotional sequelae of having an abortion? The human brain is not fully matured until the early twenties, and the last parts to come online are those that mediate judgment and risk assessment, so the issue is fraught with uncertainties. But you can't even begin to make judgments on a case by case basis if you are blocked by a "one size fits all" law.
Elements of the formative environment are known to be factors in some cases of homosexuality, and those are precisely what a psychological approach will seek to address. In cases where an individual's history gives reason to believe that such factors may have been significantly determinative, an ameliorative outcome is not an unreasonable possibility to contemplate. It is one thing to acknowledge that most of the groups offering such "treatments" are selling snake-oil, quite another to ban for that cause any attempt whatsoever.
Sorry Mr K but this complete gibberish.
Especially so given that no so long ago you were posting links to papers dismissing all the orthodox categories in the entire matrix of sex/gender/sexuality. If we have the categories wrong, and there are very good reasons for thinking so, then what hope might any therapy have that relies on and operates wholly within those faulty categorisations? Answer: none at all.
I am relieved to see that you "acknowledge that most of the groups offering such "treatments" are selling snake-oil". Perhaps you can demonstrate the existence of one 'therapy' devised and offered by competent professionals with qualifications in the area, whose independently verified track record offers a glimmer of success? My understanding is that psychiatry tried for over a century to 'cure' 'homosexuality', an uninterrupted record of total failure until it dawned upon these 'enlightened' professionals that the problem was not the existence of 'homosexuality' but their own homophobia.
No responsible person with an understanding of the history of medical and 'scientific' attempts to redirect and refashion sexual preference and behaviour along normative lines would ever advocate a repeat of those historical horrors. Just one example to demonstrate this bloody history: Well into the 20th century medicine and psychiatry practiced clitordectomies on young girls and women who were diagnosed as suffering 'masturbation mania'. Nowadays such barbarity is recognised as 'Female Genital Mutilation" and (rightly) considered a crime in most countries
Do you really want to revisit those days? Can't you see that the problem here is not the existence of homosexual attraction and behaviours but homophobia and inevitably doomed-to-fail attempts to normatise sexual preference and behaviour? The good news is that homophobia is eminently curable, even in the oblique unintended form it occurs in your post.
< Message edited by tweakabelle -- 6/14/2014 12:07:28 AM >
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