Last time I commented on the ridiculousness of the double standards that exist in our country, thanks in no small part to our elected officials and (often unelected) judges. Here’s another excellent example for you. New Jersey, California and Washington, D.C. all have laws which ban state-licensed counselors from talking to minors about changing their sexual orientation. In New Jersey and California the law also states that counselors cannot talk to minors about changing their sexual behavior or trying to minimize feelings of attraction toward members of the same sex. This means, according to reporter Jamie Dean in an article published in the May 16 issue of WORLD, that the laws prohibit “any counseling that suggests it’s possible for a person to change–or even reduce–same-sex attractions.” Furthermore, Dean reports, at least eighteen other states have considered such bans. Worse, the Obama administration has indicated that it would support federal legislation on this matter if Congress were to act.
Why is this so problematic? Consider, please, what these bans do not prevent–namely, counselors talking to minors about changing their bodies if they want to switch to another gender (like Bruce Jenner). If a young person feels a sexual attraction to someone of the same gender, and does not like it, counseling would be a logical next step in most people’s minds. Yet, according to these laws, the counselor could not discuss this with the young person. Apparently it is not okay for a young person to want to change the fact that he or she feels a sexual attraction to someone of the same sex, but it is perfectly fine to discuss with that young person changing their body and almost every other aspect of their life in order to assume an identity as a member of the other gender. In other words, state legislatures are giving their seal of approval on what kinds of feelings are perfectly acceptable (such as changing one’s gender) and those which are not (such as trying to overcome unwanted sexual attraction).
What we are seeing here is not only a horrible double standard but a frightening invasion by government into the most private and personal areas of personal lives. Here the media and many in our nation have been celebrating Bruce Jenner’s decision to abandon his life as a male and switch to a female, and counselors are more than welcome to assist young people in exploring these feelings and desires, but when a young man does not like the fact that he sometimes feels attracted to other men (or a young women does not like that she sometimes feels attracted to other women), young people cannot discuss those feelings with the very people who, theoretically, should be most equipped to help them deal with these feelings. The government, then, is deciding what feelings are okay and what feelings are not okay. It is perfectly okay to want to switch genders and it is perfectly okay to be attracted to people of the same gender, but it is not okay to not like it when those same-sex feelings pop up. The pendulum has swung far in the other direction! Not too long ago there was considerable debate over whether or not a person who felt same-sex attractions was mentally stable. It was even less long ago that someone who felt same-sex attractions would have been extremely reluctant to speak about, much less act on, those feelings. There has been a shift toward accepting those who feel that same-sex attraction, embracing them, and helping them accept those feelings. Now, instead, a person who feels a same-sex attraction and does not like it is not allowed to talk about it, is discouraged from feeling that way, and is told that trying to deny that feeling is wrong. When you see how far we have come in this area it is not really all that difficult to envision the lunacy I described in the last post that will come from giving human-like rights to chimpanzees. The government cannot tell anyone what to think, and it ought not try.
Funny, isn’t it, that our culture seems to encourage people to think whatever they want, to eschew any ideas of right and wrong and pursue whatever makes them feel good–yet when something is making them feel bad, that the culture thinks is just fine and should make them feel good, all of a sudden there is a wrong! This is just the kind of foolishness that stems from man messing with what God has already decided; we just make a big mess of everything.
THINKING OUT LOUD 