California Governor Jerry Brown on Saturday signed a historic bill that will protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) minors from "reparative" therapies administered by mental health professionals aimed at altering sexual orientation or gender identities and expressions.
Senate Bill 1172, which the National Center for Lesbian Rights notes was co-sponsored by the NCLR, Equality California, Gaylesta, Courage Campaign, Lambda Legal, and Mental Health America of Northern California, and supported by dozens of organizations, is the first law of its kind in the United States and will become effective on January 1, 2013.
"Conversion" or "reparative" therapies include a wide variety of techniques from counseling to shock therapy to -- in extreme cases -- exorcism, used in an attempt to "cure" individuals of their homosexual and transgender orientations and identities. However, in recent years, even those who once championed the idea that someone can convert to heterosexuality have admitted that viewpoint is flawed.
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