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Gay "Cure" Mandate Targeted in Calif.


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California assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal has introduced a bill that would eliminate a 43-year-old section of state code that mandates a search for a “cure” for homosexuality.

According to The Sacramento Bee, the bill targets a section of California’s Welfare and Institutions Code placed into law in 1967 that “requires the Department of Mental Health to ‘plan, conduct and cause to be conducted scientific research into the causes and cures of sexual deviation, including deviations conducive to sex crimes against children, and the causes and cures of homosexuality, and into methods of identifying potential sex offenders.’”

While it remains unclear how seriously the department ever followed the order, a spokeswoman for the department told the Bee that any research that did occur would have ended decades ago.

Lowenthal, prompted by LGBT advocacy group Equality California, wants to make sure any trace of the code is eradicated.

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Reader Comments
  • Name: Andrew
    Date posted: 2/28/2010 3:54:04 AM
    Hometown: Sacramento, CA

    Comment:

    I wonder if the governments search for a "cure" included beatings, imprisonment, shock therapy, chemical castration, and pre-frontal lobotomies? I think I know the answer. And still we rise.

  • Name: Rob
    Date posted: 2/23/2010 7:29:19 AM
    Hometown: Raleigh, NC

    Comment:

    It's not unusual for states to have really weird old laws on the books. One that I know of is that atheists cannot run for public office in North Carolina...at least some old law says that. Fortunately, no one pays any attention to it, seeing as it would be obviously unconstitutional.

  • Name: Keppler
    Date posted: 2/22/2010 7:07:24 PM
    Hometown: San Jose

    Comment:

    Finally, we find something that EQCA can productively tackle. They were useless in preventing the passage of Prop. 8. Perhaps the discovery and abolition of long-unenforced laws plays more to their talents. Your membership dollars at work!

  • Name: Erik
    Date posted: 2/22/2010 6:24:08 PM
    Hometown: Santa Barbara

    Comment:

    Amen

  • Name: Tim
    Date posted: 2/22/2010 1:46:57 PM
    Hometown: Baltimore

    Comment:

    I've tried calling in gay, and I still had to come to work. Meanies.

  • Name: Steve
    Date posted: 2/22/2010 1:38:24 PM
    Hometown: Quincy, MA

    Comment:

    Baby, file for long term disability!

  • Name: Rachael
    Date posted: 2/22/2010 1:30:24 PM
    Hometown: Woodstock, IL

    Comment:

    I didn't even know such an idiotic law was on the books...I wonder what brilliant mind came up with that one?! I think a law should be on the books to search for a "cure" for ignorance and bigotry.

  • Name: David
    Date posted: 2/22/2010 12:42:24 PM
    Hometown: Jackson, OH

    Comment:

    I work for the government and if being gay is a disease then can I call in tomorrow sick?



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