Calif. Lawmakers Modify Decades-Old Antigay Law

The California state assembly voted 62-0 to change a 60-year-old law that classified gays and lesbians as "sexual deviants" and called for research into a cure for homosexuality.

The law, passed in 1950, was in response to sex crimes against children, according to the Associated Press. The bill passed Monday removes all references to gays from statute language and now moves to the state senate.

"Even [in 1950], there was no legal justification to say that gay people needed to be understood and cured in the exact same way as sexual predators who rape and kill children," bill cosponsor and state assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal said earlier this month. "For us to leave it there would be wrong."