Emotional letter to the Massachusetts Legislature on Bill H97 -- from a New Jersey man who had struggled with homosexuality

Subject: H97 which purports to ban "abusive practices"

To the Massachusetts Legislature:

I write to help inform you about H97, called by its supporters "An Act relative to abusive practices to change sexual orientation and gender identity in minors", an act which does not really protect the public's health. We went through this same kind of "debate" (one-sided, really, because the LGBT lobby has disproportionate clout) in New Jersey, so I've had a lot of opportunity to read, think, and relate it to my own experience. I hope I can inform you well and wave away some of the smokescreen that's being thrown up in your face about it.

For one, H97 is anti-choice. Liberals are supposed to be pro-choice, right? But in this case, they're anti-choice, trying to ban something that some people choose and want. I oppose H97 and bills like it, because if somebody wants therapy to get freedom from something they themselves don't want in their life, they should be free to pursue it unless there are overpowering reasons that they shouldn't be allowed to.

In the case of H97, this burden of evidence for banning a consumer choice is not met. All we get is anecdotes and heavily biased "research". Some of the stories are false! Here in New Jersey, there was at least one case of a ban supporter giving testimony where it turned out that the whole story was lifted from a fictional movie! This suggests that the aggressive gay lobby is so determined to impose its will on everyone, they won't stop at perjury. Whatever testimony you've heard, don't take it at face value. Investigate!

The real goal of H97 has little to do with protecting health. That's just a cover story. What they really want to do, I opine, is to coerce everybody into believing the "born gay" myth (disproven by studies of identical twins) and the "once gay, always gay" myth. They want to commit a sort of genocide by denying that ex-gay people even exist. Homosexual activists play the perpetual victim card, but guess what? The real victims are EX-gay people, because the big gay lobby actually tries to hound them out of existence, quite viciously, and one way to do that is to prevent anyone from ever getting help to gain freedom from the influence of unwanted homosexual desires.

Please notice how finely I worded that last phrase. Supporters of bans like H97 say that nobody ever gets rid of homosexual desires completely. Even if that were so, which many ex-gays would say is not true, does that mean we should ban all efforts to help? Consider: Alcoholics and other addicts are said to be that way always. They're said to never get rid of the desire completely. I'm an ex-smoker myself, so I can understand that I should always be at least a little vigilant. But does that mean you would ban efforts to help me? I certainly hope not! Should we ban AA because alcoholics are said to be never totally free of the desire? God forbid! AA and other Twelve Step programs may or may not kill all the desire, but that's not really the point anyway. What patients want is to be free from living under the INFLUENCE of those desires. Maybe they still have the desire within them somewhere, popping up every now and then, but they get help breaking free of the constant influence, and it no longer plays a central or dominant role in their lives.

Thousands, really, very many former "gay" people have indeed, verifiably, reduced their homosexual desires to where they can now live the kind of life that they themselves in their heart of hearts really WANT to live.

I will acknowledge that some parents want to force their children into sexual orientation change efforts. But is that really a reason to ban all the therapy? Really? Rather, let's get specific: It is a reason to find a way to make sure that parents don't force their children. It's a reason to find a way to make sure that it's the child him/herself that actually wants the help. Any therapist worth his fee will tell you that if the patient him/herself doesn't want to change, then nothing will happen but a waste of money and time.

There's also the argument that seems to me to be a straw man: Some therapists have supposedly used bad means. Again, is that a reason to ban an entire category of therapy? Really? Rather, it is a reason to investigate the individual therapist in question and get to the bottom of the real facts, in an unbiased manner if that's ever possible, in that individual case.

Let's burn another straw man while we're at it: The consumer fraud bit. Which therapists are making unwarranted promises? Let's stop those individual therapists, if there really are any, from doing that. The only REAL promise, actually made, that I know of is this: "If you do your homework and make a sustained effort, your odds of success are better." Really, do we ban any other kind of therapy because it isn't 100% successful? Does any kind of therapy guarantee a particular result? Doesn't every kind of therapy fail sometimes? Of course it does! Does that mean we ban it? Do we ban drug counseling because only a minority stay drug-free? On the contrary, we try to improve the success rate.

Let me raise another point: "Conversion therapy" is not what this kind of therapy calls itself. What other branch of therapy is named by its opponents? Every branch of therapy is called what is practitioners call it, not what its opponents call it. So whatever your position may be on this, please use the actual name. What the opponents call it is NOT the actual name. Ditto for "pray the gay away", a phrase I've NEVER heard from anybody but an opponent.

Another angle: Wherever homosexuality comes from, there's no proof that it's inborn. They keep trying to find a "gay gene", and then when they think they have one, nobody can replicate that finding.

Identical twin studies suggest the opposite: Identical twins are, well, identical. If "born gay" is true, then if one twin has homosexual desires, so does the other, and I mean 100% of the time, because they have the exact same genes. But this is not what's found. The percentage is way lower than 100%, so it can't be genetic.

All considered, it's more likely "nurture" than "nature", and various homosexuals have various combinations of factors in their background. One root cause that is well supported anecdotally at least is that some people acquire their homosexual desire as a result of somebody introducing them to it by molestation or seduction. This is an area where such bans as H97 actually HARM people's mental health. Allow me to illustrate from my own experience:

I myself was molested by homosexual or "down low" men when I was a teenager. For a few years afterwards, I thought I might be gay or at least bisexual. If a therapy ban were in effect back then, all I would have heard from a therapist would have been affirmation and encouragement to go ahead and live a gay life. This would have been SO WRONG for me! I would have proceeded to live a life contrary to my very own nature. The mental dissonance would have roared cacophonously. Rather, a counselor friend of mine whom I got sexually involved with one day said point blank, "You're not gay". It was that simple. Those words would not be possible under H97 and what will surely follow it if it's passed, because everybody with counseling credentials would be forbidden to say such things under penalty of losing those credentials and their livelihood. So, this fellow said those simple words, and all I had to do was reflect a while to know he was right. The confusion caused by molestation/seduction was dispelled forever.

Thus have I illustrated one reason why sexual orientation change effort must be preserved! Because some people aren't gay at all, but they think maybe they are, so they should be free to get help resolving what their "sexual orientation" really is. Under H97 and bans like it, everybody is steered toward living a homosexual life, whether it truly suits them or not. This, of course, suggests that one of the real goals of H97 and bans like it may be to increase the homosexual population and gain the increase in political power that goes with bigger numbers. It surely would have that effect, at least.

Let me try another little angle here: We the public are being manipulated and intimidated toward swallowing the idea that a person has a right to get taxpayer and health-insurer subsidies to change their very visible, obvious, physical male or female sex into the opposite, involving surgery to amputate or mutilate healthy organs. Yet these same LGBT activists want to ban any and all efforts to change "sexual orientation", which exists in the mind and does NOT require surgery, and nobody is saying that taxpayers or insurers should fund such therapy. What kind of sense does this make? You can change your sex and demand money from everyone for it, but you're forbidden from getting any help to change your "sexual orientation"? Pick one or the other, folks!

Let me emphasize: If people want to call themselves "gay" (a sociopolitical construct, really) and live that way, none of us are trying to stop them. None of us are trying to force them all into therapy or lock them away in institutions. All we advocate is that people who WANT help reducing the influence of homosexual desire in their lives, they should retain the choice to grab that kind of help.

H97 is anti-choice and anti-health.

Thank you very much for reading this! I hope I've told you a thing or two you haven't heard and would like to know more about.

Respectfully yours,
Mr. Jonathan Paul Sank
New Jersey