New law bans right to choose wanted therapy

New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie just took away a teenager's freedom by signing his name to a new law that bans all licensed counselors in New Jersey from helping minor teens dealing with unwanted same-sex attraction.

Sure, Christie - who wants to be your president in 2016 - scored major points with the gay rights movement by doing this, but if your young loved one were struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction - an attraction that contradicted your child's desire to live life according to deeply held Biblical values - shouldn't he or she have the right to seek a counselor's help? And shouldn't a parent have the right to seek that help on their child's behalf?

Well, too bad, says Christie. Professional counseling for Christian teens is now banned in New Jersey. Christie has tried to claim he's just doing what the science says to protect children from licensed Christian counseling. But isn't denying a person from receiving help if they do not want the same-sex attraction nothing short of indoctrination to the homosexual lifestyle? At the very least, it's a violation of patient rights. 

Even the American Psychological Association (APA) -- which opposes counseling based on the idea that homosexuality is a disorder -- admits that "patients have a right to self-determination, and that sexual orientation change efforts sometimes help people."

Consider people like Jeff Bennion, a man who struggled with same-sex attraction for many years, but who's now happily married with a wife and child. In a New York Post Op-Ed, Bennion wrote, “The client’s right to determine the course of his own therapy is a touchstone of modern psychotherapy. So the effort to deny people access to this therapy not only infringes on my right to self-determination, it violates the ethical standards of every major mental-health association.”

Prof. Nicholas Cummings, former president of the APA, also chimed in on the topic when he wrote an article for USA Today defending the right of those individuals with same-sex attractions who desire therapy to pursue it.

In his op-ed, he wrote, “Attempting to characterize all sexual reorientation therapy as ‘unethical’ violates patient choice and gives an outside party a veto over patients’ goals for their own treatment.”

Those with a tendency toward knee-jerk reactions will probably just see this push-back to the law as homophobia, or an attack on gay rights. But those people need to start thinking about things a little more deeply and truthfully in order to see the big picture. Bottom line is, a government figure is taking away an individual's rights to get help that he or she wants. Think about that, please. 

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