The ex-gay think tank NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) reacted Monday to news of a California bill that would prohibit antigay therapist professionals from mistreating underage youths, and that would require all adult ex-gay clients of such professionals to sign an informed consent form — a form that NARTH and ex-gay “ministry” network Exodus International have opposed for decades.
NARTH said the California bill would “threaten the right of individuals with unwanted homosexual attractions to receive therapy.” NARTH has long made this contention that patients have a “right” to demand that medical professionals mistreat them. This is akin to a hypochondriac patient demanding the anticancer quack therapy laetrile (cyanide), or perhaps more appropriately, a Christian doctor insisting that she has a “right” to prescribe asbestos and nicotine to treat “unwanted Judaism and Islam” in her patients.
NARTH warns, “While this is a direct assault on everyone’s freedom it is also a not so subtle attack on religious liberty.”
The California legislation IS about medical malpractice, and it IS about liberties — specifically, the right to be informed and the freedom of religious and sexual minorities not to be defamed and abused by NARTH’s antigay and largely fundamentalist member therapists. As Truth Wins Out and others have documented, NARTH leaders have supported bullying, justified slavery, and abused legitimate researchers’ work.
NARTH seeks freedom from professional accountability, not religious freedom.
