I learned about transgender surgery and medical hormones and therapy from that book, at the age of eleven. I was a very precocious reader, as were my brother and sister.
Difficult subjects were not held back from us kids. We were black kids, two of us were girls. Things could be difficult for us, and already had been for members of our family.
Learning about other people, and their social status, and difficulties were the reason we were taught to LEARN and experience other people, before deciding they weren’t worthy of respect just because they were mysterious to others.
I was in grade school and that’s not too early an age to learn about this fact of human life and gender. The transgendered are manifesting this reality at much earlier ages, and children will have siblings who are.

Children, after all, learn a lot of things about medical technology, support and so on, that helps people and makes them happy or cures them of things that have made them unhappy.
Children do get that. And there is nothing in the world, or justification for being taught to be so hostile and insane about the transgendered, the reaction is to be abusive and violent.

Unprovoked violence is always going to be something inexplicable to children.
In comparison, teaching to understand and respect the transgendered isn’t hard at all.

The shidloe and Schraeder study showed the “therapy” is widely harmful and it is the position of all major mental health organizations that the therapy is harmful. None of the major mental health agencies says the “therapy” has benefitted anyone so your anecdotes of benefits do not allow you to make a truthful scientific claim that the “therapy” benefits some.

As I recall, even you acknowledge that in your anecdotes that the clients have not benefitted from attempting change orientation, rather that they have benefitted from counselling for other issues such as excessive drug or alcohol use, sexual promiscuity and so on. If that were true then clients of this “therapy” can still readily get counseling for such issues and as the counselling to change orientations isn’t helpful even in your anecdotes it is not just pointless to have it available, it is harmful and it is high time it is the APA and other agencies declared it unethical.

- – -

I’m disappointed that the sponsors of the ex-gay ban have not worked with the CPA to resolve their concerns. By going in heavy handed, this feels less like a solution to a problem and more like political revenge.

I hope the Senate votes this bill down. If they meet with the CPA and focus on problem resolution (rather than moralizing about the evils of those who are not pro-gay) then they can bring back a bill we can all support.

I also hope that Equality California stops sending out untruthful emails about the bill. The one I received this week informed me that change therapy is harmful to the patients. While that is true for some, it is not universally true and some patients have benefitted from the therapy.

There’s enough truthful things to criticize about the practice. There’s enough good policy that could be set. We really don’t need to be untruthful or heavy handed.

TRiG.

I must get hold of those books. They sound like good reading.

TRiG.