Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has labored hard to rebrand anti-LGBT conversion therapy as something different to hide its nature., and it's still doing so. A Feb. 2 article by Bob Unruh used right-wing rhetoric to portray being LGBT as a "lifestyle" that one must "leave":
Pro-LGBT activists have worked with pro-LGBT lawmakers in multiple locations across the United States to create a legal ban on certain talk counseling.
Their scheme allows counselors to encourage the LGBT lifestyle, but bans any therapy that seeks to support people who want to leave the LGBT lifestyles.
Those who leave the lifestyle, of course, undermine the entire movement which is based on the ideology that people are "born that way."
Now, however, a federal appeals court has blown up that argument.
A report from Liberty Counsel reveals that the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals "has ruled that the Tampa ordinance that prohibited licensed counselors from providing voluntary talk therapy to minors seeking help to reduce or eliminate their unwanted same-sex attractions, behaviors, or identity, is unconstitutional under the First Amendment."
[...]
Jung had demolished the pro-LGBT talking point that it is "conversion therapy" involved.
That's a term that activists and the media frequently use.
Unruh was at it again in a June 27 article in which he didn't use the term "conversion therapy" at all:
For at least the fourth straight Congress, Democrats have introduced the "Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act," trying to criminalize and destroy talk therapy that offers help to members of society with unwanted same-sex attractions.
They insist that such help to those who want it is illegal.
A leftist diatribe about the issue, published online, claimed, within once sentence, the treatments are a "discredited practice" and a "discredited practice."
But what is discredited are the long-discontinued practices of forced electric shocks and the like that had been used by America's medical industry in years gone by.
The therapy now involves only talk, and that has been affirmed in some federal courts across the U.S.
Unruh is being dishonest here. Electroshock therapy has been discredited for decades; conversion therapy in recent years -- typically conducted by anti-LGBT activists who are not licensed practitioners -- has included techniques such as shaming, hypnosis and induced vomiting, and those who are subjected to it (typically minors forced to undergo it by their parents) see higher rates of depression, substance abuse and suicide.Nevertheless, Unruh kept up the charade by injecting editorial comment into his "news" story:
The report claimed it is supported by the "false belief that LGBTQ identities are pathologies that need to be cured."
However, the bigger issue is that when there are those who voluntarily leave the LGBTQ lifestyle, it decimates that community's arguments that they are "born that way," that they need privileges in society because of their status.
Unruh didn't explain how being LGBTQ is a "lifestyle," nor did he detail the alleged "privileges" they "need... in society."b He also failed to explain why he avoided the term "conversion therapy" even though it was valled exactly that in a Hill article to which he linked in support of his story.
