Lawmakers in California are pushing a new resolution in the state Assembly Judiciary Committee which essentially gives the state the power to dictate the moral positions of the Church, regardless of where the Bible stands.
CBN News reports: “The Assembly Concurrent Resolution 99 (ACR 99) calls on ‘counselors, pastors, religious workers, educators’ and institutions with ‘great moral influence’ to stop perpetuating the idea that something is wrong with LGBT identities or sexual behavior. ACR 99 also condemns attempts to change unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion as ‘unethical,’ ‘harmful,’ and leading to high rates of suicide.”
A number of individuals who formerly identified as LGBTQ have opposed the resolution, including former-homosexual, Ken Williams, now a pastor in California and co-founder of Equipped to Love. According to Williams, anti-conversion therapy legislation not only denies his experience, and others like him, it also removes the rights of others to even question their sexuality.
Williams called the resolution inaccurate and harmful for a number of reasons. First, it lumps all efforts to change “sexual orientation” into the same demonised category, regardless of how benign and helpful they might be.
Imagine a 12-year-old biological male who, after being sexually assaulted, begins to be plagued with thoughts that he is actually a female.
If California’s therapists and religious organizations follow ACR-99’s directives, the prescribed treatment for that child would be a personal embracing of femininity and would likely include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, the surgical removal of his penis and testicles, and permanent sterilization. Should this child not be afforded a right to explore potential causes of his gender confusion and potential pathways that might allow him to reintegrate with his biological/birth sex?
Second, the resolution incorrectly suggests no therapy or help from religious institutions has proven helpful or effective for people desiring to change.
Last year when California proposed bill AB2943 which would have banned therapy from those desiring to leave homosexuality, people came out of the woodwork to oppose it.
And as a result, we know hundreds of people from across the country and around the world who were dramatically helped by religious groups and therapists.
Third, the resolution blames therapists and religious groups alone for high rates of suicide among LGBT people, despite the fact that countless individuals have credited therapists and religious groups for lifting them out of their struggles and easing their suicidal tendencies.
And fourth, the resolution elevates government ideology above an individual’s right to religious freedom.
With this resolution, individuals, leaders, and even therapists and religious institutions are commanded to embrace homosexuality as something to be applauded,” Williams said, “giving no thought to potential ramifications to a person’s spouse, children, or to a person whose own religious or personal convictions do not align with that ideology.
Furthermore, Pastors and religious leaders will be prohibited from calling people to repentance from “sexual immorality” as defined by the Bible. Moral judgments, particularly as they relate to sexuality, will now be determined by the State, not God.
We were once told it was all about “tolerance.” That’s all the noisy LGBTQ activists were asking for, or so they said – until they got it. But that’s not what they’re demanding any more, they want outright affirmation and mandatory celebration. To quote R.C. Sproul Jr, “tolerance was never the goal, approval is. We who give the former but not the latter will not be tolerated.”
