Evangelical human rights head fights to restore reparative therapy for homosexuality in Brazil
Pastor Marco Feliciano, a Brazilian Evangelical who was recently elected as the chairman of the Human Rights Committee for the national Chamber of Deputies, is not satisfied with holding his ground against bitter protests and pressure to resign from homosexual activists and their allies. To the outrage of the country’s gay lobby, he is now introducing legislation to roll back the prohibitions placed on reparative therapy for homosexuality by the country’s Federal Council of Psychology (CFP).
The proposed legislation, authored by Evangelical deputy Joao Campos, would override parts of a resolution passed by the CFP in 1999, which prohibit psychologists from seeking to cure homosexuals of their sexual inclination or from endorsing the notion that their condition is any way psychologically disordered. A similar measure failed last year.
The CFP is a quasi-governmental body with the power to govern and restrict the activities of all Brazilian psychologists, and it has already used its authority toprohibit psychologists from screening out candidates to the Catholic priesthood for homosexuality, calling it “discrimination.” It has also acted to prohibit one psychologist, Rozangela Justino, from practicing reparative therapy, and has ordered psychologist Marisa Lobo, who also favors reparative therapy, to remove all references to her religious beliefs from her websites and public declarations. Lobo has refused.
Asked if the bill was intended as an act of provocation against homosexual activists who oppose his presidency of the Human Rights Committee, Feliciano answered: “It’s not.”
“The bill needs to move forward and I am not going to delay any bill, also because the committee has no bills [to examine],” added Feliciano. “The few bills that it has [before it] are controversial. I can’t shelve a bill because it would be cowardly to do so.”
Deputy Joao Campos told the media that “one of the basic principles of medical ethics is the autonomy of the patient. It’s as if the Federal Council of Psychology considered the homosexual as a minor child, incapable of self-determination.”
If passed, the bill would eliminate two paragraphs from CFP Resolution 1/99. The first states that “Psychologists will not collaborate with events and services that propose treatments and cures for homosexuals.” The second reads: “Psychologists will not make declarations, nor participate in public declarations, in the mass media, in a way that reinforces existing social prejudices in relation to homosexuals as carriers of any mental disorder.”
As LifeSiteNews.com reported last month, Marco Feliciano’s election to the presidency of Brazil’s Camera of Deputies’ Human Rights Committee has caused a firestorm of controversy and media attacks on the minister, whose very vocal opposition to the killing of the unborn and the homosexual political agenda is well-known. Although he has been under enormous pressure to bend to the homosexual lobby, Feliciano has refused to budge and is now on the offensive. His position on the committee, initially seen as endangered, is now viewed as secure.
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