Immutable ideology: Teens and same-sex attraction
November 27, 2013 ( BreakPoint ) - A fifteen-year-old New Jersey boy, identified in court records as “ John Doe ,” has struggled with unwanted same-sex attraction since he was ten. Two years ago, at his urging, his family took him to see a therapist in New York who specialized in what court documents refer to as “ Sexual Orientation Change Efforts .” According to John Doe, the therapy has helped him. In his words, “every day would get a little better.” We know this because his family is challenging a New Jersey law that, like a similar law in California , “ban[s] licensed counselors from engaging in talk therapies that reduce the level of same-sex attractions in minors for whom such reduction is a personal goal.” As we’ve previously pointed out here on BreakPoint, not only is so-called “reparative therapy” controversial, its efficacy remains unproven. While there are people who have successively made the transition from same-sex relationships to heterosexual ones, there are...