.

.

A Look at Utah’s Nondiscrimination Ordinances

Note:  This is an interesting article from the more liberal point of view.

What is interesting is that the number of complaints of discrimination in the cities that have passed non-discrimination ordinances is very very low if not absent.  This would indicate that discrimination for sexual orientation and gender identity is not a large issue in Utah.  City ordinances are sufficient for those who may have a complaint.   

 To pass a state-wide law that lays the groundwork for LGBT activists to take advantage of would be unwise.  If, in the future, ordinances need to be modified, this can be done relatively easy in response to local citizens. However, if a state law is enacted, local control is lost.

Judging from what is happening in other states, this is an area that must be carefully monitored and citizens should not allow state laws to give LGBT activists the opportunity to force businesses and schools to open bathrooms to those who have "gender identity" issues.

  ... initially an extremely small number of discrimination complaints have actually been made. Salt Lake City has had three complaints, not all of which were from people within city boundaries, and no complaints were made in 2013. Salt Lake County has had zero complaints from the unincorporated areas of the county, and zero have been made to the Neighborhood Development and Community Improvement department in Logan which deals with the ordinances.  Likewise, Grand County, Ogden, and West Valley City have not had a single discrimination complaint. In some municipal representatives have stated that though they have received one or two complaints, they have not been within their jurisdictions, so there was nothing they could do to help.  

 ... A study from the Williams Institute showed that per capita, sexual orientation discrimination complaints were received at similar rates as sex and race discrimination rates (5 per 10,000). The highest LGB rates of complaint came from seemingly liberal areas, with a rate of 8.8 per 10,000 in DC, 7.3 per 10,000 in California, and 6.4 per 10,000 in Connecticut. Gender identity ordinances were too new to study comprehensively, though preliminary reports have shown that these rates may be considerably higher.

http://utahpoliticalcapitol.com/2014/01/14/a-look-at-utahs-nondiscrimination-ordinances/#

Leaving Lesbianism And 
Confronting LGBT Activism-- My Story

By Lenora

 Note: This personal story is one of many found on http://testpathvoc.weebly.com/all-written-articles.html along with many inspiring and enlightening personal stories.

 As someone who has personally struggled with lesbianism, I am very aware of the unhappiness, confusion and misery that it can cause in one's life. There are those who would say that the only way for homosexually oriented people to find any real peace or happiness in life, is to just accept their homosexuality, fully immerse themselves in GayAffirmative Therapy and ultimately "come out." 

 My own experience, however, has proven this idea false. I have been undergoing Reparative Therapy* and have found it to be extremely effective in providing me with not only a tremendous amount of relief and healing in my struggle, but also a profound sense of
peace and happiness that I have not experienced before.
The improvements I have experienced have been so great, in fact, that I have become strongly motivated to do all I can to change the opinion of those people who aggressively oppose this type of therapy. 

But where should a layperson start such an endeavor? Where does one go to have their voice and experience heard--and ultimately, to have some influence on how homosexuality is viewed and treated?

 Read the entire article at: http://testpathvoc.weebly.com/uploads/2/1/1/0/21107422/073.pdf

Study: gay teens five times more likely to attempt suicide

NEW YORK, April 29, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Teens who self-identify as homosexual are five times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to attempt suicide, according to a study released last week.
The study, published in the journal Pediatrics online on April 18, was conducted in order to determine whether living in a gay friendly social environment affected the risk of a teen identifying as homosexual committing suicide. It found that teens in “unsupportive” social environments were 20 percent more at risk of attempting suicide than those in “supportive” environments.
“This study documents an association between an objective measure of the social environment and suicide attempts among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth,” concludes the study abstract, adding that the results “have important implications for the development of policies and interventions to reduce sexual orientation–related disparities in suicide attempts.”
But Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council pointed out that the takeaway finding from the study is not that gay teens are marginally less likely to commit suicide in a “supportive” environment, but that overall gay teens are so many times more likely to commit suicide than their non-gay peers – “a difference that far overwhelms any difference caused by the ‘social environment.’”
The study gathered self-report data from nearly 32,000 grade 11 students in Oregon. The findings also revealed that 21.5 percent of the gay teens surveyed reported suicidal tendencies, while only 4.2 percent of straight teens did the same.
The study author, Mark Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University, told Reuters, however, that no studies have been able to pinpoint the root cause of suicidal tendencies in gay teens.
From a psychological point of view, the study appears to leave open many questions: Cornell University psychologist Dr. Ritch Savin-Williams suggested to Reuters that gay teens may report as suicidal based on their own stereotype.
“We have given them the message that they are suicidal,” said Savin-Williams, who wasn’t involved in the study.
Sprigg, however, said that the “logical take-away” of the study might not suit the author’s original intention.
“The most effective way of reducing teen suicide attempts is not to create a ‘positive social environment’ for the affirmation of homosexuality. Instead, it would be to discourage teens from self-identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual,” he said.
See this article online at: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/study-gay-teens-five-times-more-likely-to-attempt-suicide/

Sexual reorientation therapy not unethical

Nicholas A. Cummings           July 30, 2013     USA TODAY

Southern Poverty Law Center wrongly fighting against patients' right to choose.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has done amazing service for our nation in fighting prejudice. But it has gone astray in its recent New Jersey lawsuit charging JONAH, formerly Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing, a group that offers to help gay people change their orientation, with committing consumer fraud. The sweeping allegation that such treatment must be a fraud because homosexual orientation can't be changed is damaging. The lawsuit is the opening salvo of a wave of activism intended to discredit therapy offered in 70 clinics across 20 states, according to the SPLC.

When I was chief psychologist for Kaiser Permanente from 1959 to 1979, San Francisco's gay and lesbian population burgeoned. I personally saw more than 2,000 patients with same-sex attraction, and my staff saw thousands more. We worked hard to develop approaches to meeting the needs of these patients.

Individual's goals

They generally sought therapy for one of three reasons: to come to grips with their gay identity, to resolve relationship issues or to change their sexual orientation. We would always inform patients in the third group that change was not easily accomplished. With clinical experience, my staff and I learned to assess the probability of change in those who wished to become heterosexual.

Of the roughly 18,000 gay and lesbian patients whom we treated over 25 years through Kaiser, I believe that most had satisfactory outcomes. The majority were able to attain a happier and more stable homosexual lifestyle. Of the patients I oversaw who sought to change their orientation, hundreds were successful.

I believe that our rate of success with reorientation was relatively high because we were selective in recommending therapeutic change efforts only to those who identified themselves as highly motivated and were clinically assessed as having a high probability of success.

Read the entire article at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/07/30/sexual-reorientation-therapy-not-unethical-column/2601159/

Befriending Those With Same-Sex Attraction: One Celibate Man’s View

by   within Culture, Marriage    Witherspoon Institute - Public     April 30th, 2014

My purpose here is to appeal particularly to heterosexual men who might be willing to take up a challenge they may never have imagined before: authentically befriending someone from my background. Truth be told, you probably already are friends with some of us—you just do not realize it. They may not have told you, or you may not have guessed. But they are there, or somewhere nearby. Today, I am asking you to listen to an SSA man who may yearn for your presence in his life more than you know.

Many people have strong opinions on what causes same-sex attraction, and on the legal and moral solutions to its existence. But far fewer of these people seem to have the ability or the desire to reach out to those of us with SSA in friendship or to help integrate us into local communities. We from the SSA world need you.

Can Sexual Preference Change With Age?

Research shows attraction can be fluid when love is involved

by Dr. Pepper Schwartz, AARP,  June 13, 2014 

Sometimes a person's life undergoes such a radical transformation that the change was inconceivable before it occurred. One such gobsmacking event happens when you unexpectedly fall in love with someone who never would have pinged your "relationship radar" before. If a homosexual (or heterosexual) thought has never crossed your mind, for example, it can be doubly astonishing when —wham! — you suddenly find yourself attracted to someone of an entirely new gender.

That may sound unlikely, but as researchers are discovering, a person's sexual orientation is not carved in stone. In her influential book Sexual Fluidity, psychology professor Lisa M. Diamond chronicled her research on 80 nonheterosexual women over a period of 10 years. During that time, Diamond discovered, a significant number of the women had reported changing their sexual orientation. The most frequent cause for the U-turn? The "switchers" had fallen in love with a member of the opposite sex.
These women were not unhappy being lesbians, but love, it seems, really can conquer all — including a person's lifelong sexual orientation up to the moment when she falls hard for someone of a previously ignored gender.
The research on men shows somewhat less flexibility. But Diamond and other researchers have compiled numerous case studies of gay men who spent years feeling (and acting) fully and comfortably homosexual, only then to fall unexpectedly in love with a heterosexual woman.
Recently, I interviewed two people who went through this sexual upheaval late in life themselves. Both said they had never even considered falling in love with someone of the same — or opposite — gender until they reached their 50s or 60s. Only at that relatively late stage in life did they undergo startling 180-degree turns in their sexual orientation. (While the facts of each case are accurate, I've used pseudonyms at the subjects' request.)

Read the entire article at: http://www.aarp.org/home-family/sex-intimacy/info-2014/gay-lesbian-sexual-preference-schwartz.html

Seven Things I Wish My Pastor Knew About My Homosexuality

by  
within Marriage
 

May I make two requests? Love me, but remember that you cannot be more merciful than God. It isn’t mercy to affirm same-sex acts as good. Don’t compromise truth; help me to live in harmony with it.
Over thirty years have passed since same-sex attraction rushed up from deep within my twelve-year-old frame. This attraction was unbidden and unwanted, yet simultaneously forceful and compelling.
As a Christian, the conflict between my sexuality and my faith would become the deepest and most intense of my life. Now in my forties, I’ve gone from being closeted to openly lesbian to celibate to heterosexually married. The fact that I need to qualify my marital union as a heterosexual one reveals how much the cultural landscape has changed in that time—just as much as my own personal landscape has, though in very different ways.
During my upbringing, I heard a few fiery sermons on homosexuality. These days, I hear declarations of love instead. They make me shout for joy. Amen! It always should have been so! At the same time, however, many pastors have begun accompanying this love with an eschewal of Biblical sexual morality as oppressive, unreasonable, or unkind. Hence, loving homosexual persons also comes to entail affirming and encouraging them in same-sex sexual relationships and behaviors.
Although I appreciate the desire to act in love, this isn’t the genuine love that people like me need. Love me better than that! Thomas Aquinas scholar Josef Pieper put it this way:
love is not synonymous with undifferentiated approval of everything the beloved person thinks and does in real life. . . . [nor is it] the wish for the beloved to feel good always and in every situation and for him to be spared experiencing pain or grief in all circumstances. “Mere ‘kindness’ which tolerates anything except [the beloved’s] suffering” has nothing to do with real love. . . . No lover can look on easily when he sees the one he loves preferring convenience to the good.
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)