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Tomorrow, the Public Assembly Committee in California will begin reviewing an antiquated 1950's law that requires doctors to look into the "causes and cures for homosexuality."
The law came into being after a repeat sex offender raped and murdered a California woman. The law, which is still in effect, requires doctors to seek information that would add to the scientific data on sexual psychopaths. At the time the law came into effect homosexuality was still on the list of psychological disorders which brought gay and lesbian persons into the picture because they were considered to have a mental disorder.
Now the California law is considered outdated and sponsors have lobbied for it's removal. This morning on the news, Richard Cohen, a psychiatrist and leader in the "Gay cure" movement, is making the rounds saying the law has a valid place in helping cure homosexuals.
Cohen has been in trouble with various medical associations in the past for his absurd notions of curing gay men and women. His own claims that being molested as a child turned him gay and caused him years of anguish until he found a cure are just as absurd. There will be other comments posted online, this is all I could find today from Slate Magazine after watching Cohen's comments on CNN News:
"Tomorrow, California’s Public Assembly Committee will vote on whether to abolish a law that requires doctors look into “the causes and cures of homosexuality.” The law, Welfare and Institutions Code Section 8050, was established in April of 1950 following a repeat sex offender’s rape and murder of a California woman.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the antiquated law, which “defined the role of science in solving the ‘sexual psychopath’ problem,” affected gay men and women because “in 1950, homosexuality remained, officially, a mental disorder.”
As Slate points out, “There was no connection between the crime and homosexuality at all. Even so, before the dust had settled, well-meaning California legislators passed a law that not only required health officials to seek ‘the causes and cures of homosexuality’ but likened people who are gay to child molesters.”
Bonnie Lowenthal, the Assemblywoman (and author of the Times piece) who’s spearheading the repeal, told the Long Beach Press-Telegram, “Our codes are constantly updated, and the fact this language has survived this long is pretty amazing. We need to blot it out and make it clear we're moving forward as a society, not backward.”
I'm sure Brody will find us more. I'd settle for Richard Cohen's obituary.
[Updated on: Tue, 06 April 2010 15:11]
Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. (Sir Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
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... routine. I was all of about age-16, or thereabouts, at the time.
A Dr. Enright (I can't for the life of me recall his First-name or Initial) at the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital (a then leader in the diagnosis and treatment of Mental Disorders, now known as The E. L. Ruddy Medical Centre, and named for a prominent doctor from the period, and local celebrity, whose family founded the world-wide Ruddy Electric Corporation, and notably "Billboard" fame), was a diamond-in-the-rough, and light years ahead of his contemporaries. I had been referred to him at my father's behest, and as a personal favour to him, Dr. Enright took me on as a client.
As I've mentioned before, in my teens I was simply a walking "Columbine" waiting to happen, and were I not compelled to seek treatment for anger management issues, I would likely have made the front-page of the newspaper. As a direct result of tests his associates had undertaken, my homosexuality became known, and of course don't you just know it, but that seemed to be the only "issue" those same associates appeared to want to delve into. Dr. Enright, God bless his enlightened soul, quickly nipped that concept in the bud, and instead focused on what were really the issues that troubled me.
A corner on the then workings of those experimentally involved in treating "Homosexuality as a disorder" was, albeit ever so briefly, lifted and damn if it didn't frighten the living bejesus out of me. Fortunately, thanks to the good graces, and auspices, of Dr. Enright those quacks never got their hot little mitts on me; but, had circumstances been different, and had I not been ever so fortunate to have been placed in Dr. Enright's care, I shudder to think of my then prospects, and its' likely outcome.
There was one positive side-effect from that whole experience; that being, my coming away from each and every one or their one-hour sessions, realizing I really, and truly, was saner than they were!
It would be nearly 30-years later that I would again turn to Dr. Enright (my confidence in him because of his handling of my situation as a teen), asking his advise regarding the suggested diagnosis and potential treatment for my Mother's apparently emerging Alzheimer's Disease.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Wed, 07 April 2010 05:10]
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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Aussie
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Really getting into it |
Registered: August 2006
Messages: 475
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Warren you say
"There was one positive side-effect from that whole experience; that being, my coming away from each and every one or their one-hour sessions, realizing I really, and truly, was saner than they were!"
I guess you will subscribe to the notion that
Psychiatry is the treatment of people who don't need it by those who do.
Aussie 
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Warren, all it takes is one intelligent being to change a life. Your Dr. Enright chose to take the correct path and work with you, for that you can be thankful.
In any scientific endevor, and psychiatry is nothing but a strange little piece of medical science, it is only too easy to label something without a mind to investigation. Nothing so complicated as a human life can be so easily stamped with a label. But as a society we persist in seeking solutions from unknown doctors that may do more harm than good.
Given the circumstances of a "Dr. Jones," a married woman, 42 years of age. She was in the psychiatric field working with sexual offenders. In this case it was a young man of 23-24 who had been caught inside the home of a middle aged lady "just to watch her sleep" he said. She awoke to find him masturbating and called the police.
They had no problem finding him, he lived next door. He was convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison where he met "Dr. Jones". The young man was in treatment with her for two years, private sessions until his release. That's when she divorced her husband and the young man moved in with her. He liked older women, she liked younger men, a tribute to a bad doctor.
I don't think either of them solved their problems, they just forged a solution, albeit temporary I am sure.
Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. (Sir Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
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... its' successful resolution lay less with Dr. Enright's choosing to take the "right" path (if there ever is such a thing), and more out of his then realization that I, at worst, was actually very comfortable with my homosexuality, and at best, I knew fully well just who I was, where I came from, where I was going, how I was going to get there, and what it was I was going to do once I had arrived.
His acceptance of my apparent comfort level with my homosexuality, made the whole "Homosexual" thingie a non-starter. It was not why I was there. His associates, on the other hand were not as accepting, and for some months tried to force their agenda both upon him and on me. That he prevailed, is a testament to the man, and that man alone.
Nothing in the foundation of my "being homosexual" was the root cause of my anger. I was there because of my father's legacy of abusive alcoholism, and its' enduring impact on our family. I still remembered my older brother crawling in and out of our bedroom window in order to avoid our father and not become a "whipping-post" for another of his drunken excesses; and, the welts I routinely saw across my brother's shoulders, back, buttocks and legs after just such encounter. I remembered all too well, the four marriages to one another, and the three divorces, my parents, and by extension my brother and I, suffered through because of our father's refusal to get treatment. I remembered my mother's injuries at the hands of my father whilst in the midst one of his seemingly, never-ending, fugues; and, of my mother, brother and I, stealing away into the night what seemed to be time and time again, only to set up shop in some decrepit hovel until my mother could get her legs again and begin to put hers, and ours, life back together.
To my father's credit, after the fourth marriage, he never again took a drink; but, that neither mitigated his prior behaviour, nor assuaged the guilt I would feel, and likely too my brother felt, at mine and his failure to help our mother. Fortuitously, I had been far too young, only age-10 when the fourth marriage took place, to have myself become a victim of my father's violence; but, I could never forget the potential for his anger, nor the anger itself, and it's as vivid today in my mind as it was 50 years ago, and it was my fear of that anger, and its' consequences that fueled my own anger, and rage.
To fully understand Dr. Enright's pro-active (and seemingly enlightened) response to my situation one has to realize that I'm speaking about the early 1960's in Canada. Medical professionals, like those within the Justice field, were not immune to shifts then taking place within the fabric of our society. It's traditions and mores were being sorely tested at each turn, this most apparent within the large urban centres of the country; but, none-the-less for it, felt in even the smallest of our communities. Criminally abusive alcoholism was only just being examined as a Mental Disorder, with Spousal Abuse not quite yet on the collective radar of both the Medical and Justice professionals, and would not be so for another 15-years. Homosexuality had been tested, and retested, out of the wazoo, with it then being considered to be rather benign in the larger schemata of disturbing Mental Disorders, if in fact it was a Mental Disorder at all. By late 1965, Canada was in the final preparations for hosting "expo'67" at Montréal, the first, ever, "Universal and International Exposition" to be held outside of Europe. Lavish preparations were being planned, and coming to fruition all across the land, regarding our nation's forthcoming Centennial Celebrations, at the heart of which was to be the billion dollar extravaganza in Montréal. The eyes of the World were going to, for the first time, be cast wholly in our direction. Federal authorities wanted nothing to denigrate, or otherwise detract from, the view we wanted to project to the World. No-one wanted a front-page story featuring some visitor to Canada during it's major propaganda triumph, least of if it should focus on that visitor's social or sexual or drinking proclivities. Consequently, changes were considered, and enacted, respecting the Criminality of Homosexual behavior, National Age-of-consent standards, Alcohol Dispensing and Handling, Assembly Law, and a myriad other Statues, whether they be Federal, Provincial or Municipal, all of them affecting privileges which might then have been contrary to those enjoyed by the very visitors we wanted to welcome. The first, and most significant changes to the Criminal Code of Canada respecting Homosexuality almost didn't make it in time, with the decriminalization of Homosexuality being passed by Federal Parliament in March of 1967, just a few scant weeks short of the opening of the World's Fair at Montreal. It would be another 5-years before Homosexuality was entirely declassified under our Federal Law, and another 10-years before the nation's Justice profession would come to grips with that reality.
I've written about my experiences at "expo'67" and its' enduring effect on my life elsewhere here at APOS, but, what those ruminations of mine don't detail is the "collective sigh of relief" felt by the nation's Homosexual community and the sense of freedom, a release from shackles as it were, that we were experiencing for the first time in our lives. A feeling Dr. Enright rightly perceived that I already felt, and enjoyed, several years earlier.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Wed, 07 April 2010 20:17]
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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