Christian Post report– A New Jersey judge hearing a lawsuit made against a sexual orientation change therapy group has decided to bar the testimony of experts who consider homosexuality a mental disorder.

State Superior Court Judge Peter F. Bariso Jr. ruled last week that Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) could not bring certain experts in due to their position that homosexuality should still be considered a mental illness.

“The overwhelming weight of scientific authority concludes that homosexuality is not a disorder or abnormal. The universal acceptance of that scientific conclusion – save for outliers such as JONAH – requires that any expert opinions to the contrary must be barred,” wrote Bariso.

“No doubt, general acceptance within the scientific community is not an end in itself … Nevertheless, general acceptance constitutes strong – some might say conclusive – indicia of whether a sufficient level of reliability has been achieved.”

JONAH is being represented by the group Rancho Santa Fe, California-based legal group the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund.

Charles S. LiMandri, president and chief counsel at the Defense Fund, told The Christian Post that he was “disappointed” with the decision and felt that it could provide “great grounds for an appeal” if they lose at that court level.

LiMandri also told CP that despite Bariso’s decision on the experts, the judge left intact a “religious liberty defense” for JONAH that could undermine the plaintiff’s case.

“Whatever statements that they made regarding homosexuality being disordered was in the context of them being a religious ministry,” said LiMandri.

“The two founders are both devout Jews and they founded an organization based on the Torah … The judge left that defense intact and we believe that it will be clear to the jury.”

Sometimes called “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy,” sexual orientation change therapy seeks to change the sexual preferences of a given patient from homosexual to heterosexual.

In November of 2012, the SPLC filed a lawsuit against JONAH on behalf of four men and two parents charging that the SOCE therapy group was guilty of fraud.

According to its website, SPLC described Michael Ferguson, et al., v. JONAH, et al. as a “first of its kind” lawsuit against the conversion therapy provider.

“Customers of JONAH’s services typically paid a minimum of $100 for weekly individual counseling sessions and another $60 for group therapy sessions,” claimed SPLC.

“The lawsuit describes sessions that involved clients undressing in front of a mirror and even a group session where young men were instructed to remove their clothing and stand naked in a circle with the counselor … who was also undressed.”

The SPLC suit claims JONAH is in violation of New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act, specifically the measure regarding “ascertainable loss” regarding the therapy procedure.

Last June, Judge Bariso ruled that JONAH could be found liable for the costs accrued by the plaintiffs, prompting the case to go forward.

As the legal proceedings continue, New Jersey passed a law barring psychiatrists from performing conversion therapy on minors.

Signed into law by Governor Chris Christie, New Jersey joined California and later the District of Columbia as the three regions in the U.S. that ban conversion therapy for minors.

Regarding Bariso’s recent decision to bar experts who believe homosexuality is a disorder, SPLC deputy legal director David Dinielli stated that this was “a major development.”

“Conversion therapy lacks any such basis and its most prominent proponents – including Joseph Nicolosi – hold views that are so discredited that the supposed ‘experts’ are not even permitted to testify in a court of law,” continued Dinielli.

“Proponents of this bogus therapy lack any valid basis for their opinions promoting the abusive practice, yet they continue to scam vulnerable gay people and inflict significant, long-term psychological harm.”

LiMandri of the Defense Fund told CP that he believed “the jury is going to see through” the plaintiff’s argument against JONAH.

“No issue was decided that my clients had committed consumer fraud. The judge will leave it up to the jury to decide,” said LiMandri, who added that JONAH’s services were “free of charge.”

“There’s been no finding of fault on the part of anyone and I don’t believe there will be a finding of fault on the part of anyone.”

Michael Ferguson, et al., v. JONAH, et al. will go before a jury on June 1.

Source: Christian Post

Christian Post report– The largest study so far on gay parenting, published this month, shows that children do best when raised by their mom and dad. While the U.S. Supreme Court has already signaled a willingness to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions for every state, it has also demonstrated a concern for how their decision will affect children.

The study, “Emotional Problems among Children with Same-Sex Parents: Difference by Definition,” was conducted by sociologist Donald Sullins and published in the February issue of the British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Science.

Using several different data sets, including some from the U.S. government, Sullins compiled a representative sample of 207,007 children, including 512 with same-sex parents.

Eight of 12 psychometric measures used in the study showed that children with same-sex parents experienced more distress than children of opposite-sex parents. The results were “clear, statistically significant,” and “of substantial magnitude,” after controlling for age, sex, race, education and income. For four of the measures of emotional and behavioral problems, children raised by same-sex parents were at least twice as likely to experience difficulties compared to children raised by opposite-sex parents.

Supporters of same-sex parenting might argue that the results are due to discrimination against gays, or that the children of the same-sex parents were likely adopted and were experiencing the same difficulties as all adopted children. The data, however, does not support these hypotheses.

The children of same-sex parents were not more likely to get picked on and bullied. In fact, contrary to conventional wisdom, they were slightly less likely to be picked on and bullied than the children of opposite-sex parents, though the difference was within the margin of error.

Additionally, most of the children of same-sex parents in the sample had a biological connection to at least one of the parents, and overall the children of same-sex parents fared worse than the children of other family arrangements that were not opposite-sex biological, such as single parents, step-parents and unmarried co-habiting parents.

Adopted children were at higher risk of emotional problems overall, but the risk was twice as high for same-sex adoptive parents as opposite-sex adoptive parents. However, the author cautioned against drawing conclusions from this result because there were few adopted children in the sample.

Sullins did find, though, that a biological parent-child connection helped explain the differences between same-sex and opposite-sex parents. Since two women or two men are incapable of having a child together, at least one parent will not be a biological parent. Opposite-sex households, on the other hand, can have both biological parents, one biological parent or no biological parent.

When controlling for a biological connection (along with the other control variables), there was no difference between children of same-sex parents and children in other family arrangements where both biological parents were present. This means that the connection with both biological parents is, in a sense, an explanatory variable for the health and well-being of children, even though it technically cannot be called an explanatory variable because it is assumed in the definition of same-sex parenting (all same-sex parents exclude at least one biological parent by design).

“The reduced risk of child emotional problems with opposite-sex married parents compared to same-sex parents,” Sullins concluded, “is explained almost entirely by the fact that married opposite-sex parents tend to raise their own joint biological offspring, while same-sex parents never do this. The primary benefit of marriage for children, therefore, may not be that it tends to present them with improved parents (more stable, financially affluent, etc., although it does do this), but that it presents them with their own parents.”

Same-sex parenting is central to the current public policy debate over gay marriage. While gay marriage supporters argue the debate is over equality, traditional marriage supporters argue it is about the rights of children. While many relationships of various number and gender composition can have positive personal and social goods, the only relationship that government has an interest in recognizing is marriage because of its connection to the raising of children, the argument goes. Understanding which parenting arrangement is best for children is, therefore, important for this argument.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the likely swing vote in this Summer’s Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, has already signaled that the well-being of children is an important consideration.

“There are some 40,000 children in California … that live with same-sex parents, and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don’t you think?” he said during oral arguments for a previous gay marriage case.

There have been previous studies showing either there is no difference between same-sex and opposite-sex parents, or that gay parents actually make better parents. Those studies, however, had numerous methodological issues, such as using small, non-probability samples, or measuring the well-being of the children by asking the parents.

In discussing the public policy implications of his study, Sullins wrote, “Whether or not same-sex families attain the legal right, as opposite-sex couples now have, to solemnize their relationship in civil marriage, the two family forms will continue to have fundamentally different, even contrasting, effects on the biological component of child well-being, to the relative detriment of children in same-sex families. Functionally, opposite-sex marriage is a social practice that, as much as possible, ensures to children the joint care of both biological parents, with the attendant benefits that brings; same-sex marriage ensures the opposite.”

Source: Christian Post