When Your State Legislature is the Hate Group

The State of California has declared War on the Trump Administration. From the 35+ lawsuits filed by appointed Attorney General Xavier Becerra, to the repeated passage of legislation designed to neuter a free Internet, to the opposition to the national guard along our borders. A resident can infect someone with AIDS and get a slap on the wrist. If a restaurateur gives away too many straws, he could face one year in jail. If a nurse uses the wrong pronoun when addressing an elderly person, you could face jail time, too.

Since when did any state legislature become so hostile, so hateful toward liberty, common sense, and reality?

Currently, an egregious bill, AB 2943, is heading toward Governor Jerry Brown’s desk. Superficially, this bill would ban reparative therapy as an advertised service in the state of California. Eight years ago, the state legislature banned reparative therapy for minors. Now they want to treat adults like children and prevent them from seeking help for unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. Seeking help with sexual attraction and gender identity issues could look like it’s gone for good

For the record, reparative therapy is an effective treatment, one which relies on an atmosphere of trust, respect, and communication—not abuse, deprivation, or shock treatments, as distorted opposing arguments and fraudulent opponents would have the public believe. These testimonies from ex-gays and former transgenders are among many accounts affirming that people do change and restore their lives to healthy sexual preferences and identities.

With the continued push for AB 2943, however, the California State Legislature has maintained its morally decrepit war on the laws of nature and Nature’s God. Regardless of one’s libertarian or socially liberal leanings within otherwise conservative circles, families establish stable communities, especially Western Civilization, the best set of values out there to ensure liberty for all and equal opportunities for all, no matter what challenges, outcomes, or starting position in which a person finds himself. Families matter, faith matters, and so does freedom, which makes the other two possible.

If AB 2943 passes, all of that won’t matter—at least in the state of California, but no one should naively believe that the moral rot in California will stay there. MassResistance, the international pro-family group which makes a difference, has been fighting this destructive LGBT hate machine for years. For the last two months, we have directed more targeted, and vocal efforts against AB 2943, to protect therapy equality, freedom of speech, and respect for natural marriage and gender.

Our national team is battled-tested. Two years ago, we jumped into the fight against the California LGBT Hate Machine fray when law(less)makers wanted to essentially shut down every Christian college in the state of California with SB 1146. We contacted churches, Republican clubs, and non-profit organization invested in protecting the well-being of a truly liberal education, especially on Christian colleges. Legislators up and down the state heard from us. The legislation faced immense backlash, and the author withdrew its worst portions.

Today, MassResistance has followed the same process and connected with more activists to stop AB 2943. Our team in Massachusetts stopped the Bay State from banning reparative therapy for minors last month. Could we take on this menacing agenda in California, too? After visiting and calling a number of district offices, I learned that groups all over the state had been calling, sending emails, writing letters, and paying visits to the district and capitol offices of different representatives.

Then came the fateful day on the floor of the state senate. MassResistance activists had hoped that we could delay this legislation until August 31^st, thus ensuring that it would not meet the constitutional deadline for passage to the Governor. On August 16^th, State Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) announced an amendment which would permit the sale of goods but not services related to reparative therapy. Any legislation which imperils the right of individuals to seek help, aid, or counsel from a therapist remains unconstitutional. Pro-family activists have learned the hard way that amending a bad bill is not enough. Bad bills should fail and be withdrawn completely.

To listen to State Senator Scott Weiner of San Francisco defend AB 2943, an unjust intrusion into the rights of individuals, to justify trampling on the rights of hurting people to seek qualified help, was just unbelievable. A diligent, indifferent minority agenda has taken over California’s levers of power, and the rest of California is expected to tolerate it?! The bill passed on a party-line vote.

Doesn’t this fit the definition of ‘hate group’? The state legislature is targeting Christians, conservatives of all colors and backgrounds, even immigrants by granting favors and perks to illegal aliens. This is targeted bigotry. For decades, MassResistance has been unjustly smeared as a hate group because we tell the truth about homosexuality, transgenderism, and the unprecedented, inevitable assaults. My friends and I have been unfairly targeted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, itself a hate group recently forced to pay a huge indemnity for smearing a reformist Muslim as an “Anti-Muslim Extremist.”

Let’s call out the truth as we see it. Any state legislature which declares war on the natural rights of its citizens, which disregards the oath of office to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, has become the hate group. More Californians need to shout “Enough!”, but still so many remain uninformed.

Yet this unconscionable overreach may give way to a silver lining. Should California’s unrequited Anti-Trumpism push Governor Brown to sign this travesty into law, multiple lawsuits will emerge. This legal challenge will go all the way to the Supreme Court, and based on the concurring opinions in NIFLA vs. Becerra, a (growing) majority of conservative justices will strike down this law and all reparative therapy bans across the country.

California Democrats may win a battle, but they will lose the war. Like the Southern Poverty Law Center and other anti-conservative smear machines, the California State Legislature’s hatred of targeted groups will come to an end.