Pants on fire, Snopes.
One cannot be prejudiced against a behavior. One may certainly be prejudiced against the people who engage in it, and no rational person would maintain that insults or slander against gay people is either reasonable or itself decent behavior. It is certainly not civil behavior. But to ethically disapprove of any sexual practice is merely a matter of personal values. As an opinion, it may be unpopular. It may be quirky. But it cannot be fairly called prejudice or equated with bigotry against a race or an ethnic group or a religion or even people of homosexual orientation. Leaving aside the violence done to the First Amendment by legally restricting even actually bigotted speech- the impossibility of maintaining any viable principle of freedom of speech in the long term under "hate-speech" laws such as exist in Canada, the UK, and other Western democracies aside- to outlaw an ethical teaching clearly expressed by most Testaments and professed "always, everywhere, and by all" by Christians for two thousand years would clearly do violence to any pretence that a society respects freedom of religion.
There is a bill in the California Assembly with the commendable purpose of outlawing conversion therapy, which seeks to change one's sexual orientation. It doesn't work. It does a great deal of psychic harm to those who are subjected to it. It is something quite distinct from advocating celibacy for people of homosexual orientation, especially those who subscribe to a religion such as Christianity which, despite deviations by several liberal religious groups in recent years, has always and pretty much unanimously taught that it is a sin. And the social Left- including Snopes, a "fact-checking" website whose reputation for unbiased and objective analysis of various statements and claims is somewhat spotted- is quick to dismiss warnings that the bill could be used to prosecute pastors and churches who do nothing more or less than teach what Christianity has taught since its inception concerning sexual behavior between individuals of the same gender.
As Dr. Robert Gagnon points out in an article in The Federalist on the Snopes claim and the California bill in general, to dismiss claims that the Bible itself could potentially be found to be in violation of California Bill AB-2943 because neither the Bible nor Christianity are specifically mentioned in the bill is not only disingenuous but laughable. Whether something is specifically mentioned in a law is irrelevant; the question is whether the bill is worded broadly enough to be reasonably understood to include it. And there can be no question upon a fair reading of the bill that it can be so interpreted with regard to the Bible and traditional Christian teaching regarding homosexuality.
There is no religious exemption. And no, the prohibition is not limited to mental health professionals. The bill as worded would be an inadmissible infringement on free speech in any case, but more to the point it would also call the legality of traditional Christian preaching and teaching on the subject into question.
Mind you, there is no chance of such an application of the bill, should it become law, being found constitutional- at least as regards the Bible. But as Dr. Gagnon observes,
Given the track record of zealous LGBTQ advocacy in this country, where coercive affirmations of “gay marriage” have been found in the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) that grants full citizenship rights to ex-slaves and in interpreting the Title IX ban of “sex discrimination” in schools and colleges (1972) to include discrimination based on homosexual practice and transgender identity, “unclear” means: We will use this law against you.
The solution is simple: rewrite the bill. It should not only be possible but easy to draft a substitute which would outlaw conversion therapy without restricting free speech or the right of churches to teach and preach what Christianity has always taught and preached concerning homosexual behavior. It should also be possible to word it in such a way to distinguish between the expression of an opinion and the abuse of an explicitly therapeutic relationship to browbeat someone into changing a characteristic which probably cannot be changed.
But the bill as it stands is merely one more step in the largely successful campaign by the social Left to confuse the distinction between bias against individuals of homosexual orientation and ethical disapproval of homosexual behavior. It is not necessary that one agree with that disapproval, or even to approve of it, to see that the distinction is not only a valid one but one which must be maintained not only if the First Amendment is going to be preserved, but if the English language is to be seen as having any integrity whatsoever when it comes to matters of sexual orientation.
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