Make no mistake: conversion therapy is not about 'praying away the gay.' It's an emotional torture against our most innocent citizens: our children.
Interpretation
Conversion therapy is a harmful practice that targets children's identities, claiming to change their sexual orientation.
Gavin Newsom's quote emphasizes the damaging nature of conversion therapy, which is often disguised as a form of religious or emotional intervention. It highlights the ethical concerns surrounding this practice, particularly its impact on children, who are vulnerable and deserve protection from such emotional manipulation and harm.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about LGBTQ+ rights.
If you distill the essence of everything, what life is about, every single one of us is given a short moment in time on this planet, and we all have one universal need and desire, and that is to be loved and to love. And to deny that for your own political expediency, I don't want to live in that column. It ain't worth it.
Prop 8 did something that no other state in the history of this country has done. It took away the rights of people that already were legally affirmed. Imagine someone putting something on the ballot saying your wedding, your marriage is no longer valid.
Separate inherently is not equal. There's a reason why $45 million was spent against marriage equality. It's because people understand the word does have meaning. And equality comes when we accept the same notions and the same institutions for everyone, regardless of race and gender and regardless of sex orientation.
I was born of heterosexual parents. I was taught by heterosexual teachers in a fiercely heterosexual society. Television ads and newspaper ads β fiercely heterosexual. A society that puts down homosexuality. And why am I a homosexual if I'm affected by role models? I should have been a heterosexual. And no offense meant, but if teachers are going to affect you as role models, there'd be a lot of nuns running around the streets today.
It's the quality of your relationships that matters.
Part of forgiving people is releasing them from our own agendas.
That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth.
In a good relationship, people get angry, but in a very different way. The Marriage Masters see a problem a bit like a soccer ball. They kick it around. It's 'our' problem.
No one ever saw all of him. It took me nearly four decades to allow my father his shadows, his reserve, to sit silently with him and not clamor for something more.
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