http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6zPh97qYd4
This first time I saw this article was in Sociology class and I was so surprised! As soon as i saw it I thought of Gender class and thought it would be a great topic to discuss in class. I found this video very interesting and surprising. I thought it was pretty cool how these twins were so different and how Adam was so cool about liking girl things and even having his nails painted. Later on in life I am sure that he will change his gender. I also think it is so interseting that the study about body language on telling if someone was straight or gay was true.
This CBS 60 minute clip is about Childhood Gender Nonconformity, which is when a child's behavior and interests are of the opposite sex. It shows to twins that are completely different and how they have total opposite interests. This also talks about how Sociologists believe homosexuality is nature not nurture. Nature is what a person is born with where as nurture is what a person grows up learning. Later on in this video clip they do a study on gay and straight people and how apparently gay and straight people move differently and have different body language. They say that it is not true most of the time but on average it is. After they have a study on the voices of these people and how they talk.
Do you believe that homosexuality is nurture or nature?
Do you believe that you can tell someone is homosexual by their body language and the way they speak?
California Is First State to Ban Gay ‘Cure’ for Minors
California has become the first state to ban the use for minors of
disputed therapies to “overcome” homosexuality, a step hailed by gay
rights groups across the country that say the therapies have caused
dangerous emotional harm to gay and lesbian teenagers.
“This bill bans nonscientific ‘therapies’ that have driven young people to depression and suicide,” Gov. Jerry Brown
said in a statement on Saturday after he signed the bill into law.
“These practices have no basis in science or medicine, and they will now
be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.”
The law, which is to take effect on Jan. 1, states that no “mental health
provider” shall provide minors with therapy intended to change their
sexual orientation, including efforts to “change behaviors or gender
expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or
feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
The law was sponsored by State Senator Ted W. Lieu and supported by a
long list of medical and psychological societies, as well by state and
national advocates for gay rights. Also speaking up for the ban were
former patients who described emotional scars they said they were left
with after being pushed into the therapy by their parents and finding
that they could not change their sexual orientation or did not want to.
But some therapists and conservative religious leaders who promote
methods that they say can reduce homosexual desire have condemned the
new law as a violation of free choice. They say that it will harm young
people who want to fight homosexual attractions on religious or other
grounds and warn that it will lead more people to seek help from
untrained amateurs.
The use of harsh aversion techniques, like electric shock or
nausea-inducing drugs, to combat homosexual desires has largely
disappeared. But during the last three decades, some psychologists
have refined a theory of “reparative therapy,” which ties homosexual
desires to emotional wounds in early childhood and, in some cases, to
early sexual abuse.
These therapists say that with proper treatment, thousands of patients
have succeeded in reducing their homosexual attraction and in enhancing
heterosexual desire, though most therapists acknowledge that total
“cures” are rare. But their methods have come under growing attack from
gays who say the therapy has led to guilt, hopelessness and anger.
Reparative therapists, a small minority within the mental health profession, united in 1992 in the National Association for Research and Therapy on Homosexuality,
based in Encino, Calif. The group did not immediately comment on the
new California law, but its leaders have previously attacked the
legislation as based on politics, not science, and said they would
consider challenging it in court as an unjustified intrusion into
professional practice.
One licensed family therapist and member of the association, David H.
Pickup of Glendale, Calif., said in a recent interview that the ban
would cause harm to many who want and need the therapy.
“If boys have been sexually abused and homosexual feelings that are not
authentic later come up, we have to tell them no, we can’t help you,”
Mr. Pickup said.
Gay and lesbian leaders, along with major scientific groups, reject such
theories outright and say there is no scientific evidence that inner
sexual attractions can be altered.
“Reparative therapy is junk science being used to justify religious beliefs,” said Wayne Besen, the director of Truth Wins Out, a gay advocacy group.
The California law is a milestone, but only a first step, Mr. Besen
said, because the ideas in reparative therapy have been widely adopted
by church ministries and others promoting the idea that homosexual urges
can be banished.
Legislators in New Jersey and a few other states have discussed
introducing similar bills to ban the use of the therapy for minors, Mr.
Besen said.