California was the first state to pass an anti-gay therapy law. The homosexual community has pushed hard to normalize homosexual behavior. And it’s not just homosexuality that they believe is part of a person’s nature. Included in the prohibition to counsel people out of homosexual behavior are bisexuality and transgenderism that includes hormonal therapy and sex organ reassignment surgery, thus, LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender).

Now New Jersey and New York are considering passing a similar law making it illegal for counselors to suggest that homosexuality and other sex acts are not fixed.

The laws would only apply to minors. This means that parents would be banned from taking a child who has desires to engage in homosexual behavior to a licensed therapist for counseling. The assumption is that acted on homosexual thoughts are fixed. If a young person has sexual desires to engage in sex with someone of the same sex, then that is a fixed “orientation” and cannot change.

These states would make it a crime to suggest that sexual desires do not have to be acted on. This is really the issue and a crime by the State.

We all grow up with desires to do things that we shouldn’t. How many young people have the desire to strike out at someone in a violent way? Almost every child has had the desire to steal, damage property, drink excessively, take drugs, or act on numerous desires. Over time they learn not to act on every desire that comes into their mind.

We hear stories of teenagers who rape and kill. What should we think of teenage pedophiles? These, too, are desires and feelings. Is it morally acceptable for people to act on them?

Are these all “orientations” that are “fixed”? Why just homosexuality? Why can’t the case be made that whatever sexual thought comes into a person’s head that desire is by its very nature is an orientation that needs to be protected by the law?

A person can have sexual thoughts that he or she never acts on. A man may want to commit adultery, but he knows it’s immoral. The desire is there, like the desire for an alcoholic drink, but he doesn’t act on it. That desire may be with him for the rest of his life.

A person may want to steal in order to get ahead financially, but he knows it’s immoral to do so. Is that an “orientation” that should be protected by law?

What if a 14-year-old boy has a constant desire to engage in sex with a 12-year-old? Should this be considered an “orientation”?

There are people who have engaged in homosexuality for a long time and who no longer do so. The desire is still there, like we all have desire to do things, but it’s not acted on.

The latest propaganda piece is “former Exodus International chairman and conversion therapy ‘success story’ John Paulk.” Paulk, as reported at Salon.com, “has written a formal statement of apology for his role in promoting Focus on the Family’s ‘ex-gay’ ministry and for any harm his actions may have done to other gays and lesbians.”

Paulk was married to former lesbian Anne. While her husband has returned to the homosexual lifestyle, she hasn’t.

Then there’s the story of Rosaria Champagne Butterfield who was a committed lesbian radical.

“In 1999, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was a tenured English professor at Syracuse University, a skeptic of all things Christianity, and in a committed lesbian relationship. Her academic specialty was Queer Theory, a postmodern form of gay and lesbian studies.

“Today Butterfield is a mother of four, a homemaker, and wife of a Presbyterian pastor named Kent. They live in Durham, North Carolina.”

You can read more about her remarkable story in her book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith.

Sinful desires are always with us. Acting on them is the issue. Although Rosaria is a married mother, she “says her former life ‘lurks in the edges of my heart, shiny and still like a knife.’” And so it is with all of us.