By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

President Barack Obama has issued a declaration on human sexuality and what constitutes moral and mental health for the nation. He is warning Christian parents that the federal government wants their kids.

This is not how the story is being reported, however. For example, a story in Politico carries the headline, “Barack Obama denounces ‘conversion therapies’ for gays,” with the words “conversion therapies” in quotes, as if to suggest there’s some doubt that homosexuals can return to being straight. This is all too typical of the mentality that grips the major media and is designed to suggest that homosexuality is somehow natural and cannot be changed. But honest journalism, which is virtually non-existent when covering homosexuality, would take a different approach to the topic.

As Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth notes, there are plenty of former homosexuals. Has the Politico reporter Louis Nelson ever met or reported on them? We can’t find any record of that. So if the magazine doesn’t report on them, they must not exist. This is not journalism but cheerleading for Obama and the gay rights cause. It’s also a disservice to the parents of young people who need help and have a right to information about both sides of the story.

Rich Wyler, founder and director of the group, People Can Change, does not exist in a world where the liberal media and the gay rights movement become one and the same. He says that before he found sexual-orientation change therapy in the 1990s, “I was so conflicted over unwanted same-sex attractions that I was suicidal and self-destructive.” He goes on, “Sexual-reorientation therapy saved my life. I was in my 30s; I only wish I’d found this kind of help as a teenager or young adult. It could have saved me years of heartbreak and confusion.”

The other side of the story would include reporting that Obama’s political proclamation in favor of outlawing sexual-orientation change therapy not only constitutes crass exploitation of the terrible suicide of a mixed-up young person named Joshua Alcorn but serves as an indictment of his Christian parents. Joshua was confused about his sexuality and had begun referring to himself as a girl, Leelah. The parents had tried to get help for the troubled 17-year-old before he committed suicide.

The implication of the Politico-style reporting on this topic is that being “homosexual and transgender” is a fact of life that cannot be changed. That’s false. But the media just can’t bring themselves to report the facts.

Politico says the parents in this case found religious therapists who “attempted to convert her [Leelah] back into a boy.” This, too, is false. The child was a boy. Politico calls him “a transgender girl,” another falsehood.

In essence, Obama is proposing to ban parents, on a national basis, from seeking help for their children when they go through confusing times or have sexual problems. This is the totalitarian mind-set of the gay rights movement and its supporters.

This is not just a discussion about media bias. It’s important we understand what’s happening here. Obama’s statement, delivered by Valerie Jarrett on his behalf, is a declaration of war on parents, especially Christian parents who object to the government sanctioning and promoting homosexuality as another “lifestyle.”

From Obama’s perspective, these parents stand in the way of creating an army of “LGBT” young people who will forever be grateful to the President for standing up for their “rights.” Like the dope smokers in Colorado, participating in what Obama calls an “experiment,” these young people constitute another Democratic Party constituency. Obama doesn’t seem concerned, however, about the consequences of their immoral behavior. After all, he was a heavy dope smoker and look what happened to him and where he ended up.

Although Obama’s statement on human sexuality was “not accompanied by any concrete statements of policy,” as Politico put it, two states, California and New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia, have banned parents from having a role in raising their children in this area of human sexuality. Politico seems to be begging the President to introduce national legislation to put parents in their place. Perhaps that’s the next step.

Like the editors at Politico, Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler (NY) also seems to think Obama knows best. Nadler issued a statement declaring, “I believe that licensed mental health professionals should be prohibited from engaging in these deceptive and damaging practices.” So the politicians, including Obama, are going to decide what constitutes “mental health.” This is reminiscent of the approach taken by the USSR’s psychiatric hospitals. Perhaps political dissidents on the issue of homosexuality in the United States will be assigned to the kind of mental hospitals the communists ran in the old Soviet Union.

In other words, a form of “conversion therapy” will be retained, but used on those who resist the homosexual movement’s demands for our children. Believers in the old-fashioned values of one man and one woman marriage will be “re-educated,” or else.

Citing Obama’s declaration on the correct state of mental health, Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center has declared, “Our fight for LGBT equality has just received a major boost.” This well-funded leftist group is using the legal system to terrorize groups like JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing) from helping homosexuals escape the behavior that puts their mental and physical health in danger.

Cohen declared, “While President Obama has done the nation a great service by speaking out, he hasn’t yet introduced any new policy initiatives. That’s why our work is so important. We’re going to trial [against JONAH] in New Jersey this summer, and we’ll continue doing everything we can to stop the destructive use of conversion therapy across the country.”

JONAH, with the help of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, is fighting back and has affirmed, “We continue our defense of the right of individuals to freely choose the help they believe will allow them to live their lives consistent with their personal and religious beliefs.”

As I noted in a recent column, a legal brief before the Supreme Court in a same-sex marriage case argues that a ruling against traditional values could result in websites offering information about withdrawing from homosexual behavior being outlawed as “hate speech.”

Not only are the rights to freedom of the press and religion now at risk, parental rights are also in jeopardy. We are now seeing Obama and the progressives, including the homosexual movement, making a raw power grab for our kids. The parents are being labeled as the lunatics.

Yet while the Obama administration opposes counseling for young people who may want to change their sexual feelings from homosexual to heterosexual, they have no problem paying for traitor Bradley Manning to physically “change” from being a “he” to a “she.” It is reported that the Army has agreed to pay for hormone treatments, makeup, and female underwear for Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence for espionage and other charges, so he can become “Chelsea.”

Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America is getting downright weird. It appears to be a one-way street away from our Judeo-Christian values. Like so many other policies pursued by this President, it’s difficult to see how this one can do anything but weaken the United States.