Tag Archives: reparative therapy

Meet Our Candidates: Sean Bowie for State Senator, LD 18

Posted on by

The time to fight back — and fight forward — for reproductive justice is fast approaching. The stakes are high in this year’s state election, with candidates for governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and other races on the ballot. The Arizona primary election will be held August 28, 2018, and voters need to be registered by July 30 to cast their ballots. Reproductive health has been under attack, both nationally and statewide, but Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona has endorsed candidates who put our health and our rights first. Get to know them now in our series of “Meet Our Candidates” interviews, and make your voice heard in 2018!

[L]egislative District 18 stretches from Chandler to Ahwatukee, just south of Phoenix. It is currently represented in the state Senate by Sean Bowie, who ousted former Sen. Jeff Dial in 2016. Sen. Bowie’s win in 2016 was a victory for proponents of reproductive rights and LGBTQ equality, as his predecessor helped block access to contraception and abortion, and voted to codify discrimination based on sexual orientation into law. In contrast, Sen. Bowie has upheld the rights of women and the dignity of LGBTQ folks.

“We can work to stop bad pieces of legislation at the state level.”

For example, earlier this year Sen. Bowie introduced a bill that would have banned conversion therapy for minors in Arizona. Conversion therapy is based on the idea that someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity can be changed, and its proponents have used the imprimatur of psychology in an attempt to legitimize the psychological torture of many LGBTQ youth.

Most Arizonans oppose this practice, recognizing conversion therapy as ineffective at best — and inhumane at worst, as the practice could be complicit in the high suicide rate within the LGBTQ population. If passed, the bill would have made Arizona the 10th state in the country to outlaw this harmful and pseudoscientific practice — but the bill did not get off the ground. A shift in the Senate might give a bill like this the support it needs, however — pointing to the importance of voting in every election, including midterms.

Due to his support for reproductive justice and LGBTQ rights, Sen. Bowie has earned our endorsement. He generously took the time to answer our questions on July 9, 2018.

Since we last spoke, how has your commitment to serving Arizona grown? What has happened during that time to give you hope, and what has happened to strengthen your convictions?

I’ve really enjoyed representing my community in the state Senate these past two years. As one of 30 senators for the entire state, I can really have an impact on public policy at the state level. And because I work across the aisle in a bipartisan way, I’ve helped improve legislation, stop some bad bills, and get some good bills over the finish line. We’ve made some progress on some key areas, particularly funding for K-12 education, but we still have a way to go to get to where our state needs to be. Since the Senate is so narrowly divided, we’ve also stopped a lot of bills that would have been harmful for the state. Continue reading →

“That’s Just Your Sickness Talking”: Psychiatry, Homophobia, and the Turning Point in 1973

Posted on by

John E. Fryer, MD, dressed as Dr. H. Anonymous at the 1972 APA conference

It wasn’t his high blood pressure or high cholesterol that caught Matthew Moore by surprise when he went to his new physician earlier this year. Moore, a Southern California man in his mid-40s, described those conditions as “normal for me.” Nor was Moore, who is openly gay, shocked to see that his doctor noted his sexual orientation on his medical paperwork — until he saw the way that she noted it.

“The sickness label was used to justify discrimination, especially in employment, and especially by our own government.”

Listed as a chronic condition, Moore noticed “homosexual behavior” on his paperwork, followed by the medical code 302.0. As unsettling as the notation already was, Moore decided to research what the code meant, and he was left wondering how the diagnosis could happen today: “When I look[ed] up code 302.0 [I learned that it meant] sexual deviancy or mental illness, and that code has been removed or suggested heavily not to be used since 1973.”

“My jaw was on the floor,” Moore recounted. “At first, I kind of laughed, [and then] I thought, ‘Here’s another way that gay people are lessened and made to feel less-than,’ and then as I thought about it and as I dealt with it, it angered me,” he told a local news station.

Moore complained to his physician, and, dissatisfied with her response when she defended the diagnosis, he wrote a letter to the parent company of the Manhattan Beach office where his physician practiced medicine. Moore received a written apology and a refund of his co-pay.

Moore’s story made the news earlier this year because of how anomalous — and appalling — it was. But prior to 1973, Moore’s experience would have been almost inevitable, unless he took precautions to keep his sexual orientation as private and secret as possible.

Until a decision by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) changed the course of history 40 years ago this Sunday, on December 15, 1973, gay and lesbian people couldn’t escape the perception that their sexuality was a sickness. Continue reading →