CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman is no stranger to the CNS culture of stenography. Thus, he kicks off an April 27 article — headlined “Liberty Counsel: CA Bill Against Gay Conversion Could Ban Christian Books, Speech” — with some dedicated stenography:
The California House recently passed legislation (AB 2943) that says “advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual” is a fraudulaent business practice, and if it passes in the Senate and becomes law, it could result in certain books, speakers, and conferences being banned, including the Bible, said Mat Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel.
The bill “is so broad that it bans books, printed materials and advertisements that provide information that a person facing unwanted same-sex attractions or gender confusion can change,” said Staver. “[It] is a dramatic infringement on First Amendment rights and is a classic viewpoint discrimination. It declares certain kinds of speech as consumer fraud.”
Interestingly, Chapman actually includes alternative views that shoot down Liberty Counsel’s alarmism; several paragraphs later, he quotes the head of the group Save California as saying that it is “not likely” that the bill would ban the Bible. Yet the fact that the article contains differing views is not reflected in the headline.
Chapman never bothers to seek out the sponsor of the bill, Evan Low, who has specifically stated that the bill does not ban book sales, let alone that of the Bible.
Interestingly, while Chapman labels a California assemblyman who supports the bill as a “liberal Democrat” and the Human Rights Campaign, which also supports the bill, as “a pro-homosexuality advocacy group,” he does not provide any ideological labels for Liberty Counsel and Save California — both of which are right-wing anti-LGBT groups.
Chapman did go on to try and rebut the HRC:
The HRC also claimed that there is no “credible evidence” that conversion therapy can help a person turn away from same-sex attraction. However, some doctors have shown how homosexuality can be prevented and explained how reparative therapy can repair people.
Chapman provides as an example of “some doctors” a link to the biography of Joseph Nicolosi, a psychologist and a founder of the notoriously anti-gay group NARTH who championed conversion therapy. And the link on “reparative therapy” goes to a YouTube video of a 1974 TV appearance by fellow anti-gay psychiatrist and NARTH co-founder Charles Socarides, whose son is gay. Chapman doesn’t seem to understand that critical thinking about homosexuality has evolved over the past 40 years.
And that’s the closest Chapman ever comes to providing any evidence to back up the view of himself and his right-wing anti-gay buddies that conversion therapy works.