Testimony – David Pickup, LMFT
Dear Legislators,
This Therapy Ban bill is child abuse. This naïve and destructive bill makes it illegal for little children to receive therapy for unwanted same-sex attractions caused by sexual abuse by older teens or pedophiles. Can you imagine a heterosexual boy walking into a therapist’s office to be told that it’s illegal to give him the therapy that resolves his sexual attractions experienced from an older man?
Do YOU know what it feels like to be heterosexual and sexually abused by a budding pedophile? I do. I underwent authentic Reparative Therapy for homosexual attractions because of emotional abuse and sexual abuse that I experienced as a child. And, during the sexual abuse, just like some children in your state, that sexual stimulation resulted in unwanted sexual attractions in puberty. Authentic Reparative Therapy helped save my life and I experienced change in my sexual feelings. And yet, with sexual abuse of children just like it happens in every other state, somehow this bill is being considered. If the sponsors of this bill really cared about children they would never hurt one group of children to help another group. They would have at least amended this bill to account for the professional, licensed therapy for unwanted attractions that truly works.
I am one of the experts in real Reparative Therapy in this country. The sponsors of this bill have not even bothered to ask professional therapists what goes on in these sessions. Real RT is about the rise of the authentic secure gendered self. It’s about resolving the emotional issues that cause homosexual feelings for those who know that, for them, their feelings are not genetically inborn. It’s about resolving inferiority, depression and suicide ideation. This bill would have you believe that we do electroshock, aversion and shaming techniques. It connotes that all this horror is going on and then describes it as religious shaming or some kind of pray away the gay boot camps, which has nothing to do with authentic therapy. In fact, we do not conduct “conversion therapy.” This was a term invented by LGBT activists to push their agenda for bills like this one.
Real RT gets rid of all shame for having homosexual feelings. Real therapists love all children no matter what their beliefs are. I also love my Gay clients. I don’t force them to change or tell them they’re inferior, and we don’t believe that this is a mental illness. The American Psychological Association says there is no proof of harm of Reparative Therapy. They have not condemned this therapy, and they have not declared it unethical. Check their website www.apa.org about therapy for these issues. Check pg. 82-83 of the APA Task Force on SOCE.
What if your heterosexual child or grandchild came to you and said they were bothered or traumatized by homosexual feelings from being abused from having their genitals stimulated beyond their control by their abuser? According to this bill, there’s not a thing you could do to help them with suicide ideation, anxiety or depression resulting from unwanted homosexual feelings. Nothing you or a professional therapist could do except try to tell them it will all work out fine. That, or send them to a pray away the gay boot camp.
The lives of your children, ALL their children, are in your hands.
David Pickup, M.A., LMFT
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (#202047)
Co-founder National Task Force for Therapy Equality
16135 Preston Road, Suite 116
Dallas, TX 75248
818-481-2745
“Co-creating healthy men, women and children who seek authentic transformation”
1t-David Pickup LMFT Testimony 2017