Liar du Jour

Why, it's none other than Tony Perkins, calling for prayers to defeat California's AB 2943, which would class offering sexual-orientation change therapy for money as consumer fraud. The preamble to the "prayer" is classic Perkins:

California AB2943 Counseling BAN Vote Expected Tomorrow — Believers are rallying in California to prevent the criminalization of counseling, speech, books, advertising, and every kind of therapy to help people who seek to overcome unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion. The U.S. Supreme Court, in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, rebuked Colorado Human Rights Commission officials for contending “that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain.”

1: No, the bill does not do what he says. It's very clear that offering SOCE for money is consumer fraud. Here's the text of the bill. From the Legislative Counsel's Digest:

This bill would include, as an unlawful practice prohibited under the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, advertising, offering for sale, or selling services constituting sexual orientation change efforts, as defined, to an individual.

2: The Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, based on a really fanciful reading of comments by members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, is irrelevant. And that's not what the Court said to begin with.

3: At least one court has already found that offering such "therapy" for money is consumer fraud, in Ferguson vs. JONAH. It's a very interesting article (at least for legal geeks), but here's a summary of the decision (citations removed):

On June 25, 2015, after a three-week trial, the jury deliberated for only three hours before returning a unanimous verdict in favor of the plaintiffs. After the ruling, one juror told Equality Case Files that the JONAH program was not therapy and the decision was “cut and dried.” In addition to this first-in-the-nation verdict, a pretrial ruling by the Court declared for the first time in American history that homosexuality was not a mental disease, disorder, or equivalent thereof as a matter of law. David Dinielli, SPLC deputy legal director said, "this verdict is a monumental moment in the movement to ensure the rights and acceptance of LGBT people in America...Conversion therapy and homophobia are based on the same central lie — that gay people are broken and need to be fixed. Conversion therapists, including the defendants in this case, sell fake cures that don’t work but can seriously harm the unsuspecting people who fall into this trap. We’re proud of our clients, who survived these so-called treatments and had the courage to call to account the people who defrauded them with their false promises.”

Let's hope this trend continues.