California's "Cure the Gays" Law

Backwards as it may be, California still has a statute on the books that directs the state to fund research investigating a cure for homosexuality. Much like a law that would give money for explorers to find the Fountain of Youth or prove that the world is flat, the law is an outdated relic crafted during rather ignorant times when politicians preferred overreaction to sound science.

But the fact that it's still on the books is a travesty, at least according to one California State Assemblywoman who is fighting to repeal the measure. That politician would be Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, who is shedding light on this homophobic statute that has managed to survive decades of government bureaucracy. Just how did this law get put on the books in the first place?

As Lowenthal wrote in the Los Angeles Times this weekend, the law came about because of panicked politicians looking to take a "tough on crime" stand while jumping way out of their sphere of knowledge.

"This 60-year-old relic was not some gay-baiting prelude to the McCarthy era. It came, rather, in response to public outcry over sex crimes in California, specifically the molestation-murder of a six-year-old Los Angeles girl," Lowenthal writes. Ah, but here's the kicker. "The murderer was not a gay man. There was no connection between the crime and homosexuality at all."

Can you say scapegoat?

That's exactly the point that Lowenthal makes in her article. Panicked politicians in 1949 were trying to do something about a wave of molestation reports that came in, all around the same week that six-year-old Linda Joyce Glucoft was kidnapped, raped and murdered. Who was the perpetrator? It was a grandfather of one of Linda's playmates, who not only admitted to the crime, but didn't even resist arrest when police came looking for him.

The armies started to chant: "Find the sexual psychopaths!  Find the sexual psychopaths!" And yet, despite the fact that the evidence in this case (as in most cases) suggest that sexual predators are not LGBT people, the state legislature was all too ready to return hysteria with a hysterical law. For politicians in 1949, it was all too easy to equate sexual molestation with homosexuality. (Some might argue that in 2010, it's all too easy for certain entities ... like, perhaps, the institutional Catholic Church ... to make this claim and get away with it.)

Lo and behold, legislators passed a law demanding that a cure for homosexuality be found. They patted themselves on the back and returned to their home districts, satisfied with passing a statute that would not only waste taxpayer money but do absolutely nothing to curb crime or sexual assault. Ah, the hubris of politicians.

Assemblywoman Lowenthal is now leading the charge in California's State Assembly to get this old law off the books. The law, technically known as the "Welfare and Institutions Code Section 8050," can't be removed until legislators do something to amend the code.

"Our codes are constantly updated, and the fact this language has survived this long is pretty amazing," Lowenthal said last month. "We need to blot it out and make it clear we're moving forward as a society, not backward."

Perhaps truer words were never spoken by a politician. If you'd like to urge the California state legislature to get behind a repeal of the "Welfare and Institutions Code Section 8050," sign this petition here. There's a hearing tomorrow in the State Assembly to shed light on this relic, and legislators deserve to get as much pressure as possible to repeal this ridiculous, homophobic mandate.

Photo credit: timbrauhn