Article content continued

Grewal writes in the piece that some psychologists blame a “shock” during childhood for causing a person to become gay, but that the change “can be corrected.”

“The political competition of today raises the question of whether any person’s wish to become a normal person is wrong?” Grewal wrote in Punjabi.

“If it is a parent’s right to set guidelines for their children in terms of their education, career and health, then why is it illegal for them to strengthen their natural heterosexuality?”

If it is a parent’s right to set guidelines for their children in terms of their education, career and health, then why is it illegal for them to strengthen their natural heterosexuality?

Grewal said in an interview Tuesday that he was attempting to educate readers about an issue in the news and lay out the positions taken by the provincial parties and psychologists. He said he did not recall the names of the psychologists he mentioned.

In the editorial, he points to the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, an American group that offers therapies to people who have “unwanted homosexual attractions.”

“Yes, there’s children who have tendencies, who are attracted,” Grewal said in the interview. “If that child wants to come back or tell the parents that he wants to get out of this life, then parents should have the right to bring them back to their straight life.”

Grewal’s editorial does not address professional criticism of so-called reparative or conversion therapies. The Canadian Pediatric Society’s position on adolescent sexual orientation states that such treatments “should not be provided because they do not work and have the potential to heighten guilt and anxiety.”