What a twisted way to make a gay man straight.

[Panacea]

In the November election, California passed a ban on "conversion therapy", which purports to "cure" homosexuality, from being administered to anyone under age 18.

Of course, the lawsuits ensued, and the ban in now on hold. http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/04/us/cal...tml?hpt=hp_bn1

Fortunately, some former patients are suing a major conversion therapy treatment organization, JONAH, for fraud. http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/27/us/con...uit/index.html

It's amazing the crap these "therapists" do to their "patients:" forcing them to strip naked, beating effigies of their mothers, being forced to "cuddle" intimately and visit bath houses with "father figures," and of course being subject to all kinds of verbal abuse.

If it were any kind of therapy we wouldn't bother with a ban; we'd just call it what it is: abuse. And lock up the perpetrators.

These people make me sick.

[Nekojin]

"Conversion Therapy" is based on the notion that sexuality is purely mental. Given what we know about gender and sexuality (namely, that it's far more complex than it appears, and genetics definitely plays a role), it should be discarded out-of-hand.

Edit: I don't know how that law was enacted - I certainly didn't get to vote on it during the last election.

[Andara Bledin]

I find this bit interesting:

U.S. District Judge William Shubb ruled Monday that the ban Gov. Jerry Brown signed earlier this year could offend the First Amendment rights of therapists to express their opinions about homosexuality.

How can this be a First Amendment issue when the individuals in question are in the business of deceiving and abusing their clients? They make claims they cannot support and which are at least partially at odds with currently accepted science. Sure, saying the science has it wrong is protected. Promising a "cure" for something that they have no proof is a disorder is malpractice, or at the very least it should be.

I find it interesting that some of the strongest proponents also declare themselves "former homosexuals." It's the shame and stigma of being of non-typical sexual alignment that is dangerous, and it's unfortunate that Shubb couldn't manage to see that.

As for how it was enacted, as per the quote above, it was signed on by Gov. Brown in October after being passed by the state senate in May.

Further detail at CNN

^-.-^

[violiav]

I don't really follow the "former homosexual" thing (I dont really like labels to begin with, I think they're dumb). How is that detailed? Are they still attracted to men, but choose women for relationships?

[Skunkle]

You can make someone not-gay, but you can't make a gay person straight. As far as I've seen and read, most people who go through the more hardcore "treatments" cease to have much of any sexual attraction at all.

Much of the ex-gay 'therapy' I've read about is aversion therapy, which uses psychological conditioning, associating sexual urges aimed at men with bad smells, chemicals that make you vomit, or gory images, to force the person to be disgusted by same-sex thoughts. What the treatment cannot do is teach someone opposite-gender attraction.

[LewisLegion]

You cannot change someone's sexual orientation with conversion therapy. You can either take away their sex drive altogether (extremely mentally damaging) with aversion therapy, or you can shove them back into the closet and they can 'pretend' to be straight by marrying someone of the opposite gender (again, very damaging to patient and the poor person they end up marrying), or you can convince them to be celibate. In the case of a bisexual patient, they can basically convince them to stick to hetero-only relationships.

Not a single person who ever went through any kind of conversion therapy, ever went from a homosexual orientation to a true heterosexual orientation. Even the founders of such organisations like Evergreen International cannot show a single case where a patient went from being gay to being verifiably and documented heterosexual. Most of their 'ex-gay' testimonies came from a single phone call where they called the patient and said 'hey, you still straight?' (simplified, of course) and the patient said 'yup, sure am.'.

No follow up testing, no long term observation, just that quick conversation and they could wave it around and say 'we successfully converted this person' when really, they didn't at all. Heck, some of the strongest proponents for such conversion therapy have admitted publically it doesn't work, and two of the founders of Evergreen actually fell in love and got married (both men) and left the organisation admitting how incredibly ineffective and terribly damaging it was.

It's not about free speech or having an opinion, it is about an extremely psychologically damaging process that does not work. It creates horrible issues, both in relationships and in a person's psyche, and has even lead repeatedly to suicide, because the patient continually gets blamed if the therapy doesn't work (oh, you just don't want it enough, you're not trying hard enough, this is all your fault you aren't changing).

It's a barbaric, horrible, misguided practice that harms. It SHOULD be banned.

[Rapscallion]

If boobs don't work, their systems won't.

Rapscallion

[Nekojin]

If boobs don't work, their systems won't.

Every straight man knows that boobs are magical. If gay man can ignore their hypnotic allure, then nothing on earth could do it.

[Panacea]

I don't really follow the "former homosexual" thing (I dont really like labels to begin with, I think they're dumb). How is that detailed? Are they still attracted to men, but choose women for relationships?

Conversion therapy is harmful and not shown to work. Those who claim to have been cured by it are repressing their natural feelings and sexual attractions to gain something else they deem more important than sex: societal approval.

All the valid scientific studies done on this show it at the least does not work, and can actually be harmful by reinforcing feelings of self loathing and depression.

It's a great con, for the con artists.

[HYHYBT]

Some of the things supposed to "cure" ... well, I mean really. Getting naked and hugging other men? Groping each other's parts? Doesn't sound straight to me.

[Hyena Dandy]

It's fine if you use your first amendment rights to express any opinion you want about homosexuality. But that does not extent to actual action. I can use my first amendment rights to say that someone should be shot, but that doesn't make it legal for me to shoot them.

[smileyeagle1021]

Some of the things supposed to "cure" ... well, I mean really. Getting naked and hugging other men? Groping each other's parts? Doesn't sound straight to me.

getting naked and hugging and groping... hell, if it weren't for the verbal and mental abuse that went along with "conversion" therapy, that would sound like a damned good time to me... not sure how it would make me straight though... I mean God himself couldn't change me, so really confused how participating in homosexual acts is supposed to make you less inclined to participate in homosexual acts...

It's fine if you use your first amendment rights to express any opinion you want about homosexuality. But that does not extent to actual action. I can use my first amendment rights to say that someone should be shot, but that doesn't make it legal for me to shoot them.

Thank you for making the point I was going to make a lot better than I was going to be able to.

[Panacea]

getting naked and hugging and groping... hell, if it weren't for the verbal and mental abuse that went along with "conversion" therapy, that would sound like a damned good time to me... not sure how it would make me straight though... I mean God himself couldn't change me, so really confused how participating in homosexual acts is supposed to make you less inclined to participate in homosexual acts...

Well for starters, God "couldn't" change you because he made you the way you are in the first place. It wasn't to be petty, it wasn't to be cruel, and all the Bible thumpers who think otherwise are focusing on one passage that shows the obvious ick factor of some tribal nomad 4000 years ago, and we still haven't figured out how to get over that.

All lightheartedness aside, I doubt anyone who goes through this would find it a good time. You could put me naked in a room with a naked Tom Cruise and George Clooney, and all you'd get from me is me running screaming from the room. Being naked in front of people I don't personally know is not something I would find comfortable, even if I still find Cruise to be so incredibly hot on screen.

As for the First Amendment . . . this isn't a First Amendment issue. Applying this debunked pseudoscientific therapy isn't about communicating ideas. It's about forcing people to undergo actions to change behaviors that the medical community says are not abnormal in the first place. This has nothing to do with freedom of the press, and everything to do with assault and battery.

[HYHYBT]

Really, I don't see any reason parents wanting to put their children through proven-harmful medical treatments should have any more right to do that than parents who want to *refuse* life-saving treatments like blood transfusions for their children. And unless something's changed recently, that's not allowed.

[crashhelmet]

I can't help but think of This Movie while reading through this thread.