# Are bans on gay conversion therapy constitutional?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-bans-on-gay-conversion-therapy-constitutional/667925>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [September 3, 2013, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-bans-on-gay-conversion-therapy-constitutional/667925 "2013-09-03T21:36:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 22

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**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-bans-on-gay-conversion-therapy-constitutional/667925/22 "2013-09-04T01:26:05Z")

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> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> I read the wikipedia article you linked to. And I read all the sources it cited. And eventually everyone of them ended with somebody saying the same thing you started with - that they just “know” it’s harmful. Nobody seems to be able to say “and here’s the evidence that proves it’s harmful.”
> 
> A strongly held opinion is not a fact.

Here’s a cite I pulled up for an old thread about changing sexual orientation:

> [@Sexuality: Choice or not, and does it matter?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sexuality-choice-or-not-and-does-it-matter/526190/104):
>
> Ariel Shidlo and Michael Schroeder’s 2002 study “Changing Sexual Orientation: A Consumers’ Report”\*\* seems to be the best study on how successful “ex-gay” therapies actually are. This study involved interviewing 202 people who had undergone sexual orientation conversion intervention. 13% (26 people) of these people considered themselves to be success stories, but nearly half of these still experienced repeated “slips” into homosexual behavior. Of the remaining 14 people, 6 reported having successfully stopped engaging in homosexual behavior but still experienced some same-sex desire and did not self-identify as heterosexual. Only 8 people (4%) self-identified as heterosexual and reported exclusively engaging in heterosexual behavior with little or no same-sex desire.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> The majority (77%) of the participants in Shidlo and Schroeder’s study indicated not only that the therapy hadn’t changed their sexual orientation, but that it had done them significant long-term damage. (Another 10% reported experiencing neither change in orientation nor any long-term psychological harm.) 11 participants reported attempting suicide after undergoing “ex-gay” therapy. Only 3 of these had previously attempted suicide.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> \*\*Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 2002, Vol. 33, No. 3, 249–259

Since this study involved interviewing people who had undergone “ex-gay” therapy, it could not address the actual suicide rate among this population. (Not without a Ouija board, at least.) A quick search didn’t produce a good figure for the percentage of Americans who have ever attempted suicide, but this [CDC datasheet](http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/Suicide-DataSheet-a.pdf) (PDF) says “An estimated 1 million adults (0.5% of the U.S. adult population) reported making a suicide attempt in the past year.” More than ten times as many (5.4%) of the participants in the Shidlo and Schroeder study had attempted suicide after undergoing “ex-gay” therapy. Even if we exclude the three with a previous history of suicide attempts, that’s still 4%. I realize there are a number of problems with this comparison and wouldn’t call it solid evidence of anything, but it’s suggestive.

More importantly, participants in this study were nearly six times as likely to say that “ex-gay” therapy had caused them lasting harm than they were to say that it had helped them.

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