I imagine a lot of gay people who strongly feel homosexuality is a sin (ie the people most likely to be entering gay conversion programs) are already thinking about suicide - which is much less likely to be the case with the people entering a weight loss or tobacco quitting program. If nothing else, you can argue that gay conversion therapy has some benefit as a placebo. It gives gay people who don’t want to be gay some hope that they can change and allows them a period during the course of the program to reflect on their situation.
I guess at a certain level, I’m seeing this as a personal choice issue. It was wrong a few decades ago when gay people were told they had to become straight even if they wanted to remain gay. But have we now reached the opposite point where we’re telling gay people they have to remain gay even if they want to become straight? Shouldn’t gay people have the option of trying to become straight if that’s what they want? Even if their chances of success are minimal? I don’t see it as being society’s business to tell an individual what their sexual orientation should be.
That surprises me. I assumed there would be a large number of gay people with religious convictions against homosexuality seeking conversion. But I also assumed there would be a significant number of gay people seeking conversion for relationship reasons - people who realized they were gay late in life and had already married somebody of the opposite gender. I can see a gay man or woman in that situation attempting conversion therapy as a means of preserving their marriage.
So your response to my cite for a peer-reviewed scholarly article that found that a large majority of people who have undergone this sort of therapy feel that it did them significant long-term harm is to say that you imagine these people were troubled to begin with and that maybe this therapy was beneficial to them as a placebo. Funny, you seemed a lot more interested in cites and evidence when Der Trihs was saying these therapies are harmful than you do now that you’re claiming, without any evidence and contrary to expert opinion, that they’re beneficial.
Minors don’t have the right to freely choose their own medical and psychological treatments, and the California law is banning conversion therapy for minors. It isn’t preventing adults from choosing to have all the ineffective and harmful therapies they like, it is preventing children from being pushed into these programs by their parents.
I made it clear I was offering a theory and explained my reasons for it. If Der Trihs had just said it was his opinion that gay conversion therapy was harmful or offered it as a hypothetical, I wouldn’t have challenged him as I did. But as I stated, opinions and facts are two different things.
As for my theory, I maintain it’s a reasonable one. I don’t imagine there are a lot of gay people who enter gay conversion therapy on a whim, with the thought that they might just give heterosexuality a whirl. And then confronted by the therapy, they develop a crushing realization that their homosexuality is wrong and when it can’t be cured, they decide they now must kill themselves.
The people who enter gay conversion therapy are obviously those who already felt that their homosexuality is wrong before they walked in the door.
You might not agree with that opinion. I might not agree with that opinion. But I don’t see how it’s our business to decide for somebody else.
As I noted, there are lots of treatments that minors can’r consent to. But in almost all of them, the decision devolves to the parents which is not the case here. So this prohibition is not the norm.
Would there be cases where parents “pushed” a reluctant gay minor into conversion therapy against their will? Probably. Would there be cases where a minor wanted to go to conversion therapy and had to “push” his or her parents into letting them? Probably. Would there be cases where a minor wanted to go and his or her parents refused them permission? Probably.
Remember, this is a state law. States have broad plenary power which includes the power, which includes regulating trades and professions in the public interest. Whereas with federal law you look at the Constitution to determine “can the government do this?”, with state law you look at the Constitutions (state and federal) to determine if the state can’t. The state also effectively asserts that rock cocaine is never an appropriate therapeutic measure for long-term pain management.
The therapist’s free speech rights are not being curtailed. He is free to conduct as many gay conversion sessions as he likes; he just can’t hold himself as a licensed professional while he does so.
I agree that suicidal ideation is probably pretty common among people who enter this program even before treatment starts. However, that doesn’t render these programs blameless if someone comes out of the program and is still suicidal. Suicidal tendencies is one of the things this treatment is supposed to help with. If the process does not reduce suicidal ideation, it’s evidence that the treatment is ineffective. If it increases suicidal ideation, then it shows that the treatment is actively dangerous.
I’m pretty sure there are no treatments a minor can consent to. But that has nothing to do with this issue. I think the fairest thing one can say about conversion therapy is that it’s ineffectiveness is well documented, and it’s potential harm is uncertain. In those circumstances, I think it’s fair to limit its use to adults at least until we get a better handle on any possible negative effects.
Well, I said it was my understanding from just skimming the 138 page report from the APA that reviewed most of the studies on SOCE (in a very evenhanded manner, IMO). I strongly encourage you to skim the report to come to your own understanding and then review the theory you are proposing in this thread.
Parents are responsible for providing for the welfare of their children. Adults can martyr themselves for their religious beliefs, but parents can not martyr their minor children for their religious beliefs. It’s not that SOCE is simply ineffective, but that it also has been documented to cause serious harm by increasing anxiety, depression, self-hatred for a condition that is not a mental disorder or unhealthy condition - where as obesity and smoking are inarguably unhealthy conditions.
This isn’t just sending your kid off to fat camp and having them come back still fat with their unhealthy behaviors unchanged, this is sending your kid off to fat camp and having them return more anxious, depressed and filled with more self-hatred than they left with whilst reinforcing a societal prejudice. (again for a condition that is NOT unhealthy or a mental disorder)
You also need to look at some of the ‘successful’ outcomes that SOCE strives for - sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex, marriage to a member of the opposite sex, etc. Neither of these measures of success actually reflect a change in sexual orientation. In fact, the recommendation of marrying a member of the opposite sex (as I quoted upthread) has shown not only to harm the individual, but harm the spouses and children who were unwittingly dragged into the individual’s SOCE therapy. Even the Mormon church which once strongly promoted this sort of “treatment” has totally backed away from it, because of the disastrous results of mixed orientation marriages.
The issue isn’t with competent adults consenting to SOCE (though, I personally disagree with it), but the harm to minors, as the core issues in SOCE is sexual orientation and self-determination - both of which are not quite fully developed in minors. (And some techniques used in SOCE would be inappropriate if used on children/adolescents, IMO. e.g. discussion of sexual thoughts, viewing nude pictures of the opposite sex, measuring sexual physiological response to stimuli, etc).
The benefits of the non-aversive aspects SOCE (social and spiritual support, a lessening of isolation, an understanding of values and faith and sexual orientation identity) are not unique to SOCE and are also found in Affirmative Acceptance modalities without the associated risk of harm found in SOCE.
Participants in the studies by Beckstead and Morrow (2004) and Shidlo and Schroeder (2002) described:
So your theory is that this therapy initially gives troubled gay people false hope that they can be “cured”, and that when they realize the truth they are so crushed that they attempt suicide. In other words, the therapy takes people who are already unhappy and makes things worse until they want to die. And yet somehow you don’t see how this could be considered harmful.
In the case of minors, the group this law is intended to protect, they are likely entering gay conversion therapy because their parents feel homosexuality is wrong.
They’re minors. They already lack the legal right to make this sort of decision for themselves. There are plenty of other laws saying minors can’t do this or that until they reach a certain age, and they’re apparently constitutional.
This sort of treatment isn’t the norm either, because it’s aimed at “curing” something not considered a disorder by medical or mental health professionals, is largely – perhaps totally – ineffective, and causes psychological harm to many people who go through it.
Stopping providers from “treating” kids who may be in treatment against their will or under undue influence due to their young age is a different thing from saying that a competent adult should not be allowed to freely and intelligently choose to undergo gay conversion therapy. One is about protecting kids and making sure that they are not unnecessarily harmed while they are vulnerable. The second involves restricting freedom. South Park’s “Butt Out” expressed this rather well - that America is about giving people the opportunity to make their own decisions and determine for themselves what the risks and benefits are of doing something and coming to their own conclusion about how important each of them are, and then live with the consequences of their choices, good or bad.
I quoted your exact words. I will quote them again:
So according to your own “theory” this therapy doesn’t change people’s sexual orientation, it does crush them so badly that they feel driven to suicide, but somehow it’s still your position that this therapy is at worst “useless but [does] not cause any actual harm” and potentially even “beneficial to them as a placebo.”
Okay, there are people who are oblivious to irony and sarcasm. It’s sad but we can accept their handicap.
But even a literal reading of what I wrote, without any awareness of the subtext, doesn’t support your view.
Read again. Slowly this time:
I don’t imagine there are a lot of gay people who enter gay conversion therapy on a whim, with the thought that they might just give heterosexuality a whirl. And then confronted by the therapy, they develop a crushing realization that their homosexuality is wrong and when it can’t be cured, they decide they now must kill themselves.
Focus on the first three words. I said I don’t imagine there are people like this. So if I don’t think people act like this, I don’t have a theory based on people acting like this.
I apologize for the misunderstanding. I (obviously) think your post was not written very clearly, but I could have asked for clarification.
Am I correct in understanding that you do not believe that gay conversion therapy causes any significant harm to patients, and that your “theory” is that any mental health issues experienced by people who have been through it must have been present and of equal severity beforehand? Or, to put it another way, that anyone who would attempt suicide after gay conversion therapy would have attempted suicide even without gay conversion therapy? Because if so, that is not a statement of opinion, that is a claim about the facts. There have been several cites posted in this thread in support of the claim that gay conversion therapy is harmful. I don’t see that you or anyone else has provided any saying that it is harmless.
Even if it were totally harmless, homosexuality is not a mental disorder and gay conversion therapy has not been proven to be effective in changing a patient’s sexual orientation. It seems perfectly appropriate to me that licensed mental health providers should be subject to some sort of formal discipline if they attempt to “cure” a patient of something that isn’t a mental disorder by using a treatment that isn’t effective. I’d be comfortable with a law that did even more to protect the public from being scammed in this way. But the California law doesn’t go so far as to ban gay conversion therapy. All it does is say that a licensed mental health provider can’t perform this sort of treatment on patients who are too young to consent to it for themselves.
Being gay is not a mental disorder. But being straight is not a mental disorder either. So switching from gay to straight or straight to gay (if either is possible) is essentially neutral. Anyone claiming it’s better for a person to be gay or it’s better for a person to be straight is imposing their moral judgement on somebody.
Consider cosmetic surgery. Do we consider having small breasts to be a disorder? No, of course not. But is a woman wants to have larger breasts, she’s allowed to undergo a medical procedure to get them. We don’t require her to prove that having small breasts is harming her or that having larger breasts will cure her of something. We just acknowledge it’s her choice.
As for effectiveness, we allow all kinds of alternative health therapies of dubious effectiveness. We allow people to participate in things like acupuncture, aromatherapy, and homeopathy.
If it’s not a mental disorder then it is quite literally not the business of mental health providers to treat it.
I’m pretty sure that if licensed mental health providers were to start claiming that they could cause the breasts of underage teen girls to become larger through therapy then the reaction of the public, the relevant professional organizations, and the legal system wouldn’t just be to shrug and say “Well, it’s the girl’s choice.”
Does the state of California allow licensed mental health providers to offer these treatments to minors for conditions that are not recognized mental disorders?
Well, if we’re going to be citing the works of Professors Parker and Stone et al, perhaps a more on-point example would be the episode “Cartman Sucks”, which directly depicts reperative therapy and, as I recall, shows or references at least four suicides or attempted suicides.
Are your objections based solely on the minors being compelled or forced to go into therapy they don’t wish by their parents? Suppose a child absolutely one hundred percent wants the therapy and is begging his or her parents to let them have it. Would you still object?
I would still object, if the procedure has been researched and shown to be harmful. The state has some duty to protect children from their parents (and from themselves.)
If the procedure were shown to be safe and effective, then, while a ban might still be constitutional, there would be little point to it. It would be morally troubling to many of us, but it would be much more difficult to argue for a ban.
As it is, the procedure is neither safe nor effective, and that’s a damned good reason for banning it from use on minors. Once you grow up, well, it’s a free country.
to come to your own understanding and then review the theory you are proposing in this thread.