Check the current regulatory frameworks, because it is looking, to me, a lot like avarice has honor pinned to the mat right now.
Andros:
The evidence would suggest that people are a lot more malleable than you propose, both historically and in the present day.
Many cultures have had a tradition where an otherwise straight man takes on a gay lover as a matter of course; the Greeks and Romans, for example. The Sacred Band of Thebes was an elite fighting force. In joining, you entered into an exclusive homosexual relationship with another member.
Heterosexual men in prison may engage in homosexual behavior, and then stay that way when released or revert back to heterosexuality.
Men and women high strong homosexual tendencies may get married and stay hetero.
So, there are many cases of people switching.
And just what is sexual preference? How many married men would prefer that their 50 year old overweight wife looked more like a supermodel?
He has sex with her, because she is available and she is what he is used to.
Sexual preference is a compromise between what one would prefer and what is available.
This would indicate that the idea that we are locked into our sexuality is probably the exception rather than the norm.
Additionally, it’s practically impossible to separate sexual preference from social and environmental influences.
So, I am not claiming anything special when I say that I would probably be homosexual given the proper environmental and social incentives. The evidence suggests most of us would.
As for the snake oil nature of gay conversion therapies, I too suspect that they are near enough to being wholly bullshit that it is not worth quibbling.
Still, if you want to ban that, will you also ban Tony Robbins and the whole self-help industry? Bad diets? Chiropractic? Nutritional supplements? Skin “rejuvenation cosmetics?” There are a whole host of things that we allow that harm far more people than gay conversion therapy, which, compared to any of the above is a laughingly small industry.
What these things have in common is that people want them, and some people claim they work for them. Likely this is erroneous or part of the placebo effect, but the placebo effect is very real.
I also don’t buy the blanket condemnation of Gay conversion therapies. I understand the reason why people of goodwill and compassion are vehement in their denouncing of them, and I agree with those reasons. I don’t like the idea of some 15 year old kid who is perfectly happy how he is being forced by his parents to a brainwashing camp to pray the gay away. I don’t like the idea of someone who is troubled being taken advantage of by a charlatan.
At the same time, I can’t say that some people haven’t come out of gay conversion therapy, with a positive experience. They claim it is so. Who are you or I to say it didn’t help them?
People get pressured into many harmful things by their families, by peer groups, and even by society. This is phenomenon is not limited to sexuality and a little thinking will suggest that gay conversion therapy is a vanishingly small part of the massive damage done by family, peer, and societal pressure.
Sometimes this pressure, channeled correctly has a positive effect. We are social animals, and we make decisions based on how that will effect our social status. This pressure is neither the villain nor the hero. It just is.
I don’t consider it proof that anybody can be made to change, rather the opposite: that the fact that it does occasionally happen isn’t evidence that it actually matters one way or the other. Consequently, the idea that anyone can be made to change is pointless nonsense.
Bumped.
A recent AP article - elections, films help effort to ban gay conversion therapy: https://www.thestate.com/entertainment/celebrities/article223713800.html
It should be pointed out that all the bans currently enacted in the US law are banning conversion therapy in minors, not adults. Which seems to me the correct balance legally speaking.
Gay conversion therapy is clearly utter bullshit. But mentally competent adults can choose to undergo all sorts of utterly bullshit, possibly harmful, “medical” treatments (chiropracty, homeopathy, goop enemas, etc. etc.) Hell they can choose to refuse medical treatment (like blood transfusions) that will almost certainly result in their death. Why should this particular bullshit treatment be any different?