I’m all for banning this garbage for minors totally, but why make adults sign a release by law? If an adult wants to try and change their orientation why should anyone stand in the way of that? That really rubs me wrong.
Because it doesn’t work and harms people.
Even if someone wanted to change their orientation, many studies have shown that these treatments simply don’t work.
Homeopathy on the other hand, while being similarly uneffectual, is not outright dangerous, so I can see the argument for not banning that.
Devil’s Advocate: has anyone shown that these therapies themselves are harmful? I would expect someone so unhappy with his sexuality that he wanted to do this (or so loathed by his family that he’s forced into this) to be suffering from “extreme depression and guilt” already. Has anyone done a study which corrects for this variable?
In other words, are they depressed and suicidal because of the therapy, or because they hate themselves so much that they seek this therapy? Is the therapy causing harm, or merely exploiting it?
Lamia mentioned some studies in the “gay fix” thread in GD.
[QUOTE=Lamia]
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. So it looks to me like “ex-gay” therapy is at least as likely to make people want to kill themselves as it is to result in a successful conversion to heterosexuality.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks. I missed that thread; I’ll wander over there later and read more.
Because the existence of conversion therapy harms many more people than just the participants themselves. It causes harm to society by perpetuating the false belief that sexual orientation can be overcome at will.
So, if I understand correctly, the government is merely using its police power to suppress pernicious viewpoints. Is that correct?
I agree. It’s kind of like Virginia’s “if you want an abortion you have to get an invasive ultrasound” stipulation, but this time the state is using police powers for good, instead of evil.
Maybe a better example is that adults can smoke, but they have to see the surgeon general’s warning.
Homeopathy is not dangerous, because it does nothing.
Homeopathy practitioners can be dangerous though if they cause someone to not seek real treatment.
Making adults sign a release isn’t significantly standing in their way of seeking to change their orientation. If you seek mental health treatment of any kind, you generally have to sign all kinds of paperwork. This would be one more item. I would bet it isn’t going to have a significant deterrent effect on adults seeking therapy to change their sexual orientation.
So let’s get rid of the requirement altogether. After all, it does nothing, right?
“Gotta sign something, why not include this too” isn’t really a great argument for adding a layer of government regulation, correct? In general, the thumb on the scale is to allow free citizens to do as they please, not for the government to regulate idly, no?
I wouldn’t say it does nothing. It provides proof that the clinics were upfront about the effectiveness and risk of their procedures, and weren’t misleading their clients about what sort of outcomes they can expect. The extent to which people seeking this kind of treatment will pay attention to the warning is debatable, but I expect at least a few people will decide against it, if given accurate information about the process.
So, then, you agree that the abortion laws requiring statement signing are similarly well-justified.
If you think that case should be treated differently (and I don’t … abortion warnings are similar attempts to deter people from doing perfectly legal things that they have freely chosen to do), can you explain why gay conversion warnings are a legitimate exercise of government regulation and abortion warnings are not.
The desired outcome of an abortion is to no longer be pregnant. This has proven to work and has a success rate of close to if not at 100%. Requiring an ultrasound or other impediments are solely to keep women from having them.
Sexual orientation conversion therapy has no proven record of success, is shown to be harmful in many cases and is considered invalid as therapy by every major psychological association.
Do you really see no difference between the two?
I’m very pro-choice, and I would not mind signing a statement saying that I understood that an abortion would end a pregnancy that could result in a child, if I wanted an abortion. There are some other impediments to getting an abortion that I would object to, but that would not be one of them.
What is it that you believe those abortion warnings (which are required to be signed) say? And what part of your disclosures do you believe are inaccurate?
Merely to point out that they are different procedures with differing success rates is irrelevant. There are potential complications and unfavorable outcomes associated with each procedure.
Informed consent is absolutely necessary. And it is adequately handled by allowing largely unpolticized malpractice insurance companies to set disclosure requirements for the physicians they insure. The actuaries and underwriters who institute these rules do so on the basis of their knowledge of tort law, medical practice, and data about med-mal lawsuits. And these requirements are without the force of law. If a physician does not care for them, she can find another malpractice insurer. (Unless her preference is so far afield of medical standards that no one will insure her.)
And these insurance company rules are instituted without, by and large, an intent to take sides on the question of the moral valence of any given medical procedure. That malpractice insurers do not care to weigh in on that red herring is what makes this system of rulemaking so unattractive to those with an urge to condemn patients who elect procedures they disagree with.
I also add this: should this bill pass, the only change that will occur is that instead of telling patients they will be made straight, practitioners will tell them how to “manage” mixed-sex marriage or celibacy while they “struggle” with homosexual urges.
Personally, I think the whole enterprise is doomed to failure. And personally, it is nothing I would seek out or recommend to others. What I choose personally for myself is not, however, a good reason to override the autonomy of others and enshrine my personal notions of how to live my life into law and bind others to live likewise.
It should also be clear that we cannot ban “managing homosexual urges while living as a straight person” therapy without running afoul of the First Amendment.
Perhaps the waiver or release should also have a description of the practices used in the sexual orientation aversion therapy.
Key word is “aversion.” Vomiting. Electric shocks. That stuff is straight from the dungeons of the Middle Ages.
~VOW
Lies, generally. False claims about how horribly traumatic it is and how they’ll be scarred for life, lies about how the fetus is a person, thinks, feels pain and so on. Not to mention that they’ll take the opportunity to scream at her that she’s a slut and threaten her.
:rolleyes: One is a genuine medical procedure that works, the other is a fraud motivated by bigotry. There’s no comparison.
Telling people lies is not “informed consent”; it is the opposite of informed.