Posted on 07/10/2019 9:27:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In light of the latest attack on sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE), namely, Amazon’s banning of books on the subject, we do well to separate fact from fiction. Are these change efforts really so dangerous? Should they be banned and even criminalized?
According to the critics, “conversion therapy” is dangerous and harmful because it tries to change something that cannot be changed, akin to trying to change a lefthanded person into a righthanded person. In keeping with this analogy, it would also say that there is something fundamentally wrong with being lefthanded.
As expressed in California’s SB 1172, which was signed into law in 2012 and criminalized SOCE for minors, “Sexual orientation change efforts pose critical health risks to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, including confusion, depression, guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, shame, social withdrawal, suicidality, substance abuse, stress, disappointment, self-blame, decreased self-esteem and authenticity to others, increased self-hatred, hostility and blame toward parents, feelings of anger and betrayal, loss of friends and potential romantic partners, problems in sexual and emotional intimacy, sexual dysfunction, high-risk sexual behaviors, a feeling of being dehumanized and untrue to self, a loss of faith, and a sense of having wasted time and resources. This is documented by the American Psychological Association task force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation in its 2009 Report of the task force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation.”
Is this true? Certainly not.
According to Christopher Doyle, himself a former homosexual and today, a licensed therapist, “Despite the claims of harm cited in SB 1172, the American Psychological Association task force did not actually provide evidence to back up the 28 health risks listed above. In fact, none of these health risks have been documented in the scientific peer-reviewed literature outside of a few published and unpublished anecdotal reports from adults. But there is not one single outcome-based study in the scientific literature of minors undergoing SOCE therapy to back up these claims.”
In short, while there is no doubt that some people have been hurt by SOCE, there is also no doubt that the harm has been exaggerated.
In fact, it is these exaggerated charges, including shock treatment and torture camps (as if sadistic therapists try to torture gays into becoming straight), that have been used to criminalize SOCE efforts for minors in other states.
Not only so, but many people have been helped through SOCE.
As noted by Brandon Showalter, “A new study is challenging the American Psychological Association's contention that therapies for unwanted same-sex attraction are harmful.
“The study, ‘Effects of Therapy on Religious Men Who Have Unwanted Same-Sex Attraction,’ which was first published July 23 in The Linacre Quarterly, finds that sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE), often derisively called ‘conversion therapy,’ improves the mental health of participants. Researchers surveyed 125 male residents of the United States.”
We should also remember that the very term “conversion therapy,” as noted by Showalter, is derogatory more than descriptive. It was coined by critics to describe professional efforts to help people with unwanted same-sex attractions (or, unwanted gender identity confusion). This would be like white supremacists calling the Civil Rights movement the “Negro Aggression Movement.”
Such derogatory monikers are unfair and unhelpful. That’s why we do better to speak of SOCE. Why use the language of the critics?
As to the alleged harm of SOCE, while it’s true that there have been examples of abusive practices in the past, similar abuses have been documented in other types of psychotherapy as well. (In other words, shock treatment was formerly used to treat a wide variety of mental disorders.)
More importantly, professionals involved in SOCE engage in talk therapy, speaking with their clients and helping them get to the root of their inner-conflicts and struggles.
What on earth is so bad about this? What is so frightening?
I could also point to a book like Twelve-Step Horror Stories which “tells tales of unmitigated horror. And all of them occur either in 12-step support groups or in treatment based on the 12 step of Alcoholics Anonymous.”
Should all twelve-step programs be banned? Should books promoting them be removed from Amazon?
And what of various diet fads, leading to many horror stories? Should diet books be banned? Should weight-loss programs be criminalized?
Why is it, then, that books promoting SOCE that are singled out? Why is it professional therapy that addresses LGBT concerns that is being banned and criminalized?
Even the idea that homosexuality is immutable, a sacred plank of gay activism, is being challenged on many new fronts.
In fact, Dr. Lisa Diamond, a lesbian activist and respected researcher in the American Psychological Association, said this in one of her lectures: “I feel as a community, the queers have to stop saying, ‘Please help us. We’re born this way, and we can’t change’ as an argument for legal standing…and that argument is going to bite us in the a**, because now we know that there’s enough data out there, that the other side is aware of as much as we are aware of it.”
Yes, the data is out there, but LGBT activists and their allies want to suppress it. Let the truth be told.
Rod Dreher pointed out that currently, on Amazon, you can buy books ranging from Hitler’s Mein Kampf to Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones, “which calls on Muslims to wage relentless global jihad against non-Muslims and insufficiently radical Muslims, until the entire world is under radical Islamic rule.” But you can no longer buy books by the Catholic psychologist Dr. Joseph Nicolosi.
He writes, “You can buy the work of Dr. Joseph Goebbels on Amazon.com, but not the work of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi!”
Indeed, “Amazon.com now bans the sale of works of an author that LGBT activists find offensive. Woke capitalism at its finest. Where does this stop?”
What, then, makes Dr. Nicolosi’s books so bad? Why are they so exceptionally dangerous? How evil is so-called “conversion therapy”?
In the words of the gay activist largely responsible for getting the books removed, “Our hard work finally [expletive] paid off!! We got the homophobic books pulled from Amazon!!!”
This was nothing less than gay activism at its totalitarian worst. There is nothing enlightened, inclusive, or tolerant about it.
Let the truth be told.
If people don’t like books on SOCE, they don’t have to buy them. And if they don’t want to participate in SOCE, they don’t have to.
Why can’t we live with that?
Dr. Michael Brown (www.askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program. His latest book is Jezebel's War With America: The Plot to Destroy Our Country and What We Can Do to Turn the Tide.
So now the apparatus for thought control is functioning quite well! With time, more and more authors will be added to the list. One day we will wake up and say “It’s 1984!” and will be put in prison for saying it.
I don’t give a dam if gays want to try this therapy or not.
That being said, I DO KNOW a number of gay guys who I worked with in graphics in Manhattan who did try this and it DID NOTHING except mess them up a little more.
They are what they are. Many must accept it and not act on it and i they do act on it, they should keep it behind closed doors and with closed mouths like in the old days.
And this WHOLE ARTICLE is weak. It basically says it doesn’t harm them THAT MUCH, maybe.
There’s a convincing argument :)
And I have met dozens of ex-gays who have tremendously benefited from conversion therapy. And Brown never says it “doesn’t harm them that much”. He is saying the incidence of any harm to anyone has been greatly overstated.
Conversion therapy paid off in my case.
Maybe it doesn't apply so much to sexual orientation. Maybe it does. Way too many high school aged boys (and even younger) get convinced by Sodomite recruiters that they might be a Sodomite because they are awkward around girls and have their life ruined with STDs and the like because they buy into the Sodomite crap.
If "conversion therapy" or just waiting a few more years until they are out of college or practicing a worthwhile trade and thus exposed to a little more of the real world can help some of these kids, then it is worth a try.
REALITY101:
Homosexuality is a vile psychological disorder.
Homosexuality is an unnatural lifestyle CHOICE as proven time and time again in hundreds of scientific studies.
Homosexuals do NOT have a “homosexual gene”.
Homosexuality is so evil God, who has perfect wisdom, describes it as an obamanation.
Homosexuals need psychological help to overcome their abnormal & destructive behavior.
“We should also remember that the very term “conversion therapy,” as noted by Showalter, is derogatory more than descriptive. It was coined by critics to describe professional efforts to help people with unwanted same-sex attractions (or, unwanted gender identity confusion).”
They did this intentionally because it sounds very similar to “aversion therapy” so it invites confusion. “Aversion therapy” actually did use some kind of “shock treatment”, though it was not electroshock ala “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, but rather small electric shocks designed to cause a patient to associate certain stimuli with pain rather than pleasure. Although controversial now, such treatments were not frivolous, they are actually some of the more grounded stuff that was done in psychiatric treatment at the time, since it was almost pure Pavlovian conditioning, not much different than the trick of snapping a rubber band around your wrist when you think of smoking a cigarette.
Re: “Homosexuals do NOT have a “homosexual gene”.
People can be born with birth defects. People can be born with predilections for certain behaviors - that being said, it doesn’t mean that it is morally right to act on them. Some people are born with attractions to a lot of things that are immoral and must not be acted out.
Some homosexuals were abused sexually and physically.
We are all sinners in need of forgiveness and mercy. Yes, we must not condone sin, but we must also proclaim God’s mercy as Peter says in his first letter, chapter 3, verse 15, “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect . . . “
One must convert from being a slave to sin to being a slave to the Lord.
FACT: Homosexuals do NOT have a “homosexual gene.
FACT: Homosexuality is a CHOSEN lifestyle.
FACT: God states homosexuality is so evil, HE describes it as an obamanation
Denying the above is denying God and His perfect wisdom.
Sadly, leftists & apologists for the poofters believe they are wiser than God.
Good luck with that strategy....
21,460 Attend Library Conference Featuring Workshops On Drag Queens And Queering Elementary Schools
At the American Library Association’s annual conference, the nation’s librarians learned how to circumvent community objections to events like Drag Queen Story Hour and other outrageous, taxpayer-purchased materials.
I did not deny homosexuality is a sin.
I did not deny that homosexuality is a choice.
Birth defects do exist, which are not always physical disabilities. Sometimes they are mental, sometimes people are born with predilections to certain behaviors, sometimes people are abused sexually and physically to the point of messing up their heads - that doesn’t mean it isn’t sin to act on them. That doesn’t mean it morally “ok” to act out those predilections.
One can be born with a predilection to alcohol addiction. That person cannot drink - ever. Drunkenness is a sin. If some people drink they become addicted to it - it is a behavioral choice that they must not act on.
To recognize this is not condoning sinful behaviors.
My point is that all sinners are in need of mercy and God’s grace and forgiveness, no matter what our sin is. And thus, the article’s focus on SOCE is helpful to people trying to deal with this sin and get out of its vicious cycle.
All sin separates us from God. All sin leads to spiritual death.
Are you not also in need of God’s mercy and grace?
I used to have a book by a guy who worked with homosexuals as a psychiatrist in the 70s & 80s. He said some were deeply homosexual and could only really be helped to learn how to live with it, while others were entirely voluntary, and most were somewhere in between. Not sure I still own the book, but it presented homosexuality as a continuum of behavior rooted in early childhood (for many, not all). The author’s goal in treatment was to help the individual determine where they were, how much they wanted to change, and then to help the patient meet HIS goals.
Good book but I’m not sure it survived my periodic book thinning.
The problem lies in the fact that there are many incompetent therapists out there who can and do cause harm at times; and especially in this area there are poorly trained and unethical zealots pushing a pseudo-religious ideal-- hence the lable "conversion" therapy.
But there is a useful therapeutic approach which does not apply religion abusively, or at all; and this is the approach developed by Nicolosi. He has done the research and has therapeutic successes to point to.
Des it work all the time? of course not. No therapy does. But does it help people to feel better about themselves and indeed change their sexual proclivities? Yes, in many cases.
Banning his books from Amazon is nothing more than totalitarian oppression of freedom of thought and speech. It will get worse because there is no unified association of people motivated to take action to defend their freedom.
sorry allah, your pretzel logic cannot be turned into an attack on me.
Now go back to your bathhouse and praise homosexuals, pedophiles and those who choose beastiality - it’s all the same evil.
They're aimed at parents.
Conservatives had better be paying attention here. The LGBT lobby is trying to slide these conversion therapy bans under the radar. Indeed, language in the Equality Act would've declared conversion therapy harmful. This would've opened the door to future laws being passed against it.
If these conversion therapy bans pass, there's going to be a lot of parents out there shocked to discover that it is now against the law for them to counsel their own rebellious or confused children against homosexuality.
Pay attention!
So you can go from straight to gay and taht's possible, but deciding to be straight again is impossible??
Sure......
The Left is looking more and more like the Ape Government in the movie Planet of the Apes. Maybe that is what we should start calling them “Apes”.
What is really telling is that it is okay to use conversion therapy in our constant daily life by the gay left to convert children to the gay lifestyle but all hell breaks loose when it is tried to convert back or when it is not wanted.
Re: “sorry allah, your pretzel logic cannot be turned into an attack on me.
Now go back to your bathhouse and praise homosexuals, pedophiles and those who choose beastiality - it’s all the same evil.”
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
“Do not be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor “men who have sex with men” nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor “slanderers” nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. “And that is what some of you were.”
But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Romans 3:21-25
But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
——-
Just saying we all need God’s forgiveness, mercy, and love. Me, you, homosexuals, slanderers, liars, etc.
I really wasn’t trying to pick a fight with you. I just thought I would qualify the “choice” of homosexuality. Some do simply openly rebel against God and choose to sin with no impetus other than their own rebellion. Others have some real medical/mental issues, and even some had abuse that pushed them in that direction. But, as I’ve already said three times now - no matter what the case - whether open rebellion or medical/mental - it is a choice that God tells us not to make.
You’re absolutely correct that homosexuality is an offense and abomination to a God because it deliberately goes against His created order.
But, whether homosexuals, or slanderers, thieves, liars, etc. - all sinners are loved by God, even before we accept Him. He loves us even when we “were enemies of God”!
“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:10).
The Good News is that God, in His mercy, chose to bring us forgiveness and salvation - a salvation that only faith in Christ can bring to us all. I am greatly humbled by that mercy and grace.
This is not condoning sin - it’s just God saying He loves us in spite of it. Of course we all need/must repent. Some are willing but need help getting out of it.
So, I guess I’m just trying to say we need to show the same grace and mercy that God has shown us. If you feel you don’t need God’s grace, I guess that’s between you and Him.
By the way, “allah” is Muslim, not Christianity. I’m not Muslim.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.