The Other Gay Rights Movement

woman-behind-door-closeted-0611136If you live in the United States, you are probably aware of the growing momentum of the movement to grant gay people the right to marry: the marriage equality movement. With eleven states and the District of Columbia now granting lesbian and gay people this right, a tipping point may have been reached. It feels as though there is no turning back.

But you may not be aware of a smaller, less-publicized movement—the growing efforts to ban what has been called reparative therapy, conversion therapy, “ex-gay therapy,” or SOCE: Sexual Orientation Change Efforts, as officially deemed by the American Psychological Association.

First, a bit of background. For decades homosexuality was considered a mental disorder, which gave legitimacy to social prejudice. The fact that gay people were automatically called “sick,” simply by virtue of their same-sex attractions, was used as a justification for criminalization of gay sex acts ad for discrimination against gay people in housing, employment, child custody decisions, and more. In addition, sometimes barbaric methods of psychiatric “treatment” were used to “cure” people of homosexuality, often forced upon minors after they were committed to mental institutions by their parents.

Breaking Ground for Civil Rights

So it was a major gay activist victory when, in 1973, homosexuality was deemed “not a mental illness” by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the official keepers of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). It is hard to overestimate the importance of the APA decision. Some historians believe that it laid the groundwork for many of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights gains that followed over the next four decades. And, of course, it put an immediate end to the most flagrant excesses and abuses of SOCE methods, such as aversive conditioning and involuntary commitments to psychiatric hospitals.

In 1983, ten years after that momentous decision, I started the Institute for Personal Growth as one of the first gay affirmative therapy centers. I had many lesbian and gay clients, older than I, who had endured lasting mental damage from SOCE psychotherapy. Even if these men and women, coming of age in the 1950’s and 60’s, hadn’t suffered some of the more extreme techniques, like psychiatric commitment and electroshock, they had been told repeatedly by their therapists that they were sick and doomed to a life of loneliness and misery if they didn’t change.

But they COULDN’T change. Study after study shows SOCE may influence people to repress behavior and perhaps even same sex urges for a while, but nothing can eliminate an attraction that appears to be inborn. So gay people who endured SOCE back then experienced lack of support even from their therapists, on top of rejection by family and society. More often than not, SOCE therapists made their gay and lesbian clients less mentally healthy, not more. I and therapists like me thought that those heartbroken clients would become a thing of the past with the APA decision. After all, the treatments were ineffective, probably harmful, and, since the APA’s decision, unnecessary and unethical.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

But we underestimated the backlash against gay rights that took place in the 1980s and 90s, a backlash that included the re-emergence of the reparative therapy movement, this time driven primarily by the Religious Right. In a bizarre turn of events, the movement was bolstered in 2002 by Robert Spitzer, who had been a supporter of removal of homosexuality as a mental illness back in 1973. Spitzer maintained that some people apparently could change orientation, and his stance gave renewed credibility to the ‘ex-gay’ movement. In the years after Spitzer’s endorsement, the SOCE movement thrived.

And so the debate among mental health professionals about whether homosexuality could be ‘cured’ began again. More research was done, and most showed SOCE to be ineffective at best, and harmful at worst. For example, SOCE clients have elevated rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. Recently, the organization Beyond Ex-Gay, comprised of SOCE “survivors” posted a survey that, so far, has garnered over 400 responses, 80% of whom say they incurred personal harm from the treatment that lasts to this day. Professional health and mental health organizations worldwide have nearly universally deemed SOCE unethical. Nevertheless, it continues to be practiced, especially in the United States.

In April 2012, in a stunning turn-around, the same psychiatrist, Robert Spitzer, recanted his position of 2002, acknowledged the ineffectiveness of SOCE, and apologized to the gay community for the harm his public stance caused lesbians and gays. Just as his endorsement of conversion therapy efforts bolstered that movement, so did his recant and apology give more survivors the strength to go public. It also gave birth to the movement to make SOCE illegal for minors.

Progressive Action in the United States

Within months of Spitzer’s retraction, California passed such a law. Since then, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania have introduced bills to criminalize SOCE in their state legislators. It is rumored that federal legislation may follow.

The designers of this legislation have no quarrel with adults who may choose to undergo conversion therapy. The intent is to protect gay, lesbian, and gender nonconforming children. LGBT youth are already at higher risk for emotional problems like depression, posttraumatic stress (PTSD), and self-destructive behavior. They are more often bullied at school and rejected by their families. The harm done by bullying has also been well documented — as we see in the news too often lately — and it can last a lifetime. However, other studies indicate that parental support of the child’s identity and gender presentation can help to counteract those effects and provide a buffer for kids from the impact of bullying and the stress from school and peer rejection.

SOCE is especially harmful to children. First, it tells young LGBT clients that they are fundamentally defective for traits, feelings, and behaviors over which they have no control and cannot change, inculcating both self-hatred and a feeling of personal failure. And SOCE therapists advise parents to view their children’s orientation as a “disease” to be discouraged, or even punished, in the name of cure. Thus, already vulnerable young people are exposed to continued disapproval and shame from family, peers, and their own therapists.

The argument has been made that parents should have the right to choose this therapy for their children. I’m sure most of the parents who subject their children to SOCE are well-meaning and trusting of their SOCE therapist. Moreover, few of them know that change efforts have been discredited and deemed unethical by every major mental health professional organization in the world.

But in other situations — say, parents who want to deny life-saving treatment to their children because of religious beliefs — the state intervenes on behalf of the best interests of the children. Knowing the facts that we do about both the ineffectiveness of reparative therapy and the harm it can do to a young psyche, I would argue that this is a parallel situation. We need to protect all children, regardless of sexual orientation — even if that means protecting them from their own families.

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  • 6 comments
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  • emma

    June 11th, 2013 at 11:59 PM

    a message to all the homophobic people out there:
    if Im happy the way I am then you have no right to tell me I should change.if it isnt harming me then why change at all?bad habits need to be gotten rid of,not habits that you do not!

  • Blakely

    June 12th, 2013 at 4:07 AM

    Reparative therapy?
    I didn’t even realize that there are segments of the population who would still in this day and time think that this is ok.

  • Christine

    June 12th, 2013 at 8:52 PM

    If someone desires change for themselves, who is anyone else to tell them no. Freedom of choice should go both ways.

    P.s. it’s not homophobic to have a different opinion.

  • randall

    June 13th, 2013 at 4:19 AM

    I want to be true to who I am and what I am. I am a gay male with no intention or desire to become anything more or less. Why does this have to be the onlyu identifier that matters to others? Why isn’t the fact that I am self made, successful. smart, energetic, etc. more important than the fact that I am gay?

  • margaret nichol, ph.d.

    June 14th, 2013 at 11:18 AM

    hi christine

    i agree with you completely – except these bills aren’t about adults making choices for themselves, they are about adults forcing on unwilling children a therapy that could be harmful to them.

  • Arie Mirmanas

    March 1st, 2014 at 5:28 PM

    Thanks ofr that, Christine and Randall! I do certainly agree with both of you… If I choose to do reparative therapy and to work on diminishing my homosexual desires, it should be my right for self-determination and freedom, and, if as Randall, someone wants to live a gay life and they are happy and they believe this is who they are, so be it! I believe in freedom of self-determination, and protecting minorities of persecution, repression and basically give full human rights to everyone… I, myself, ever felt I was “really” homosexual in the first place, and even out as gay, it was not for me. I choose this path of reparative therapy, and it worked for me, yes, it was a difficult bumpy road, and a very lonely place to be sometimes as so many people do not support what I due mainly because of lack of understanding, but, at the same time, I do not believe that people are fully aware of the consequences that many gay, especially men, get because of their involvement in the gay lifestyle… Much worst than any person I ever met who choose to do rt :) Is simply that gay activists have lots of cash to do huge marketing and manipulate the masses… That’s all… Freedom, choice and honesty do matter….

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