Conversion Therapy Bans Aren’t Based on Science or Facts.
If you are a boy who wants to be a girl the government, the medical community, teachers, and administrators will fly to your aid. If you don’t want to act on your same-sex attraction anymore, it will be illegal for anyone to help you. Think about that.
Bans on LGBT “conversion therapy” are proliferating. It’s just so easy for a politician to stand against these therapies that many people continue to seek out because the media will praise you. There is virtually no downside for politicians.
28 states in the US have banned it even though it’s difficult to define. Several countries have also done the same.
Pastors will be jailed over this. Make no mistake. And the parameters of the laws are nebulous as well. What is conversion therapy and what is simply teaching the Christian view of sexuality?
But here’s the other thing. Are any of these bans on SOCE (Sexual Orientation Change Effort) based on science? Nope. In fact, there’s some reason to believe that those who have gone through it are less likely to attempt suicide than those of the LGBT community that don’t.
“Where is the peer-reviewed expert proof that “talking conversion therapy” is harmful?
A lot is at stake. The terms of the various laws vary, but some of them would prevent psychologists, pastors, or even parents from dissuading children from a belief that they are gay or lesbian or trans.
An article published this week in a leading peer-reviewed journal, Frontiers in Psychology, claims that there is none. American sociologist Paul Sullins states bluntly that “even for persons for whom SOCE has had no efficacy, there is no discernible psychosocial risk”. (Sexual Orientation Change Effort)
Sullins analysed data from the Generations study gathered by the Williams Institute, an LGBT thinktank in California. This is the first long-term, five-year study to examine the health and well-being across three generations of American lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals.
He compared SOCE alumni — people who have undergone “conversion therapy” — with non-SOCE LGB persons. Astonishingly, for anyone informed only by the overheated media coverage, he found no difference between the two groups for several measures of behavioural harm, including suicidal morbidity, psychological distress, self-harm (cutting), and substance abuse.
True, SOCE alumni probably did experience stress and stigma over their lifetimes – but they did not fare worse than the non-SOCE group. Even in measures like internalised homophobia and the number of days of poor mental health in the past month there was no difference. There was at least one difference — they were more likely to be out about their sexuality.
Bold claims – but the UK government’s own report candidly admits that the evidence base is very weak.
Most people believe that “conversion therapy” is always and everywhere wrong, like female genital mutilation, so the no-harm theory requires some unpacking.
From a policy perspective, the real question is not whether a gay or lesbian person has memories of a stressful experience, but whether its effects were truly long-lasting. It’s important to bear in mind that someone who seeks out therapy must already be troubled.
Sullins found that: “Those who had undergone SOCE were no more likely to experience psychological distress or poor mental health, to engage in substance or alcohol abuse, to intentionally harm themselves, or to think about, plan, intend or attempt suicide, than were those who had not undergone SOCE.”
Sullins acknowledges that several studies have reported harm following SOCE, particularly increased suicidal behaviour. But only four of these used a random sample and all four failed to distinguish suicidal behaviour before and after SOCE. Sullins’s study, on the other hand, is based on 1,518 people who self-identified as LGB in a Gallup survey of 350,000 American adults.
He found that suicidal behaviour is much higher before SOCE (which probably prompted requests for therapy) but not afterward. In fact, in a forthcoming critique of an influential study by gay suicide expert John Blosnich, Sullins argues that people who have experienced SOCE are less inclined to commit suicide:
“Experiencing SOCE therapy does not encourage higher suicidality, as they claim; rather, experiencing higher suicidality appears to encourage recourse to SOCE, which in turn strongly reduces suicidality, particularly initial suicide attempts. Restrictions on SOCE deprive sexual minorities of an important resource for reducing suicidality, putting them at substantially increased suicide risk.”
Let that sink in. If Sullins is right, depriving LGB people of the possibility of seeking therapy could lead to more suicides, not fewer.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is extraordinary that the UK government is contemplating the criminalisation of talking therapies. Common sense suggests that people need to talk about their sexual anxieties. Where is the extraordinary evidence that common sense is wrong?
Unfortunately, virtue signalling is higher on the list of Liz Truss’s priorities than gathering evidence. She says bluntly: “it is the view of the government that one incident of conversion therapy is too many.”
So it might be the case that suicide rates are lower among those who went through SOCE than those who didn’t. You’d think that would give these legislators some pause, eh? But no. Their virtue signaling is more important than the actual health and well-being of people afflicted with same-sex attraction.
Once again, those on the right are pointing to science and facts and the left is simply declaring their righteousness and condemning all who stand against them as heretics.