Reparative and similar therapies changing sexual orientation

The two approaches to therapy

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Types of mental health therapies:

There are two contrasting beliefs about homosexual behavior:

With such opposing beliefs concerning homosexual behavior, there are obviously two different approaches to the counseling and therapy of homosexuals.

The two main types of mental-health therapies are:

 "... the psychological effects on lesbians and gays from the heterosexism, homophobia and homo-ignorance from society, family religion, and one's culture..." ₁

This form of therapy is promoted by many persons with a homosexual or bisexual orientation, religious liberals, secularists, and all of the large mental health professional associations in North America.

As with all forms of therapy, clients will have various degrees of success with GAT, depending largely on their relationship with their therapist.

This website's beliefs:

It is our belief that no therapeutic technique, whether recovered memory therapy, therapy for multiple personality disorder, facilitated communications, theophostic counseling, etc. should be widely practiced until after its efficacy and safety are firmly established. People's lives are simply too valuable to risk injury from dangerous therapies.

we strongly recommend caution before entering either reparative therapy or transformational ministry programs.

Background to reparative therapy and transformational ministry programs.

There are dozens of topics involving medical science, physics, psychology, natural science, etc., where religious conservatives hold views that conflict from those of many other faith and science groups. Specific topics  include abortion, homosexuality, cosmology, age, origin and development of the world and its life forms, religion, and therapies designed to convert homosexuals to heterosexuals -- the topic of this section.

Attempts have been made to change sexual orientation through psychotherapy, aversion therapy, nausea producing drugs, castration, injections of estrogen, LSD, hypnosis, electric shock, brain surgery, breast amputations, etc. Both the U.S. government and the Nazi government of Germany tried to find a way of changing homosexuals to heterosexuals. All of these programs have one factor in common: they were miserable failures.

These methods were largely abandoned by the mid-1970's. However, Outrage!, a British support group for lesbians and gays, recently found it necessary to ask the Royal College of Psychiatrists to renounce aversion therapy and instruct its members to halt "the use of all therapies that attempt to cure homosexuality." ₂

Two methods are still in use with which therapists and lay groups attempt to change sexual orientation: Reparative Therapy is an experimental and controversial secular therapeutic technique. Another consists of various religious and spiritual practices by Transformational Ministries. Many groups that practice these therapies estimate their "cure" rate at 70% or more. Many gays, lesbians, mental-health professionals, religious liberals and human sexuality researchers estimate a rate of adult sexual orientation conversion as equal to or near 0.0%. ₃ We suspect that the latter estimate is closer to reality. Unfortunately, no long-term objective studies have ever been conducted, so there is little hard data to consider.

Millions of dollars per year are spent by individuals and groups:

However, no money or motivation appears to be available to fund a meaningful study of these counseling methods' effectiveness and potential adverse side effects. That is a pity, because there exists a lot of anecdotal evidence that failed therapy can drive many gays, lesbians, and bisexuals into deep depression; some commit suicide. Alternately, when some people fail to change their sexual orientation after reparative therapy, they realize that their orientation is fixed. Some come to terms with this and lead much better lives.

Whether reparative therapy generates more dead bodies than persons with changed orientations remains an open question.

References used:

The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.

1. Joe Kort, "So you'd like to learn about Gay Affirmative Therapy (GAT) at: http://www.amazon.com/ Kort has provided a list of 43 books on the topic.
2. "Christian Ex-gay ministry hosts Chicago conference," Charisma. Online at Maranatha Christian Journal, at: http://www.mcjonline.com/news/news3280.htm 
3. G.M. Herek, "Attempts to change sexual orientation," at: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_changing.html