I've always been a little uncomfortable with some of the things people say about why conversion therapy should be banned.
It's one thing to say, well, why would someone need to be converted, that is pretty straightforward. The strongest argument to allow it would be if some adult wanted to be straight, why restrict that, if it was possible to do it. There are reasons people might still think its not a good idea to allow it, but it's not a completely bizarre point of view. But if that's the argument against it, I don't have an issue.
But the idea that it doesn't work - well, sure, it seems that what what we call conversion therapy doesn't work. But that doesn't mean it could never work, who knows maybe there could be some discovery that would allow it, or to affect foetal development. I can think of lots of good reasons we might not do those things, but I don't like tying the idea that it doesn't work to why we don't do it.
We've kind of seen how making "conversion therapy" an amporphous idea can be a problem when it comes to trans issues. But I have wondered as well about some cases that could really seem like gay conversion therapy. People here talk about the development of fetishes a lot, and I know of some young males who may or may not have been gay in the regular sense, who in my observation were exposed to an environment where certain involving sex with other men, and there seemed to be a fetish based sexuality that came out of it. I imagine, though I don't know, that its similar to what happens in cultures where pederasty is normative. But if one of these men, as an adult, were to seek therapy, I wonder if the course of it could begin to look at the attraction to other men, and if so, would that be considered conversion therapy?
I imagine that could be a sensitive topic for gay men, but I don't kow if its not talked about because it is too pc, or I am just talking about something so rare it doesn't matter, or what.