Is a conversion therapy law necessary?

He also says "harmful practices" are already illegal and links this with electro shock therapy in a way that implies it is illegal. It isn't, it's actually a treatment for clinical depression that is referred to by webMD as "safe", "painless", and "harmless".

You're confusing two different things here.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a treatment for deprression that involves stimulating the brain by passing electrical current through the head. It is performed under aneasthesia so that the participant doesn't feel any pain.

That is completey different to the kinds of aversion therapy involed in historical gay conversion, which involved showing individuals same-sex erotic imagery and then giving them painful electric shocks to try to condition them out of their same sex attraction. Nowadays these technques are considered deeply unethical and are not practiced in the UK (or I suspect anywhere in the developed world).

www.livingout.org/resources/stories/19/sean-and-gaby

I don’t necessarily agree with the video above. I don’t think God would create gay people and not be happy for them to express that and experience it. However I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what they are doing. I don’t think it’s harmful if they are just supporting people who have asked for support. It’s transparent and linked to the CoE.

Rev Richard Coles had a celibate relationship with his partner. He thought sex outside marriage was wrong, for him at least, and that two men couldn’t be marriage in the eyes of god. If he advised the same to a gay person would he be committing “conversion therapy“?

While I don’t agree with these views I don’t want to stop people expressing them or helping people who believe too.

Surely banning the above could drive it underground in more strict groups with more abhorrent practices. It’s likely some groups are doing this now in illegal ways already, in churches/mosques etc that are less open and engaged with authorities.

@Mollyollydolly I felt like I was being lectured through most of the programme and the timing is very suspicious.

Nobody thinks gay conversion therapy is a good thing. The question is what it means for children and the trans ideology. Did anyone else watch 'Call the Midwife' on Sunday and think it was odd that this week they had a story about gay conversion therapy? Strange timing. I'm deeply cynical about what the aims of this are after the Keira Bell verdict.

I think gay conversion therapy should absolutely be banned, it's horrifying that there are still people out there who think homosexuality needs curing. Whether that's "praying the gay away" or insisting their gay son is actually a straight girl.

With the short government consultation being announced I wanted to bump this thread by sharing this.

Here Glinner speaks to Thoughtful Therapists, opening with some background on the guide for Therapists that conflates sex and gender identity.

There are conversion 'therapies' offered by churches. I know of young gay and lesbian people who have been subject to them in recent years.

From the surprisingly robust Observer article today:

The current campaign to ban so-called gay conversion therapy is, [David Bell] believes, likely to become a Trojan horse for trans activists who will use it to put pressure on any clinician who does not immediately affirm a young person’s statement about their identity, decrying this, too, as a form of “conversion”.

www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/02/tavistock-trust-whistleblower-david-bell-transgender-children-gids

This is the brilliant interview with Bev and Kate from LGB Alliance, it has been shared on another thread but I'm posting it here as it goes into some discussion around gay conversion therapy as one of their next actions now they are officially a charity.

All of it is brilliant but the gay conversion therapy bit starts around 45 mins in.

I kind of agree about the Trojan Horse. And usually I don't agree with a lot of that kid of theory, I just think people are kind of thick about making good laws.

But I think that this is pretty clearly really directed at trans children and youth, not what we think of as gay conversion therapy. If it were, we would be seeing something concrete about what that is involving, how many people, who is doing it, and none of that is really forthcoming. There are anecdotes, and some aren't all that recent either.

But there have been indications that there may be a real change of direction with the affirmation approach, as more research comes in and we begin to see the results of it over time. Sweden is already heading in that direction it seems and they are ahead of many other countries on this. The characterisation of non-affirmation approaches as conversion therapy seems to be very much about making that rethinking dangerous for practitioners.

Trojan horse is a excellent way of putting it. The Dentons document on which much strategy to obtain policy change has been based, suggested that gender recognition should be tied to “more popular reform” such as same-sex marriage, or perhaps gay conversion therapy laws. To create “a veil of protection”

I think thr proposed ban is on shaky ground if it doesn't define "conversion therapy" and doesn't distinguish between forced and voluntary. Of course any forced coverdion therapy should be banned, along with snything painful of harmful such as drugs or rlecttic shock. These are dangerous. But if you ban voluntary counselling, you are possibly removing a service from some people who might want it.
Based on my reading of the science, neither gender identity nor sexuality are immutable or biologically determined from birth.
With regard to gender identity, there are serious long term consequences in an unquestioningly affirmational approach which bans counsellors from questioning a person (often a child) who proposes to go through invasive and untested medical interventions. If the patient changes their mind later on, there's no going back.
With regard to sexual orientation, no such permanent danger exists. However, the idea that sexual orientation is fixed is questionable and can often change over the course of someone's lifetime. Some people may wish to change their orientation for whatever reason, and I'm not convinced that it's fair to remove this option from them because of an assumption that we know best, i.e their desire to change is wrong. All of us will have things we like about ourselves snd things we would like to change, and I think the state should be very wary about banning things unless there is evidence of clear harm. So forced or coerced conversion therapy should be banned along with anything involving physical harm, but let people have counselling if that's what they really want.

Oh blimey, spelling!! Counselling, counselling, counselling...

@Scepticaltank has it right. This proposed bill is nothing but a smokescreen for trying to stop the 'watchful waiting' which is the best proven treatment for youngsters with ROGD.

The whole purpose of this Trojan Horse bill is to try to stop the 'watchful waiting' and councilling, which should be offered to ROGD children.

Their dysphoria is almost always cured by puberty.

The 'wrapper' of the bill, the gay conversion therapy bit, is just a diversion. It's a non- issue.

Yeah I'm not sure.

It's a big problem in the USA. They are a totally different culture.

Is there any evidence about gay conversion here?
My guess is, and it's a guess, that it's in certain religious groups/ communities mainly. And in them, it's not conversion. It's just not an option.

We have closed religious communities in my area. Christian and Jewish. Where there have been things flagged in the past. No appetite to address.

It feels like a USA imported issue? To me.

I've not seen any info/ stats about gay conversion therapy in the UK.

Does anyone else have some?

Yes, it was only later that I managed to watch to the end and I was going to comment on Dominic Davies of Pink Therapy talk about how in his view paedophilia is a sexual orientation.

I'll end with one final comment on the video. If you watch it, ask yourself this:

Did they suggest anything that, were it to be followed, would mean fewer girls would find themselves in the position of Keira Bell?

[quote OhHolyJesus]I share without comment - I believe this was from at some point last summer.

(It says it's confidential but I was able to get access)

[[https://vimeo.com/453348242/9aadce0903]][/quote]
I wont write what I'm thinking but that bunch made me {{{Shudder}}}.

At around 36 mins in

"If paedophillia is a sexual orientation, which personally I think it is, it's not mutable. Like any treatment that tries to eradicate any sexual orientation, therapy doesn't work on changing it. What does work is supporting people to not act on impulses"

I'm not a therapist or a behavioural psychologist but I could read the body language of those participants and it spoke volumes.

I hope someone has saved that video

We know how people feel about it, which is not all the same for everyone, we know that people don't seem to think about it or experience it in the same way in every culture, we have some data around behaviour but it's difficult to separate it from cultural context. We don't know that sexuality is really just one thing or refers to a few different things we tend to lump together.

don't think it's ever a good thing to tell ourselves we know more than we do about things like this.

Going back to the video, things Pink Therapy love:
early application of puberty blockers
Stonewall
asexual people (who they see as being highly effective to deploy in arguments)

It looks like asexual people are to conversion therapy what people with a DSD condition are to sex is a spectrum.

Of course sexuality can’t be changed, people who say they were always straight and they’re now gay/bisexual were probably always bisexual/gay and just suppressed it. Can’t believe people on here are arguing for gay conversion therapy. No the worst that can happen isn’t they feel disappointed, the worst that can happen is they commit suicide because they’ve been wrongfully told they can choose to be straight if they just tried hard enough.

Very interesting. The lead chap, Dominic Davies, refers to "the TERFs". Maybe not the best person to get balanced counselling from.

As ever in the absence of making clear what "conversion therapy" means in relation to trans people, this doesn't come across as a meaningful discussion.

As for your later post about sex offenders, I don't really see what this has to do with it as being a sex offender isn't a sexual orientation.

But I'm guessing that a ban on gay conversion therapy would cover any attempt to suppress gay sexuality.

Imagine someone in a heterosexual marriage, that was being troubled by homosexual feelings at times. They don't necessarily need to switch orientation exactly, but they might want to suppress that side of their sexuality.

And I think that's roughly comparable to trying to suppress deviant sexuality of whatever type.

I don't of course mean that they are morally equivalent or homosexual feelings are bad.

I mean, that if it's possible to "cure" for one case, you could likely "cure" it for the other also.