Does “Conversion Therapy” (Counselling) Constitute Harm or Help?
Advocates for banning “conversion therapy” do so on the basis that sexual orientation and gender identity are innate and immutable and, this being so, efforts to change are inherently harmful and should be criminally punishable. When public policy is based on incorrect or incomplete assumptions, poor policy with detrimental consequences is the inevitable result. It is therefore vitally important to test the accuracy of this underlying assumption. It is insufficient to simply believe that sexual orientation and gender identity are fixed and immutable because popular opinion declares it to be so. Nor should public policy be guided only by the deeply felt convictions of a politically radical minority. For the criminalisation of “conversion therapy” to produce the benefit intended, the assumption that change is impossible, and efforts to produce it damaging and futile, must actually be correct.
Read the attached document which presents the collated results of testimonies from 70 ex-LGBT people…