When we speak of pro-heterosexual counseling and therapy, we are not referring to efforts that have homosexual attractions and activity as their exclusive focus, even though the client’s ultimate goal certainly can be to move from homosexuality to heterosexuality. When a client has other objectives, no competent therapist ever will push the goal of heterosexuality on him or her. Yet when client and therapist agree that heterosexuality is the goal, counseling efforts that achieve it, or that help a client move toward it, focus primarily on the underlying causes of same-sex attraction. These causes often involve deep emotional wounds. When the wounds are addressed, healing occurs over time, and homosexual attraction automatically tends to diminish, often with a corresponding increase in heterosexual attraction. It is in this sense that such counseling is pro-heterosexual. Another important point: Effective counseling never, ever shames or coerces a client.
Experts at choosing words to maneuver for advantage in a debate, LGBT activists use the term “conversion therapy” to demonize and malign all pro-heterosexual change efforts: Sadly,
those who profess to want to protect children from abuse, and relieve their suffering, actively advance legislation whose outcome is just the opposite. Many children want to be cured of same-sex attraction or being transgender. But because activists in our society a) refuse to accept that these are disorders, and 2) therefore, refuse to accept that such therapy can rightly be considered cures, they vigorously seek to outlaw such activities.
Be sure of one thing, whether or not electrical shock is employed is irrelevant. But don’t expect to hear that admission.
In other words, people who seek bans on “conversion therapy” aren’t primarily targeting shock treatments or other really harmful approaches. They are targeting any and all efforts to help people with unwanted same-sex attraction. The Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg expresses it well. After noting that bills like AB 2943 don’t just outlaw harmful techniques, he exposes supporters’ real intent: “When pressed, sponsors [of therapy bans] must admit that they seek to outlaw ordinary talk therapy as well. What these laws and bills target is nothing more or less than a goal: ‘to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.’ This is extraordinary.”
When pressed, sponsors [of therapy bans] must admit that they seek to outlaw ordinary talk therapy as well. What these laws and bills target is nothing more or less than a goal: “to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” This is extraordinary.”
—Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council—
Thus, driving therapy bans is the reality that effective therapy is a threat to gay activists’ narrative. Anyone who has moved from homosexuality to heterosexuality, by his her very existence, counters the notion that gays are “born that way” and cannot change.
Copyright © 2018 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
top image: Photo by Zachary Young on Unsplash