A War on Conversion Therapy

by Michael Jones · 2010-02-09 12:10:00 UTC
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Last week, an undercover activist in England exposed some fairly shocking revelations about British mental health professionals gaming the health care system in order to get the government to pay for conversion therapy for LGBT people. Fed up with conversion therapy and therapists who practice it, the activist, Patrick Strudwick, is now on a mission to root out conversion therapy wherever it exists, and report therapists who practice it to their professional ethics boards.

Strudwick has launched a group on Facebook, the Stop Conversion Therapy Taskforce, where he's drumming up support for a campaign to find health professionals who try and cure gay people, and bring them down.

"We believe that the practice by therapists, psychiatrists and religious leaders of attempting to change a person's sexual orientation is damaging, offensive, immoral, unethical and ineffective," the Taskforce says.

Wonder if the Montgomery County Public School District is paying attention?

Strudwick revealed some rather disturbing practices and statements by psychotherapists in the United Kingdom in a piece that ran in last week's Independent. Among his discoveries included psychotherapists who blamed homosexuality on bad parenting, as well as therapists who tried to pray away the gay.

Strudwick also came upon a renowned ex-gay therapist, Mario Bergner, who will be headlining a conversion therapy conference in Ireland later this month. Among the claims made by Bergner? That he overcame his physical attraction to men, and that he was able to pray away his HIV.

The bottom line comes down to the principle that conversion therapy wrecks lives. That's the crux of Strudwick's organizing on the issue.

"[Conversion therapists] defend their techniques vehemently, claiming: 'We offer choice! We only treat those who come looking for it!'" Strudwick writes in today's Guardian. "It's like a Venus flytrap blaming the hungry insect that wanders into its gaping mouth. But we are determined to root them out however long it takes. This won't be a battle. It's war."

War is pretty tough language. But one thing that certainly is worth getting behind: lobbying psychological associations the world over to condemn ex-gay therapy practices. It's happened here in the states, with the American Psychological Association saying last year that these types of therapy are damaging, deadly and destructive. Three adjectives that sound just about right when describing the type of tactics used in most conversion therapies.

Photo credit: kynan-stewart-hughes

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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