Is Britain's National Health Service Paying to Convert Homosexuals?

Is there anywhere on the face of the planet where discussions about health care don't create chaos? Take Britain, where an investigation into gay-to-straight reparative therapy revealed that Britain's National Health Service (NHS) was funding -- via taxpayer money -- treatment to convert people from homosexuality.

Don't you just love it when bad politics and bad science combine?

The investigative report was filed by Patrick Strudwick, a perfectly happy gay man who went undercover (so to speak) to infiltrate Britain's network of health professionals who believe homosexuality can be cured like a case of the chicken pox. But forget calamine lotion. This type of treatment requires a whole lot of dubious psychological practices that one patient told Strudwick was akin to "torture."

Reparative therapy appears to be not only common in Britain, but widespread. Professor Michael King at the University of London believes that one in six psychologists in Britain have tried to convert patients who idenitified as LGBT. If that's even halfway accurate, then there's an epidemic of really bad medicine going on in Britain.

"Shrinks who prey on the anxieties of gay people are not helping the lot of gay people one bit and don’t deserve referrals from the NHS," the Telegraph wrote.

They're right. Science has roundly condemned the use of psychotherapy to cure people of their sexual orientation. The NHS shouldn't be spending taxpayer money for bad science, and psychotherapy that sounds more like torture than counseling. Send the NHS, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, and the General Medical Council a message that reparative therapy is damaging and dangerous, and not deserving of a ringing endorsement by Britain's government.

Strudwick documents in his investigation that American reparative therapists, most notably Dr. Joseph Nicolosi of the widely discredited National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), have done a great job of organizing the psychological community in England. Dr. Nicolosi himself presented at a conference last year in England, where he told an audience full of psychotherapists that he counsels fathers, "If you don't hug your sons, some other man will."

Catchy sound bite, even if it's not accurate. And it seems particularly weird that the NHS would be shepherding money to support counseling similar to Nicolosi's. Last week, David Cameron was busy telling the country that same-sex relationships ought to be taught in school. This week, it's revealed that the government is paying for psychobabble and shady therapy practices to treat people and attempt to change their sexual orientation.

Check out Strudwick's in-depth coverage of what it felt like to meet with conversion therapists in his country. And then demand that the NHS condemn the use of reparative therapy -- particularly reparative therapy funded by the government. There's just no reason to be using government money to fund what so many have called "psychological torture."

Photo credit: xJasonRogersx