The Pros And Cons Of Gay Conversion Therapy

There’s a small portion of society that grow up being Gay; they get treated differently, a new definition of what people don’t see as “normal”. In today’s world, there’s parents and friends that think that being gay is a sin. In a matter of fact, it is a sin according to religion (baptist, catholic, [etc..]). Some parents think that gay conversion therapy could help “cure” the sexuality of their child but will it? By showing a personal story, Sam Brinton wrote, “I Was Tortured in Gay Conversion Therapy. And It’s Still Legal in 41 States”. He tries to convince his audience that this therapy should end, therefore he wants people to feel the pain he went through, trust him when he talks about his experience, and believe that it’s unnecessary.
Although gay conversion therapy is legal in most states, only a few were open minded to end the program completely.
The state of Nevada, New Mexico, Connecticut, and New York were some places that banned this type of therapy. Sam Brinton’s parents forced him to go to conversation therapy, when he was just a middle schooler in Florida. His parents were Southern Baptist missionaries that thought that being gay or bisexual was a disgrace. There’s more people like Sam that go through the same situation. Sam’s persuasion is by using logos, pathos, and ethos to successfully convince states to ban the gay conversion therapy among the U.S. Therefore, he explains to his readers that the pain he had to go through, was more than just wrong but damaging. His experience in the conversation therapy was not helping him; he went to the point where he had to fake that it made a change. When people go to therapy in general, there’s so many emotions running through the room. Well, Sam felt lonely and heartbroken; there was an enormous amount of pain going through his mind. For this specific reason, he believes that this type of therapy should discontinue. Believe that it’s unnecessary, that people shouldn’t punish those that are gay, just because they act too
feminine. Pain is all that Sam could feel in this stage, for a couple of years in therapy. He explains that, “For over two years, I sat on a couch and endured emotionally painful sessions with a counselor. I was told that my faith community rejected my sexuality; that I was the abomination we had heard about in Sunday school; that I was the only gay person in the world; that it was inevitable I would get H.I.V. and AIDS”(par 2). Sam was forced to stay with a counselor for hours, days, months, and years. For being religious parents, they just wanted for Sam to be “cured”, they looked for what they thought to be the easy way out. Sunday school wasn’t even normal; getting criticized by people, thinking that he would have a higher chance to get H.I.V or AIDS. He felt left out and rejected by his own church; he didn’t feel welcomed. No one helped him to get out of the monstrous place, but once he got out, he wanted to say that, “the trauma of conversion therapy can cause depression, suicidal ideation, family rejection”(par 10). Sam’s experience was like living in hell; he was forced to do and see things that could scar him for life. The worst part of all was that, he had to see rated R clips that shouldn’t be shown to the young. “The therapist ordered me bound to a table to have ice, heat and electricity applied to my body. I was forced to watch clips on a television of gay men holding hands, hugging and having sex”(par 3). Sam was just a simple middle schooler! A middle schooler that didn’t choose to be the way he is now. Watching men holding hands may not be too bad to watch but having sex? That’s too extreme to take, especially for a young child. After all the time spent in gay conversion therapy, it had a motivation for Sam Brinton. He is now a proud bisexual that is the head of advocacy and government affairs for the Trevor project . This project is a big success for preventions of suicide and intervention organization for the L.G.B.T.Q youth. They get notified by survivors that got through conversion therapy, some that were contemplating suicide. Most of them fall to the category of being Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or those that are still questioning what they are. Through his eyes, he sees nothing else but knowing that gay conversion therapy is unnecessary.
Believing that it’s full of horrors that children need to face without expecting what is coming their way; Sam Believes it’s “heartbreaking that the study estimates that 20,000 L.G.B.T.Q. teens will receive conversion therapy from a healthcare professional before they turn 18. An even larger number of youth, an estimated 57,000 teenagers, will receive the treatment from a religious or spiritual adviser before adulthood”(par 8). No matter how harmful the session may be, this therapy won’t change all Gay people by how they act or feel. Sam stopped going to therapy but it didn’t change him. He did tell his counselor and parents that it worked, but that’s just because he didn’t want to keep getting hurt. He says that he sees himself as a survivor of conversation therapy, and he knows there’s people like him that have gone through the same situation. In a matter of fact there’s a boy from, “A Survivor Of Gay Conversion Therapy Shares His Chilling Story”, that experience the same. In year 2015, a 15 year old boy was forced by his parents to attend conversations therapy. His name was TC and he went through the same experience as how Sam had to go through. Saying “Their goal was to get us to hate ourselves for being LGBTQ, and they knew what they were doing..The second step of the program, they “rebuilt us in their image.” They removed us of everything that made us a unique person,
and instead made us a walking, talking, robot for Jesus. They retaught us everything we knew. How to eat, talk, walk, dress, believe, even breathe”(par 8). Therefore, Sam wants the program to end and that the youth need to survive. Gay people shouldn't choose to be gay or straight when they’re in conversation therapy, but to be happy for who they are. There’s parents that force their child’s to go through situations that seem to be the right thing to do. While Sam’s or TC’s parents had hope that they would get “cured”, they didn’t know the experience and the emotional pain they both had to go through. Gay conversion therapy is a harmful process, to practice of trying to change an individual's sexual orientation by using psychological or spiritual interventions. Sam’s message is so that this type of therapy needs to end; he wanted people to feel the pain he went through, trust him when he talked about his experience, and for people to end up believing that therapy is unnecessary. Gay people should be allowed to be freed like every other human being; they aren’t worthless.
Although TC and Sam have faked to their parents that gay conversion therapy helped “cure” them, they both are helping people that are just like them. In “A Survivor Of Gay Conversion Therapy Shares His Chilling Story”, James Michael Nichols wrote that TC escaped conversion therapy, “Today, he attends a religious university and still identifies as gay privately, a secret from his family who thinks the conversion therapy “worked.”(par 21). He is happy and knows that life will continue no matter what. As mentioned, Sam is also proud for what he has to help the gay. Today, he is serving as the leader of the Trevor Project, which is a large suicide prevention organization. There may be states like,New Hampshire that had recently rejected to help the youth from conversion therapy, but Sam and any followers won’t stop trying till they get this therapy to end for good.