The Pros And Cons Of Sexual Orientation Therapy

Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy began in the time of Sigmund Freud, and how it was practiced in the time of Sigmund Freud is significantly different from how it is practiced in modern day society, Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy was used in order to further the field of psychosexuality that was still in its infant stage. Freud wrote to a woman in Nineteen- Thirty five who had asked for her son to be cured of his homosexuality, that “Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and
modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime – and cruelty, too (Homosexuality and Mental Health).”
To Sigmund Freud, the father of psychosexuality, he did not consider homosexuality something that needed to be cured. So why now, do people go to such great lengths to “cure” their children of their homosexuality, when Sigmund Freud and the American Psychological Association consider Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy unethical, and possibly damaging to the patients mental health(Cramer, Golom, LoPresto, Kirkley)? Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy should be illegal to be administered to both willing and unwilling patients of all ages, due to the amount of both physical and psychological harm that can be both directly and indirectly caused by the therapy.
Homosexuality has not been listed as a mental disease in the Diagnostic Statistics Manual of Mental Diseases (DSM) since 1973, and Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy has been considered an unethical pseudo-therapy by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association since 1997 (American Psychological Association). It is considered unethical by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, due to the nature of Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy, that more often than not, patients that both willingly and unwillingly participate in Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy, are far more likely to exhibit extreme depression and anxiety, sexual dysfunction, and are thirty percent more likely to commit suicide than individuals that have not participated in Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy (Haldeman).
It also needs to be taken into consideration that both willing and unwilling people participate in Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy, and more often than not it is due to the fact that someone who is extremely religious believes that homosexuality is a sin and wants their child or a person themselves to be “cured” of their homosexuality, or an individual believes that the thoughts they are having about a person of the same sex are “unclean,” and “unchristian,” and those thoughts are taught to them by a religious extremist person or persons. That is more often than not, the reason that a person experiences Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy.
For the people that are forced to undergo Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy, it is often more harmful to a person’s self-esteem and their physical selves, than it is to their self-worth and personal identity.
To people like Samuel Brinton, due to being raised in what could be called a Southern Baptist religious compound, that resemble the Polygamist compounds that have been in the news in the past few years; Sam had no idea that he was not supposed to be attracted to other boys (Bentley). Sam was led down a religious path that did not teach him that men should not be attracted to other men. So when a Playboy magazine found its way into the hand of the boys in the compound, and Sam told his father that he was not attracted to the women in the magazine, but the feelings he believed that he should have felt for the women in the magazine, he felt for his best friend Dale. His father, who we find out as we listen to Sam’s recollection of the events that occurred before his Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy “torture,” that his father repeatedly “beat the gay away” which resulted in multiple trips to the emergency room before the Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy or what Sam called his “Month of Hell” even began
(Bentley).
After being sent to the emergency room a total of six times, for various reasons such as falling down the stairs or tripping on the sidewalk, his parents came to the skewed revelation that “beating the gay away,” was not going to work. That was when Sam’s “Month of Hell” began. Sam was made to believe that he had A.I.D.S (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), and that the United States government had committed mass genocide by killing all of the homosexuals and if he told anyone that he was gay, that the government would kill him. Sam was the forced to endure large blocks of ice placed on his hands, and heating coils wrapped around his hands while he was shown photos of men touching or hugging, so that he would associate pain with making physical contact with another man. Sam also had needles shoved under his fingernails and received large quantities of electric shock while he was shown both illicit photographs and videos of men performing sexual acts on other men (Bentley).
By the end of his “Month of Hell,” (Bentley) Sam could not take it anymore, he believed that killing himself was the only answer. So Sam said goodbye to his sister, climbed to the roof of the three-story building where he lived and was going to jump. Sam’s mother appeared on the roof and told Sam that his family would love him again if he would just change. Sam rationalized that if he jumped off the roof and it did not kill him, he would just have to endure the torture. Sam made the decision to just pretend to be straight, and that was how Sam lived for six years. Until he went to college and encountered a lesbian couple, and discovered that despite what he was told by his mother and father, that he was not the last homosexual in the United States. After the encounter with the lesbian couple, Sam came out to his parents again, and after speaking to them he found all of his things on the front steps on his childhood home with the door locked, and the locks changed, and he has not spoken to his parents since then (Bentley).
Sam is now twenty-five years old and still battles with extreme depression, anxiety around other men, and thoughts of suicide. Sam endured those horrors, and his “Month of Hell,” over thirteen years ago, and he still struggles with crippling mental instability, and crippling intimacy issues. Sam still struggles with the issues that were forced upon an innocent twelve year old boy, just because he had sexual and emotional feelings for his best friend. But Sam’s parents still live in the same building that Sam attempted to jump from, and they are completely unaware of the disability that they have forced upon their son. If a person is hit by a car, and bound to a wheelchair for the rest of their lives, the person that hit them is punished. So why have Sam’s parents not received a punishment for the disability that they caused their son? If Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy is made illegal, than maybe, just maybe, some justice could be given to Sam and all other people that have endured Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy (Bentley).
Sam was forced to unwillingly participate in Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy, but if we consider the findings of Shidlo, Schroeder, and Spitzer whose research revolved around men and women who are members of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter Day Saints and other strongly anti-homosexual religions. These men and women willingly participated in Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy, due to their personal religious beliefs in terms of sexuality and marriage clashing with what their pre-therapy sexual orientation was personified and expressed as. When interviewed by Shidlo, Schroeder, and Spitzer, the two hundred Mormon men and women (one-hundred and forty three men, and fifty-seven women) believed that homosexuality was “a sin next to murder,” and an “abomination,” a “danger,” and an “unnatural conduct” (Beckstead and Morrow).
Those beliefs are taught to Mormon children and children that belong to the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter Day Saints from infancy, so to the two-hundred men and women that participated in Shidlo, Schroeder, and Spitzer’s study, homosexuality was a wall standing in the way of their further closeness to God. The two-hundred men and women underwent the Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy, but of those two-hundred men and women; more than fifty percent completed their therapy and reported “increased depression, suicidality, and internalized homophobia; decreased self-esteem; increased distorted perceptions of homosexuality; increased intrusive imagery and sexual dys- function; increased monitoring of gender-deviant mannerisms; increased negative feelings toward family of origin; increased alienation, loneliness, and social isolation; interference with intimate relationships; loss of social supports; fear of being a child abuser; delay of developmental tasks; and loss of faith (Beckstead and Morrow).” Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy was supposed to help those two hundred men and women, but it was once again found that the therapy did more harm than good to the participants. If you judge by what the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, as well as the studies done by Beckstead and Morrow, Shidlo, Schroeder, and Spitzer, as well as the firsthand accounts of Sam Brinton on just how horrifying that Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy can actually be. When the odds of suicide and extreme mental disability outweigh the probability of success, if it were any other therapy or medical procedure, the government would see it shut down and disbanded. But the United States government still has not completely separated church and state, which allows for a therapy that has its roots so deeply seated in the world of religion. Some people have compared the use of Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust. Hitler used religion as a means to kill a mass number of people who he believed had wronged him. In that sense, Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy is the same concept. The use of Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy in a sense, due to the fact that more than sixty percent of the people that participate in Sexual Orientation Conversion therapy, are more likely to commit suicide or be extremely mentally and emotionally disabled. Something that is so damaging should not be legal just for the fact that church and state is not completely separate. So why is this kind of pseudo-therapy legal in the United States?