I Was Tortured in Gay Conversion Therapy. And Its Still Legal in 41 States. (New York Times)

[Odoreida]

I Was Tortured in Gay Conversion Therapy. And It’s Still Legal in 41 States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/gay-conversion-therapy-torture.html

In the early 2000s, when I was a middle schooler in Florida, I was subjected to a trauma that was meant to erase my existence as a newly out bisexual. My parents were Southern Baptist missionaries who believed that the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion therapy could “cure” my sexuality.

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.

But it didn’t stop with these hurtful talk-therapy sessions. 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. I was supposed to associate those images with the pain I was feeling to once and for all turn into a straight boy. In the end it didn’t work. I would say that it did, just to make the pain go away.

...

Historical note:

Back in the 1950s when "homosexuality" was considered a disease and Behaviorism was all the rage, the whole aversion therapy thing (electric shocks and all) was tried. When it didn't work, the research was abandoned. Not because of any sudden access of ethical enlightenment, but simply because it just plain did not work.

So ethical issues aside, this is a "therapy" that has been scientifically proven not to work by actual experiment.

So I would think the existing laws against medical quackery should be enough in all states, but I guess "God" has an exemption from ordinary human decency.

[shenmue]

1. Mercy

[RKP5637]

2. Conversion Therapy sadists!!! n/t

[RKP5637]

3. One of my friends was given endless shock therapy treatments by a psychiatrist in the 50's.

He was confined to a hospital by his parents. F'ed up his head and mind. He told me about it years later, met him in later life.

[Irish_Dem]

4. Totally unconscionable, makes me sick.

Torturing people, children, because they are LGBT.
Violation of human rights.

[The Genealogist]

5. Sad and sick

I think some of the people who perform this torture (let's call it what it is) get off on it. I really do. This shouldn't be legal any place. I can't imagine parents who love their kids would put them through it.

[BaileyBill]

6. And this century there were psychologists willing...

to advise W's CIA on how best to torture their captives.

Knew many wonderful people in the field, but could no longer be a part of it.

[lambchopp59]

7. "Southern Baptist", I believe the same denomination as that horrific "Westboro" hate group.

I had to survive homeless after relatives of the Phelp's clan had brought their uncle "Fred" to town, to hold a jaw-droppingly ignorant "send the faggot sinner to hell" ceremony in my honor. It was 1974, homosexuality had recently been removed from the DSM. I endured social isolation and daily physical bullying, and it was the local "good christian southern baptists" that maintained my own ostracization from the community. I was the only known gay person in a community I've never returned to since I ran away to San Francisco in 1976. I've had to deal with the consequences of a bad start to my adult live ever since and deal with very similar PTSD as those who endured these "therapies".
Had one of these quack groups existed in the area, my parents would surely have sent me for such torture.
It's long past time people who believe they are going to bring back some 1950's ideal "beaver-cleaver" society were not only placed in the halls of shameful history, but also made to pay reparations for lives they've damaged.
It makes me cringe with nauseated disgust that Westboro and ilk hasn't been sued for every damn dime they have by the distress, impoverishment, ostracization and attempts to marginalize LGBT, or suggest horrific nazi-style genocide.
Here it is, 2018, and we're still reading about case after case of face-palmingly ignorant organized xenophobia, even have witnessed the power of the mob mentality that placed the Orange xenophobe in chief in office.
I escaped a relatively certain Matthew Shepard-esque fate at the hands of one of these hate groups. If I don't see the rightward swing of the socio-political pendulum reversed in our next two election cycles, I must admit I'm done with the U.S.A., 2020 will be nearing my retirement time and I don't want to stay in a country that seems to be trying to revive the damn stone age.

[Odoreida]

8. Westboro Baptist is its own little family cult with no denominational ties.

Southern Baptist is the biggest Protestant denomination in the USA.

Some are very regressive, but Jimmy Carter is one.