It’s like saying that child molestation should be legal because a lot of the practice of some pedophiles involves buying the children ice cream and taking them to see movies, which is fine. Or that driving 95 on a 55 mph road should be legal because some people are speeding to the hospital. Side exceptions don’t make rules and laws.

And the compelling interest of the law is, let’s not forget, to protect people. The imperative is to protect children. That’s the A-#1 compelling interest.

I’m sure that there could be random strangers that would want to randomly pull up to a playground and offer the kids free candy and to take them to the movies where it’s actually 100% innocent. It’s a big world– they probably are out there somewhere. But we as a society order our laws so that we’d arrest / stop / frisk / etc that person, and for good reason. The law is the law, and the law is designed to protect people.

On an aside: Even if we look at the talking side of “aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy”, it’s far from medically neutral (and of course not beneficial). You have children forced against their will to attend sessions with people that will be (again, assuming this is just the talking side) telling them that they’re immoral, disgusting, impure, wrong, and otherwise corrupted. They’ll be told that their child-like, innocent beliefs that they could have romantic relationships with other children is nasty, deviant, and bad (one thing that’s common is taking Valentines Day cards that children have written and ripping them up in their faces). And then the children go through exercises with no medical value that are basically the same as ‘new age’ medicines where you put a pyramid on your head and supposedly it sucks the evil spirits form your soul. There’s no medical merit to this. It’s pure quackery.

I can understand that we have strict free speech protection in this country for a reason, and for parents to tell their kids (and then to send their kids to be lectured at by others) that they should never have been born, that they’re stupid, that they ruined their parents lives, that they cost too much, that they’re ugly, and other such bad things… well, just ‘saying’ those things to children is legal, and it should be legal. Even if it’s beyond horrifying.

So, well, I guess I can kind of meet you all halfway. I don’t think, thus, necessarily that parents and groups that, outside of “aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy”, give conversion-style verbal abuse ONLY should be banned. Ban “aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy”. But if a person as a person offers to talk down to kids as a part of other services, that should be legal.

I do have to say, though, if you’re one of those parents that spend time haranguing to your kids about how your kid’s mere existence, supposed, ugliness, development problems, sexual orientation, etc is a drain on them (and I’m sure, if you’re one of those parents, you’re a proud Christian)… please restore your humanity sometime.

For cases of molestation, your normal non-abusive, non-perverted, non-unlicensed, non-“aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy” therapy that involves kids and adults getting help with traumatic experiences help them greatly. It’s a travesty to take them away from that kind of help and care to then give them to quack “aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy” people without medical degrees. And what happens in those cases of molestation are NOT changes of orientation. What happens is that a child of one orientation that they’ve had since birth is conditioned through abuse to think of themselves as incapable of having the loving, romantic relationships that they previously thought of.

Think of having someone smash a vase, a mirror, or something equally precious at your home. If you reconstruct that vase, mirror, whatever, you are not “changing the definition” / “changing the nature” / “changing the orientation” / etc of that thing. You’re bringing it back to what it was.

What parents do by taking perfectly normal, perfectly kind and caring LGBT children to these “aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy” camps is trying to alter them from what they previously are and form them / mold them into something new and foreign (straight). That’s not the same thing at all. It’s totally different.

Bringing up child molestation is interesting in terms of this debate, because standard “aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy” of exposing children to sexual materials while inducing pain is actually highly parallel to what pedophiles due during child grooming– the only real difference is the conversion therapy people are supposedly doing it because God wants them to whereas the pedophiles are honest that they’re just fulfilling their own desires on the children. Which is hardly an excuse. But that’s the world we live in.

Some methods involve talk only: helping a gay man get in touch with his own masculinity instead of seeking it out in other men – or by treating sexual abuse or whatever might have affected his orientation.

Such a method would not work with everyone, but it also shouldn’t be banned because it’s not abusive by any stretch of the imagination.

For some molested boys, their first sexual experience with a male – though traumatic – has an imprinting effect. Some molested girls are so traumatized by the rape that they cannot bond with men and so turn to women.

What if treating the sexual molestation also ends up causing the same-sex attraction to fade? Are we going to fight that?

It’s possible that there is more than one road to same-sex attraction, and that the nature/nurture ratio varies widely among individuals.

When Anne Heche left Ellen Degeneres for a man, should we have arrested someone for switching her? If conversion therapy (of the non-abusive kind) works for a handful of individuals, shouldn’t they be allowed to pursue that avenue?

I’ve no doubt that the impetus for the NJ bill is politics and more politics, not science and not the well-being of all concerned. On such an emotionally and politically charged subject, there’s little hard evidence one way or another that we can trust, let alone make policy on.

But that’s never stopped people before, so I guess it won’t stop them now.

The problem with your argument about techniques is that it’s entirely a red herring. The point of “aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy” — the very nature of how it’s done, what it’s for, and why it’s done by the horrible parents that do it — is to cause physical discomfort in children and to indoctrinate them to thinking that traits within themselves are wrong because it causes pain physically dude to psychological conditioning. This is how”aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy” operates. This is what it is. This the dictionary definition.

Hit an animal every time a bell is rung. Soon, they will fear the bell itself. Have a child zoned out on pain-causing drugs while they’re exposed to homosexual pornography. Soon, they will feel discomfort just from the images themselves. This is how “aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy” works. This is the design. This is the definition.

Saying “Well, we can ban the techniques, but don’t ban the practice” is like saying “Well, we can ban putting cigarettes into mouths and lighting them up, but don’t ban smoking” or “Well, we can putting your arms and legs into a car and pressing the go pedals, but don’t ban driving” or “Well, we can ban putting your fingers into the private parts of a child, but don’t ban child sexual abuse”.

>It is possible to ban all abusive techniques without banning the very idea of a possible change of orientation.

This is objectively false. “Aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy” ARE those techniques. That is the definition of “Aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy”. “Aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy” ARE abusive.

If a person is going to get someone to “change their orientation”, then they are going to use what is being described. How “aversion therapy” / “conversion therapy” works is by psychologically conditioning someone to feel pain when they are around certain stimuli in order to make them fear that stimuli. It’s being used by people that hate homosexuality in this instance, but it could just as easily be used to make a white child to (because mixed-race coupling has been considered a sin in Christianity until, in historical terms, very recently) feel pain from the stimuli of being exposed to black children and thus make them fear mixed-racial coupling in his or her future.

Think about it in animal welfare terms. If you want to train a puppy, and you go to a “aversion therapy” “conditioning” based pet center offering “aversion training”, then you will know that your puppy is going to get hit. That’s how it works. And those places are engaged in unprofessional, unethical, and unlicensed conduct according to pet care specialists.

If you thought that hitting your little fluffy thing would be barbaric, then you would avoid going to an “aversion therapy” “conditioning” based pet center and go to a place that just offers standard pet care. Those places are engaged in ethical, professional, and licensed care. Those places do not operate under the ideological framework of the previous places– they instead believe in rewarding positive conduct and creating personal bonds with the animals.

Now, think about it in human terms. It’s not that hard. Ugh…

I wonder whether you actually have read my post.

As I said in it, techniques like electroshock can be banned. But this bill (which I have yet to see the text of) appears to ban the whole idea of any sort of therapy that attempts to question a possible homosexual orientation of a minor, or that explores the idea that that particular orientation is not the final and absolute one for that minor. It is possible to ban all abusive techniques without banning the very idea of a possible change of orientation.

Again, I would really like to see the text of the ban. I very much doubt it merely bans abusive techniques. I would have no quarrel with it if it does.

The California law (after which the NJ law is apparently modeled) appears to state that “therapists and counselors who use ‘sexual orientation change efforts’ on clients under 18 would be engaging in unprofessional conduct and subject to discipline by state licensing boards.” As I asked in my post: is it banned even if the minors themselves want it? Is it banned in general? This law seems unconscionably broad.

Again, if anyone can direct me to the wording of the statute, it would be helpful.

Actually, all I’ve seen from various blogs, commentaries, and the like is the opposite. Conservative parents with more mixed, squeamish views on abortion suddenly drop the superficial pro-life line and become very much not so opposed to the practice when they find out it’s their own son or daughter in question.

Example: “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ finding” – ‘The Daily Mail’

The attempt to blur the line between anti-homosexual aversion therapy and actual psychological therapy needed for children with PTSD, depression, and other issues fails on the face of it. A therapist will diagnose something like PTSD with a long period of talking therapy first, then allocate medications, and then personally assist the person through more detailed talking therapy in a way in which strict lines between patient and therapist are set up. “Conversion therapy” is nothing like this.

“Conversion therapy” is, by design, made to expose children to harm in order to cause psychological aversion. The infamous scene from ‘A Clockwork Orange’ provides a clear counterpart. That “treatment” of Alex DeLarge was done by supposed therapists, but it was designed specifically to cause harm in order to condition him to feel psychological stress later on.

Good God… most Christians today would consider an animal trainer using “conversion therapy”-like tactics on a puppy — i.e. smacking him across his furry back if he barks too loudly — as disgustingly horrible. Can we apply the same to human children? Please?