Good day everyone. This is Chuck here on a Saturday with a Selex episode about conversion therapy boo. And you know what, regardless of what you think about conversion therapy, it doesn't work. And so that's why this episode is titled how Conversion Therapy Doesn't Work from November twenty nineteen. And if you're wondering before you listen, what is conversion therapy? That's when parents try to make their LGTBQ. Let's just put it in that whole bucket. Child not that, and
it's just not possible because that's who they are. So I hope you enjoy this episode, and if you don't keep it to.
Yourself, welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Josh Over There. Don't be confused, everybody, there are more than one Josh in the world. It's nice to hear you finally admit that it's taken a long time, a lot of therapy, a nice segue, it's like a short stuff. I'm like, let's get to it, let's get going.
Well, I have a CoA to issue.
Eh. You know what cracks me up as people who are still like, what does that mean? You figure it out and you can email eventually some people will.
Yeah.
So my CoA is just a personal CoA that I'm going to try and just disguise my disdain for this entire topic.
Okay, but I might not do a great job about it.
Well you've already shown your hands, all right, good, that's my CoA. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think there's too many stuff you should know listeners who are probably into this.
Yeah what.
But part of the problem is we'll see later in this episode, is part of the problem with conversion therapies coverage in the media, Oh yeah, is that it has largely been fairly even handed and described as like this controversial therapy and not said this scam and this junk science fraud igetrated by zelots super harmful.
Yeah. Yeah, so that's where I that's where I am.
You know. That stuck out to me too, that in the late nineties we'll talk about it, especially when it was treated even handily, and it made me think like we should do an episode on that, like the like should the media treat all sides of an issue equally, and if it does, does that just like perpetuate ignorance, or if it doesn't, does that like support fascism? Right, Like that's a hornet. I really think we should do it sometimes it is. That's a good good call, Thank you, Charles.
I don't know how we I mean, I guess I could be researched. Yeah, surely somebody's done a think piece on it, and we can springboard off of you know, I think piece. That's right, that's what we do most of our research. I think piece.
This is from one of our great writers, Julia Layton, and she put this a lot of this stuff together for us.
Yeah, she did a good job on this.
So like the additional histories you found.
Out though, Yeah, because this this so we we'll define it first and then we'll talk about some histories. But this stuff goes back way further than you would think. But what we're talking about today is called conversion therapy, reparative therapy ex gay therapy, where.
Reporative therapy is trademarked by the way we should.
Say, Well, you couldn't hear it, but under my breath, I said, yeah, more like ts it was. Yeah, it was trademarked by a psychologist named Joseph Nicolosi, Yes, senior. So what conversion therapy is probably what we're gonna mostly call it though, what it's what it is is it's an alleged psychological theory and practice that is based on the idea that all people are born heterosexual, and because of certain.
Certain events past traumas usually.
Traumas typically, but also the family dynamics play a huge role, people who would otherwise are meant to be heterosexual can be accidentally steered into homosexuality.
And therefore can be or purposefully steered back cured, yes, cured being gay, right back to the righteous land of heterosexuality.
And as you can imagine that this is a very popular with the fundamentalist Christian right. Sure, And I mean like that's not even like a guess like it overtly is. They've adopted and taken on X gay, the X gay movement, as as basically one of the what's it called an a tempole temp post, Sure, one of the planks in there in the Christian Rights Platform for Social Change.
Oh, it is an if It was officially part of the twenty sixteen Republican Party platform.
Even what that's right?
Well, wait, the whole RNC yeah, which has been called the twenty sixteen platform, has been called by far the most anti LGTBQ platform in the nation's history.
Wow, I mean yeah, If that's a plank in the party's platform, that's pretty significant. Like they don't throw just anything in there, No, they don't. So with the with with the X gay movement and conversion therapy, I saw it described at least back in the late nineties as a front in the culture war that's as strong and as significant as abortion. Like the the the Christian right in particular is has basically dedicated itself to stamping out
gayness and by converting gay people to straightness. The problem is is there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that that is even possible.
Right, And the problem is when you try and stamp out gayness, that creates a good beat that you can dance to.
It makes that sound, and they're like no, no, no, no, no, stop stamping exactly.
I had actually I went to well, should I say this? I don't sure? Why not?
Because this is the truth. I went to a church camp once when I was a youth.
Well, I figured a story or two like.
That.
They talked about stomping your feet to the music or whatever they're playing, and they literally said, don't alternate feet because that's too close to dancing.
Wow.
Right, Yeah, And these weren't, like, I mean, these were pretty mainstream Baptist church camps.
It wasn't like I went to.
Some snake handling thing.
No, not at all.
But I had a really good episode on that.
Yeah, that was a good one. So anyway, stomp your feet, everybody, just don't altern.
So you stomp them both at once, because that's.
Not just stomp one foot just on your right foot.
I was gonna say, that's just jumping lightly. Okay. So that's what we're talking about is conversion therapy. And like I said, it became part of the Christian rights kind of philosophy and part of their culture war, their culture war they're fighting. But it goes back way further than that then. I think it was the late nineties when the right kind of adopted it. As a matter of fact, like into the nineteenth century, there were people who subscribed
to this, but they were all psychologists. This is back at the time when you could be a ghost investigator and say I'm a psychologist. This is the times when you could say, you know, this cigar reminds you of your mother, you know what I'm saying, right, and you could be a psychologist. You could be a father of psychology at that point.
Yeah, you dug up a great article from history dot com called Gay Conversion Therapy is Disturbing nineteenth Century Origins by Aaron Blakemore and Mary Nice.
Attribution check.
Uh, yeah, Well, Aaron wrote a great article and in it she talks about in eighteen ninety nine this hypnosis. Well, again in the days where you could be a hypnotist and be a legitimate scientist at the same time, get.
In a stage shows, or's psychology.
That's right, maybe where's the money?
But he was German, of course, and he claimed to have turned a gay man straight after forty five hypnosis sessions and some other therapies. And that's sort of the first evidence of what we would later call conversion therapy starting up. Yeah, although I'm sure even before that people they probably didn't call it conversion therapy. But if you were an effeminate man, you were no doubt probably beaten by your parents and shunned by your community.
Right, I think one of the other things. It's kind of a hallmark of this long tradition of converting people from being gay to straight or trying to. Is this idea that there's something wrong with you if you're gay, and that that idea can actually become hung up on the individual, the gay person, so that they actually do
seek out help in becoming straight. But the problem is in seeking that help, they're going to be frustrated, and they're ultimately probably going to be They're going to have feelings of shame, guilt, inadequacy that they're not capable of helping themselves. There's something wrong with them. Why can't they just be straight? Kind of thing. And then if you're a minor and your parents are forcing this on you, then that raises it a whole other can of worms
of ethical dilemmas. Sure, but even from the outset there were probably people who sought out hypnotists and other psychologists for help. It wasn't just people walking around kidnapping gay people and taking them off the street and trying to.
Convert them, right, It could have very well been some man that's like, wait a minute, I don't feel normal feelings because I'm looking at Joe out there in the field and things are happening, right, if you know what I mean, Doc, And they're like, well, come on.
In watching him swing that scythe and take his sweaty shirt off, wring it over his face, that kind of thing.
Right, So just sit down and follow the wristwatch with your eyesight or I guess the pocket watch.
That'd be a weird U technique move when moving. But from that same history dot Com article there.
She she talks about some of the early attempts, like with electro convulsive therapy. Yeah, lobotomies. I think we even talked about some of the lobotomy's episode.
And may we give you a lobotomy for anything?
Oh? Sure?
What about testicular transplantation?
Right, because that was a theory from a doctor, an intercrinologist name Eugene Steinach, who thought that your testicles were the root of the problem.
Well a lot of people did.
Yeah.
There was like you.
Could have gay testicles literally and they would swap them out for straight ones.
Right, And there's no I could not find any evidence one way or the other that any of these testicular transplants worked or were successful. I don't think they were, but I didn't see anything that said like all of those failed or whatever, but like what happened? They just shrivel up and fall off or something.
So do you mean if it actually like medically took to the body or yeah, yeah, that's.
What I mean.
Okay, saying like did it convert them? Did it work?
Right? Yeah?
No, Yeah that's the answer.
But yeah, I didn't know that you could in the nineteen twenties held a testical transplant successfully.
That's what I'm saying, Like, I surely I mean at some point, and we must have talked about this in the Michael Daylan episode. We talked about that. I don't think it was but it wasn't a transplant. It was just a straight up removal an archaeactomy I believe castration. So, but at some point testicles have been transplanted onto a person successfully. When did that happen? Is my question.
It probably did to a dog first.
Right, But I mean think about it, like if it didn't work, well, sorry you're castrated now.
Yeah they probably didn't say sorry though, no.
But we took your gay testicles. The heterosexual testicles just didn't pan out, right, But now you don't have any testicles gay or otherwise.
That's right.
Some of the other awful techniques that they would use back in the day were chemicals that they might have to make you wretch and vomit when you look at, you know, pictures of people of the same sex.
That's called covert sensitization.
Yeah.
Yeah, or if you're cross dressing maybe same thing, sure, or look in a mirror and be disgusted with yourself and wretch and vomit.
Yeah, and very sadly, if you have, say like as someone you were in a relationship with that you love, they might show you a picture of that person and carry out aversive therapy or aversive conditioning. What's weird, As you said, these are these are things they used to carry out. From what I've seen, this stuff still goes
on today, Yeah, some of it. So what we're talking about though, back in the nineteenth and most of the first half or so of the twentieth century, this was all like the domain of psychology, and then eventually gay psychologists and other straight psychologists too. We're basically like, this is wrong, yea, Like the science is not adding up, this is just this is just incorrect.
Yeah. There were medical doctors too, though, wasn't just psychologists.
Right, sure?
Yeah.
So eventually, in nineteen seventy three, the American Psychological Association said, hey, big news, We're no longer going to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Right, And a certain part of the population went, yeah, it's nineteen seventy two.
Why did it take this long?
Right? Exactly? Yeah, But that was a big deal, and at that point a psychology mostly abandoned and the idea that being gay was a disorder of any kind, and therefore there was no point in researching how to cure someone of being gay, and so it turned its back on this whole history of conversion conversion. Yeah, but it didn't fully die away, and I believe starting in like the eighties, the Christian rights started to kind of pick up on it and kind of breathe new life into it again.
That's right, I think we should take a break. Yeah, that's a robust and a half setup.
Is that? Oh? I thought we were already into it. Oh my gosh.
It wasn't just a setup. It was more you're right, we'll be right.
Back, Josh shock.
All right, So let's talk a little bit about because there's a couple of a couple of schools of thought here, and I hesitate to one to call the one more bonafide. But you know, there's conversion therapy that can happen at a licensed therapist office. And there's conversion therapy that can happen in you know, somebody's basement or the basement of a church.
I was gonna sae basement too, Yeah, or a room.
Didn't have to be a.
Basement, I know, but a basement makes it seem sure, that's probably sinister.
That's probably why I said it. So there are two sort of ways is that that can happen. We're gonna talk a little bit about the first way, the patented way repaired to therapy trademark by Joseph Nicolosi.
That guy doesn't even get the Italian accent, man, and I don't believe he.
Doesn't, which we should say, by the way, in July this year, Amazon stopped carrying his works on their website.
Yeah, because they they considered them that they promoted fraud, that's right, which we'll get to.
Yeah, which is interesting.
But this guy is like a psychologist. Yeah, he's a trained psychologist who basically said I'm going to take everything I learned and direct it toward curing gay people of being gay.
Yeah, I don't know much about do you know much about his religiosity?
Or I think he was Jewish? Okay, I'm born in Brooklyn. From what I understand, I read a really really great article not a think piece, but a memoir in the American Prospect from American Prospector from twenty twelve. Yah, it's different Their Gold by Gabriel Arana. Okay, it's called my so called ex gay Life. It's definitely worth reading. But it's a great look at conversion therapy, but also is like overlaid with his personal experience with it. Okay.
At any rate, his contention was that, like we said, you develop homosexuality or homosexual feelings at least because of a result of environmental conditions, childhood traumas, and they call it same sex attraction SSSA, and that could stem, in his opinion, from a few different things desire for adventure, peer acceptance, loneliness or boredemer curiosity, approval or affection from males. And a lot of this is centered on men, although it's certainly women have been involved in.
This as well.
Yeah, we'll get to that.
Yeah, But a lot of them. A lot of this over the years is making gay men straight.
Oh yeah, I see what you mean.
Yeah, but it's not exclusive to that.
No, it's not general rebellion, which is pretty funny. And then sexual molestation by another male.
And I think that is a very like I think that the idea that that leads to being gay is very widespread in culture, well beyond the Christian rioter people who believe in conversion therapy, the idea that if you're sexually abused by a man or somebody of your same sex, become Gayah, which is just wrong, but I think a lot of people still believe that. I know, that's what I thought when I was a kid.
Yeah, that's right. I mean it's not right.
No, it's utterly wrong. But yeah.
And the whole basis of Nickelosi's theory he takes back to a study from nineteen ninety two called Demography of Sexual Orientation and Adolescence. And this was an actual study from the Journal Pediatrics that looked at patterns of sexual orientation and high school students in Minnesota, And what they found out was that younger teens in Minnesota in this study were more likely to express sexual confusion about their orientation when they were younger, and as they grew older,
they were less confused about their sexual identity and orientation. Right.
It's a legit study, and I think that probably anyone who's ever been an early teenager and a late teenager can be like that sounds about right exactly, you know.
But the extrapolation that Nicolosi did was what's the problem as right.
So Nicolosi was saying, like, yes, that shows that like you're you're you're in a dangerous place earlier on, and that if a couple of things happen in a certain way, you can be veered off of this natural path toward heterosexuality into homosexuality.
Right, and also more dangerously that means we got to get them while they're young.
Right. So one of the other things that he's he really based his practice on was this family triad of a domineering, over attendant mother, a passive, detached father, and a sensitive child books in kind of in that was a good one in that that triangle like you would like almost certainly have a gay kid if somebody didn't intervene. So he decided like this was his career was intervening in that kind of stuff, but that in and of
itself has never been proven to create gay kids. That like, whether you believe in conversion therapy or not, if you have a domineering mother and have some father and you're like a sensitive type who likes dolls, even doesn't mean you're going to turn gay. This is the basis of that though, is that yes, you will turn gay. And still to this day this idea is allowed to live because science is never fully satisfied the question like are
we born gay? Do we develop being gay? And it looks like it's on a pretty strong track toward a genetic basis of homosexuality, but it's still nothing's definitive, and so people can say, well, maybe we do develop, you know, an adolescence, you know, being gay or whatever, because science is not filled this void cor yet.
Yeah.
And the way Nicolosi will would write about this stuff and describe it as in a very sort of professional, innocuous type way where a casual reader might say, well, this seems totally valid and above board.
Yeah, a Newsweek reader, yeah, or an OPRAH viewer.
That's right. This is one of the things.
I think This is from one of his books and This is how he describes a relationship to from patient to therapists. The client has come to the therapist seeking assistance to reduce something distressing to him, and the RT psychotherapist agrees to share his professional experience in education to
help the client meet his own goal. His own goal, the therapist enters into a collaborative relationship, agreeing to work with the client to reduce his unwanted attractions and explore his heterosexual potential, which again, it seems very innocuous, And there are plenty of cases where a grown man of his or woman of their own.
Volition goes and seeks this out right.
But what they don't say is what happens many times is a parent forces their young child to do this.
That's a big one. Yeah, it's a big one. In this that American Prospect magazine, the author was like in his early teens when he went to Nickelosi's therapy. But he said, everybody else in the group is in their like forties or fifties, So it's definitely both. Yeah. Yeah, But there's something here that's really important because, like you said, if you just read this stuff, it does sound innocuous.
It's all very much based on things like cognitive behavioral therapy like stuff that works, which means that this works in a weird, twisted way, which we'll talk about, but not in the way it's ultimately meant to. It works in a bent way.
Yeah, I mean, do you.
Want me to explain now? I feel like I should.
I take issue with the word works at all.
There are situations where it might prevent someone from acting on a homosexual impulse, That's what I mean. Yeah, but that does change the nature of their sexuality.
No, no, right, And ultimately preventing someone or training someone to not act on their sexuality is damaging in and of itself and causes all sorts of other problems.
But maybe good enough for a really religious family, right you know.
Yeah, Well that's what I read is that over time, as the Christian right adopted the idea of you know, championing the ex gay movement, that part of that was accepting gay people who refrain from gay sex. So if you were like, I'm gay, I'm never going to be straight. I tried, but I don't have sex with men, but I won't come in with and welcome in church. Yeah.
So what I was saying, though, is with with Nicolosi's thing, there's something fundamentally wrong with it, and that if somebody came to you and said, I'm tired of being white or black or hispanic. I can't stand it. You wouldn't say, oh, well, let's figure out how to make you not black or white or hispanic or straight. Let's figure out how to
change you. They would say. Any therapist worth their salt would say, well, no, there's a lot of great things about being white or black, or hispanic or straight, and let's focus on that so that you can own your identity. The conversion therapy does the opposite, says, yes, let's figure out how to get the gay out of you. Let's change your identity because this group of society has said that it's unacceptable. That's right, and that is an extraordinarily
damaging position to come from. And that is the basis of conversion therapy.
Yeah, and as we'll see later on, the AMA's official stance is that it is and we'll read the quote later that it is a damaging prospect right and creates real.
Harm an American Prospector magazine.
So this approach by Nicolosi has four steps to it. The first one is interesting because it's the disclosure of the therapist's personal, professional, philosophical, and religious views on homosexuality, which includes Nicolosi says, the gay affirmative therapist also discloses his philosophical views to the client. But from a gay affirmative perspective, does he just put that in there to
like cover his baces. No, it's true though, because you wouldn't send your son or daughter to a gay affirmative therapist to convert.
Them into right. You know, I think this is what he's saying. You've been to therapy before, right, sure? Have you ever noticed that when you first your first session, the therapist tells you a lot about themselves and what they think about mental health or life or whatever.
Yeah, and I'm always like, wait a minute, what about my projects?
I sat we were talking about may I'm get in charge for this. I don't care about your family, right, That's what he's saying that they do. But because this is about being gay, that's what they're going to talk about, is their views or whatever. Interesting They're going to share their opinions of it, and that they think that there's problems with it.
You know what my line is at the therapist when they do all that stuff like great, that's really interesting. At the end, I'm like, you want to start the clock.
Now, right? Nice? Either that or I can pro rite.
Number two of the four steps is encouragement of the client's inquiry, so basically asking the client the questions examining
their feelings to try and discover what lies beneath. Number three, resolution of past trauma if it is, in fact one of the reasons they suspect this person has gone down the road to homosexuality, and then education regarding features of homosexuality, which includes everything from what motivates you to do this to you know that if you are gay, then this lifestyle ends in a very very bad way.
For you, right that There's a lot of physical harm, social harm.
Emotional harm.
Yeah right. So what's weird though, is like, I can't Nicolosi is like a tough person to paint with just one brush. Even though I totally disagree with what he dedicated dedicated his career to, he doesn't seem, at least from what I've read, including that American Prospect article from somebody who was a patient of his for years, he doesn't seem to have been like any sort of evil man or anything like that. I don't know if he just thought like this was a real thing and he
was really helping me or what. But for example, there's this one quote from Gabriel Ariana who said that he had been like experimenting with sexual encounters with other men as a teenager. And he said that he'd been meeting men off of the internet, and he told Nicolosi like, he's like, I trusted the guy enough to share this in therapy, and he said that Nicolosi told he said, he told me to be careful meeting men off the internet, but that I shouldn't dwell on it or feel guilty.
He said, my sexual behavior was of secondary importance. If I understood myself and worked on my relationships with men, the attractions would take care of themselves. I just had to be patient, Which is I mean, that's a pretty great thing for a therapist to tell a patient, right, don't dwell on it, you know, don't feel guilty, just you know, except it, move on and learn from it or whatever.
But then the second part, right, that's where it goes downhill.
Yes, And so the thing is, though with conversion therapy, in most cases, Nicolosi is like he's almost a shining example in a weird way, whereas other people associated with it are. It's very easy to paint them with just one brush. Yeah, you know, so we.
Should talk a little bit about the argument against, a little bit more about the argument against, which includes a little bit more history. You know, we talked about the earliest stages of conversion therapy in the late eighteen hundreds, but it really kind of picked up steam in the United States and the nighteen sixties when the Civil Rights movement, you know, when gay people started coming out of the closet more, presenting themselves more in public, gay bars, popping up, things like.
That Stonewall Stonewall, of course.
Which you know, anytime something like that is becoming a little more accepted in the mainstream, there's going to be another side that really roots down and digs in. And that's sort of how the modern gay conversion therapy movement was born, was out of homosexuality becoming more accepted.
Yeah. I read a really interesting journal article from two thousand and seven by Robinson and Spivey. It was in Gender and Society, the journal, and they basically they looked into the X gay movement, not necessarily the psychology community's basis of it, but the later on the adoption of
it by the Christian right. And they explained why the Christian right would be interested in that, And they were interested in and dug in, like you said, because they saw homosexuality and feminism in particular as signs of a decadent society that would eventually cause us to crumble and collapse.
And that the the And this is according to Robinson and Spy I haven't actually interviewed any one on the Christian right who believes this, but they are academics and this was a peer review journal that the that masculinity is the antidote to that, it's the antidote to homosexuality, it's the antidote to feminism, and that it was up to each man to be a strong leader among women and children and to be as masculine as possible. That's how you how you did that?
Yeah, I mean I went.
I heard sermons every Sunday, well not every Sunday, but I heard sermons on many Sundays where they were still saying why to submit to your husband's Yeah, straight out of the Bible, you know.
Yeah, And like most of the antidote is dad's you're being way too passive. You need to step up and be the leader of your family. But also, moms, you can help by saying, oh, you have a question, ask your father. I defer to your father. Go ask your father, right, and just yeah, being passive.
Well, which goes back to that triad you mentioned earlier about the domineering mother.
The passive father equals gape.
That's basically the basis of the whole thing. From what I could tell is that at least among the Christian right, that if the father is not the dominant, in leading figure in the family, that's where the trouble comes from, and that can produce homosexual children. Interesting.
Yes, So.
Something we failed to mention as part of the AMA's change in nineteen seventy two, or was that.
The apa apa was?
They said, and this is an important distinction, is that homosexual they deemed a normal variation, not deviation, but a variation in human sexual orientation, and like other normal sexual orientations, can't be changed. In other words, you can't make a straight person gay anymore than you can make a gay person straight, is what that equals.
And because of that is we'll see later on. That became the basis for this idea that conversion therapy is in essence of fraud, right, because it purports to do something that can't be done.
That's right. Should we take another break?
Oh? Man, really, they're coming hard and fast like men swinging sides in sweaty shirts on the field.
Yeah, let's take another break and we'll talk about what might happen in conversion therapy right after this shot.
Shot. All right, Chuck, I'm excited about this part.
You're excited about the horror show of conversion therapy.
It's not all horror show. Some of it is just outright laughable. Yeah.
So statistically also.
Also, I'm sorry everybody, I want to say something too. Okay, we typically try to be super objective. This one is very tough.
We have science on our side too.
This was really hard for me to research. Yeah, nothing is ever hard for me to research. This one was. It was like turning over a log and finding it like Maggot's writhing underneath. That was what researching this one was. Like. I just kept putting it off. I just keep leaving it and just going and watching like the Office or something like that. Just anything but researching this because it's super sad.
It is it's that that children are taking at their most vulnerable time and adolescence, when they don't know what's going on, and they're told that they're wrong and they're sinning and they're dirty.
That is a part of why it's sad. Another part to me of why it's sad is that the idea that grown ups would direct this much thought and attention and effort into slamming their head up against a wall to try to change someone else to a way they think they should be. That I think is that's at least as sad to me as the new children being misdirected like this, because a kid can go on and grow up and be like, geez, my family was super messed up. I'm really glad I don't speak to them
anymore because I'm much happier over here. Right.
Well, that can happen in the ideal circumstance.
Sure, or the ideal circumstances that the family's just like, hey, we're really screwed up, We're really sorry, we love you no matter who you are. But the idea that there's a group, a social movement dedicated to just eradicating another group of people. Yeah that I find that very hard to swallow.
Yeah, agreed.
So apparently, statistically about or close to seven hundred thousand people in the United States have undergone conversion therapy, and we should mention that it's a real problem in places like Africa and Asia and South America.
Yeah, where you can still be imprisoned for being gay. Yeah, like Uganda is a big place for that.
Conversion therapy is like on the rise in those places and other places. But we're talking about the United States in this case, seven hundred thousand people. And like we said, sometimes it is in the with a licensed therapist. Sometimes it's done by a religious advisor in a basement or at a church.
You know what that reminded me of is another thing we need to talk about sometimes exorcisms, like church exorcisms.
We've done exorcism.
We did like straight up Roman Catholic exercise. Oh okay, I'm talking like the kind that somebody does in the basement of their house. Gotcha because they're supposedly an exorcist or something like that.
Sure backdoor exorcism basically a black market.
You'll see You'll be like, oh man, we should be talking about.
This all right, Well, I agree already, I trust you.
Okay.
So the AMA says that conversion therapy programs may utilize harmful psychological techniques. We were talking earlier about aversion therapy and given chemicals, they can still be given noxious stimulus, and I didn't see exactly what that entailed or could entail.
There was a guy named Robert Gilbraith Heath who was the father of implanting electrodes into the brain to deliver shocks, and one of the things he directed that toward was curing gay people. I don't think anyone in their basement
is implanting electrodes or whatever. But there are things like giving people like na nausea inducing medications as one, right, showing them pictures that might nauseate them and then figuring out how to associate that with masturbating the thoughts of other men or something like that.
Yeah, I mean we should talk about a few of these specifically. I mean, all you have to do is look up on a search engine conversion therapy horror stories, and there are plenty of people out there saying what happened to them?
Yeah, look up also conversion therapy super happy fun stories, and you're going to connect with almost nothing Google zero results.
There was one teenager who said that he was forced to wear a backpack with forty pounds of rocks eighteen hours a day to just signify the physical burden of being gay. One person's family gave them a fake funeral, closed casket funeral in front of him, where they said that he died of AIDS and they said their final goodbyes because he went down the sinful path.
Pretending he wasn't there, like that he was dead and in the casket, yes, about him in third person, that's right, his family.
One reported being told to strip naked in front of a mirror and say disparaging things about themselves.
I just do that normally, though.
Well.
I did read one account where they basically said the whole idea is to break you down to nothing in the worst way possible and then build you back up again and the image that they want.
So I get the impression that that is one route, but that is not necessarily what you're going to get at any place you go for conversion therapy. There are other ones that say.
That's the problem is we don't know because so many people don't talk about it.
Right. There's some that like you would go to that say okay, we're not going to abuse you or anything like that. But the basis of our beliefs in this is that you you are gay because either you had an absent father, a domineering mother, some combination of the two. Or you always like wanted to be like loved and you know, popular among your male peers, and you didn't get that. So now you are misdirecting this need, this unmet need, toward having anonymous gay sex on the dance
floor with some dude in Miami or whatever. So we need to figure out how to meet that need and have you hang out with guys who will tell you how cool you are and how popular you are, yeah, like tailgating or something kind of. And while we're at it, we're going to do that by accenting the masculinity. We're going to teach you how to be masculine so that you can hang out with dudes in the real world and they will think you're cool. So things like we're going to teach you how to change the oil in
your car. We're going to teach you to sit without crossing your legs. No joke. There was a guy who.
Can teach you how to man spread on the subway.
There's a guy who's kind of a prominent thinker. I think he was. I saw him as a sexologist, maybe a Christian sexologist, garretar van den Ardluig. It's pretty great. I think I nailed it. He said that homosexual men need to unlearn avoidance of getting their hands dirty doing manual work like chopping wood, painting a house using a shovel, and that I.
Say, no, thanks to all three. Chop wood. That's kind of fun.
It is fun, and that not necessarily just here's an act. Start chopping wood. You're going to just suddenly become cured. But that that is part of it. And in this thought, this tack where they're not abusing you, they're not degrading you or anything like that. They're teaching you masculinity and manliness. That the ultimate aim and goal of that is to go get married and have a kid or kids, right, And that that is a big part of conversion therapy.
It was for a very long time, was saying you might still be gay or whatever, but you're not really gay. You're now married and you have a kid, and that is what you're dedicating yourself.
That's right. You're a wood up in football throwing dude.
With a pencil thin mustache.
Oh no, no, not that.
So in nineteen seventy four, we should talk about George Reckers. He was a psychologist who tested whether or not this was an effective treatment, and he had a four This wasn't his boy, but this was his client was a foreigner. I guess client's a weird way to put it. Sure, this child was forced to go to this person at four and a half years old, and this is a boy manifesting quote childhood cross gender identity. And they said this is based on the clothes that this boy wears.
And now, of course looking at this, it was probably a transgender.
Child, yeah, or gender fluid.
Yeah.
I mean it's hard to tell because this was nineteen seventy four and the way they wrote about it, it's hard to kind of piece it together.
Yeah. And it's also like, just how much of this behavior did this child exhibit? Like it makes it makes it seem like this is all the kid did was act like a girl when he was a boy, Right, what else was he into? What else? You know, it's just such a narrow picture of the subject.
Of course, so in the end, Reckers did something super damaging. He trained the boy's mother to be the therapist, Like, here's what you need to do, so this kid can get twenty four to seven therapy from you and basically punish feminine behaviors, reinforce masculine behaviors at all times. And they said that, hey, this is working because every time this boy gets punished for doing something feminine, he stops and like chops wood or throws the football and gets
a reward. So because he's four and a half years old, he's doing the things that their parents congratulate him for and reward him for.
And not doing the things that he's getting punished for. And exactly the punishment is what stood out to me. It's just so sad that the mother was instructed to reject him, to basically ignore him when he acted like a girl, but not ignore him like pretend it's not going on, like let him know that she is giving him the cold shoulder and that that's how he learned. And that is just devastating.
It's heartbreaking.
And what's heartbreaking is this is used was used as an example like see this works. This four and a half year old is now acting more masculine and is not going to grow up to be gay. And this this child died by suicide at the age of thirty. Yeah, Like that's the end result of this road. That's where it ends up.
And that's what I meant earlier when I said, like, it does kind of work because it follows psychological techniques that actually work. But it works in like kind of a bent way where yes, you can train somebody, You can mold a four year old to behave in a certain way by conditioning them. It's possible you can get somebody to do just about anything like that. But the ramifications, the results, the damage to the individual's identity that will
eventually come out later are widespread and sweeping. Yeah, And that's the point. That's why you shouldn't monkey around with somebody's identity using proven psychological techniques. That's what's so evil about the whole thing.
Yeah, I mean, my daughter's four and a half had a hard time even getting through this stuff.
And then also if somebody this is the other thing too, if you're a conversion therapy advocate or activist or practitioner, and that you say, no, there are people out there who are distressed who are experiencing psychological distress for being gay. Yes, that's true. I guarantee that there are people like that out there, But directing them toward working on not being gay is not the answer.
Yeah, go to regular therapy.
And learn to love that you're gay, and go find a church that accepts gay people. There's step two.
Yeah, because they're out there, let's talk about the science of it, because we.
Are so contributing to a decade into society.
In two thousand and nine, there was a report from the APA Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. Quite a read, and this was the actual final stance was sexual orientation change efforts can pose critical health risks to lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Critical health risks, not emotional not I mean it's part of emotional health too,
but critical health risks. And if you read the review of research and peer reviewed literature and the findings of what it can result in, it reads like the worst pharma ad disclaimer you've ever heard. Depression, guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, shame, self hatred, hostility, dehumanization, betrayal, social withdrawal, substance abuse, stress, sexual dysfunction, loss of faith, and suicidality. And on that last note, homosexual teens attempts suicide more often than heterosexual teens.
And then among those homosexual.
Teens, you're twice as likely to try that if your parents have rejected you, and three times as likely if you have undergone convert therapy.
Three times is likely, yes, compared to a heterosexual team. That's right, man, Well do you have it? That was just the apa that a bunch of different associations, like legit medical and psychological associations have come out and condemned in no uncertain terms conversion therapy. And all of these condemnations basically follow two different texts. One, there is no science backing up the idea that you can change somebody
from homosexuality to heterosexuality. And number two, there is science backing up the idea that trying to do that causes damage to the individual, So don't do that. And as a matter of fact, some countries and states in the United States have said, well, this is outlawed, you can't do this anymore everybody, which is really touchy stuff because again, the Christian right kind of adopted it, and we don't
really infringe on religious beliefs. But that's how strong these condemnations have been that they're saying, we'll kind of start to wade into that with this one.
Yeah, and we'll talk about the legalities of recent years in a sec But before that, between the seventies and the APA's stance changing things a little bit, then through the eighties and nineties, where conversion therapy was really sort of hitting its peak. I think in America there were a lot of there were a few high profile cases that were exposed that have helped sway things a little bit back to sanity.
So first thing, more recent years.
Yeah, So before those high profile cases, and I mean right before them, I think in nineteen ninety eight, a coalition of church groups got together and sponsored an ad campaign, something like a six hundred thousand dollars ad campaign, and things like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times all this and this ad featured John and Ann I believe Anne Polk, both of whom were formerly gay but were now ex gay and married and married and had a kid,
and said gay conversion helps. And at the time, there wasn't a lot of ink on the other side saying actually this is totally discredited, and it captured everybody's attention. And this was when the Christian wright came in and said, we're going to make this huge push in the culture war, and it really worked. That's when that Newsweek's story came out.
Yeah, they were on the cover of Newsweek.
He was.
He was a leader of an ex gay organization called Exodus International.
John Pauk was right, and it brought a lot of the poster boy yes, and in Exodus International in particular became one of two main umbrella organizations. They were kind of like this I saw it put the spiritual version of this the X gay movement, and then something called NARTH, the National Association Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, was like the scientific branch of the ex gay movement. And so Exodus International became a very well known prominent organization in
the late nineties. But within two three years two it would be it would basically be the poster child for how conversion therapy doesn't.
Work right, because John Paulk is gay. In two thousand, just two years later, he was photographed coming out of a gay bar in Washington, d C. At the time, he refuted that he didn't refute that he was there, He said, what you always say, I didn't know it was a gay bar.
I went in there asking for directions.
Now I saw he went and to use the bathroom. So no, either way, I just read the article and then they were like, but you're in there for a couple of hours. Did you get the directions and use the bathroom?
It clearly says blue Oyster in neon. Have you not seen the Police Academy movies?
That was the name of it in the Police Academy, right, the Blue Oyster Bar, d D.
Dan Goodness uh and John Pauk, we should say, now lives life as a gay man and is a chef. He's been on like some celebrity chef shows.
All right, uh huh cool, and he is uh living his best life.
He's living his best life from what it looks like.
So he's no longer married any longer to ann Actually that I don't know, because there are some well we'll keep going.
I don't think he is, but there are a couple of people that are. There was in two thousand and three Michael Johnston. He was another person touted as an ex gay success story, founder of National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day.
He actually was.
He was found out to be having sex with men that he met online and infected them with HIV. Very big deal. And then there's Ted Haggard. Of course in two thousand and six I remember this. Yeah, he was a preacher and president of the National Association of Evangelicals or was it the time. I guess very much an anti gay leader in the religious circles. And this one sort of unfolded little by little, like, hey, this guy came out and said, this guy had a relationship with
me for like three years. We did crystal meth together. And then Haggard came out and said, you know what, I have to admit, I sinned. I bought crystal meth, but I didn't use it. I threw it in the trash because I wouldn't succumb to the sin. Is everyb he said, Yeah, he says he did buy crystal meth, and because I assumed that was proof, and he said that he didn't use it at all. He threw it in the trash before he used it, where the other guy was like, no, he did tons of meth and had gay sex a lot.
I know he's talking about on like day four of us staying up. He like freaked out and threw it in the trash, but then he went back and got it, and the proof was that he paid for it by check.
Maybe no, no, probably not. I don't think met dealers take checks any or do you thing? And then that was he was outed by a having a relationship with an underage boy, a sexual relationship.
This is Ted Haggard again.
Yeah, and the boy sued and it was settled by the church with a dollar figure.
I think it was like one hundred and eighty grand.
And then finally in twenty eleven, Ted Haggard comes out and is like, all right, so I did have a relationship with a boy, but we never touched each other.
I just masturbated in front of him.
I threw him in the trash.
And in twenty eleven he said, you know what, I'm bisexual.
I'm going to admit it.
I am bisexual, but I am going to choose to live my life as a faithful heterosexual husband to my wife.
I wonder if, after he admitted that it came out as bisexual, what that felt like, if he felt like a weight was lifted, or if the anxiety associated with it was just so much, or know what his wife knew or didn't know or thought about it. I'd be very curious to know what that, you know, what life has been like for him after that.
I mean, he's a preacher again, because I.
Mean, more power to him. If he's like, I'm a Christian and I'm just not going to have gay sex. That's as much a personal choice as having gay sex, you know. I mean the whole underage boy thing. That's a huge problem that I think I'm hoping was addressed. But I wonder what his life is like now.
Oh, I mean he's, like I said, he's preaching again. I think in Colorado.
He's probably a stuff you should know. Listener Haggard right in.
We'd like to hear from you, sir, you want to talk about the law.
Because right now, oh wait, there was one more, Chuck, there's a big one, Alan Chambers.
Yes, so John Paulk. When he was outed cruising the Blue Oyster in DC back in two thousand, he was running Exodus International.
Yes.
He was replaced a couple of years later by Alan Chambers, and about a decade after Chambers took over Exodus International, he said, I'm gay I've been gay. Conversion therapy doesn't work. We're shutting down Exodus International.
Yeah, and I apologize to the LGTBQ community.
Yes. So, within about a decade or so of the Christian Right adopting the X gay and Conversion Therapy pillar post as part of the platform for their culture war, the biggest organization, one of two biggest organizations dedicated to conversion therapy said it doesn't work. We're sorry gay people for all the damage we've done. Yeah, that's a pretty big turn of events, it is. So, Yes, it's still continues. So that led to Yeah, so that led to a
bunch of laws. They're trying to keep it from continuing.
Yeah, And the laws are basically usually around miners, saying you cannot force a minor to do something like this, right, not. Hey, the whole thing is outlawed. If you're an adult and you want to go do this, then that's up to you. As of twenty nineteen this year, eighteen states in Washington, d C. And Puerto Rico have similar bands enacted. And also it's important to point out that those bands are
about the legitimate scientific community. Like you will have your license revoked, doesn't say anything about a preacher that you go to, or a youth counselor or any you know, sort of non licensed church there.
Right, it's only scientists or licensed counselors or psychologists or psychiatrists or doctors. I'm sure who can lose their license if they practice it.
That's right.
But yeah, that's because there's religious freedom. It's I guess you can still do that to minors, though if it's a religious group doing.
It, that is what I'm not sure about. So for the well, it depends on the state.
So there was a group or there was a counseling organization called.
And Jonah is this Goldbird and Burke.
Yes, they ran Jonah, which stood for I can't find it anywhere.
I got to hear Jews offering a new alternative for healing.
Okay. They were not only found practicing in New Jersey conversion therapy, so they both lost their licenses. They were also sued in a civil suit by former patients for fraud and lost.
It's interesting if you think about it.
Wait a minute, if this is not possible, right, you're charging people for it, right, that's fraud.
So they had like a three and a half million dollar settlement levied against them and lost their licenses, But then they just set up shop under another name, apparently the same year of the verdict in the civil suit. But for the most part, if you're a state and you pass a law banning conversion therapy to minors among medical practitioners or counselors, the courts are going to uphold that law.
Yeah, it's been upheld in California and New Jersey. Most of the challenges are on the grounds of free speech. And the New Jersey when they upheld the New Jersey or maybe it was Maryland, the judge said, we're not infringing on your free speech. You can say whatever you want, but you can't practice this therapy. That's different than free speech. You can believe what you want, say what you want, but you can't do this as part of your licensed therapy.
It's the same thing as like if you if you carry out quack cancer treatments that is harmful, like you're poisoning your patients or whatever, and like they become they lose the use of their arms and legs because of a treatment that you gave them for cancer. That the American Medical Association has specifically said is damaging and harmful. You're totally going to get held accountable for that. You're lucky to just lose your license in that case. This
is the exact same principle, Yeah, for sure. So because it deals mostly with minors or exclusively with miners, the
course have upheld it. But New York City actually is widely considered to have overstepped its bounds and actually misstepped in this kind of culture war about conversion therapy in banning the practice among miners and adults, and that got New York City sued, and New York City was like, well, the Supreme Court's actually gotten pretty conservative lately, I don't know if we should test this, And they repealed.
The ban, yeah, as a strategy, right to keep.
It from getting tested in the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court could say, no, all laws against conversion therapy are unconstitutional. You can't outlaw or ban it in any form.
Yeah.
And I think the Supreme Court already refused to hear one case.
Which actually upheld the state's outlaw of conversion therapy. Yeah.
Very interesting. There's a movie I haven't seen yet called The Miseducation of Camera and Posts. It's a twenty eighteen film from the twenty twelve novel by Emily Danforth. I haven't seen it yet, but it's about a girl who undergoes conversion therapy, and it's Chloe Grace Mortz Moritz.
I you know her.
I do. I can't put the face with the name, but I know both.
Yeah, you've seen her for sure.
Sure. If you want to know more about arrested development, conversion therapy, all that stuff, you can, well, I guess start researching online. See what you think. And since I said see what you think, it's time for listener mail.
I'm going to call this complaint pedantic complaint. Okay, I write to complain Josh. In the episode on historic districts, you kept referring to them repeatedly with the indefinite article ANN rather than A and historic district.
I said, ann.
That's what he says.
That sounds unusual. I don't usually do that. Really, I guess I was just being unconsciously correct.
So is that correct?
Yeah?
So what's the rule? I don't know.
Huh, what I just said, that's the rule. That's the rule.
What I say, Okay, I.
Try not to exercise it too much. Only when i'm right.
Joe says this.
I realize this infuriating practice has become popular in recent years in the US. I feel passionately that it must be discontinued, especially primarily by those voices are attended by large audiences like you.
You are no doubt where the letter H is.
A consonantssit necessity necessitating geez nice. The use of the indefinite article A rather than ann citation all grammar books. Ever, I should limit the scope of my gripe with an important caveat Cockneys. They should probably continue to say ann because they pronounce it historic.
This guy doesn't even know that the rhyming slang episode is coming out. How weird.
But guys, that's not really what I write today. I love the show. I wanted to tell you. I wanted to wait for a halfway plausible pretense to make the email a little more fun, which I hope this has been any chance on an episode of How Pedantry Works.
Keep up a good work, Joe, He's spoken fun.
Turns out he's good. Peeps after all?
Yes, is the and before an ah? Is that a thing?
Oh? Yeah?
That is it?
Yeah? I think I don't know if it's proper or not. But I understand where it comes from because the vowel that comes right after the age is usually so heavily pronounced in relation to how it's pronounced when it comes after other consonants, like an historic and historic district sounds an honor and honor a honor? Which one sounds better?
Like I was bestowed an honor?
Yeah, the other way, but you wouldn't say dog vomiting.
In high school, I had an history teacher that was great. You know, it's really weird.
Did Joe tell you to say that?
No?
I just thought of it because an historic history teacher.
I had a historic Yeah, both work. How about this, We're both right, Joe, try not to focus on such stupid stuff.
I'm cure.
I'm curious if there I really want another rule now, because I know it's a consonant, But if people are saying it these days, is that just some sort of a fighting the system.
That's the descriptivest way. The prescriptivist is like, no, it's this way right. Joe's the prescriptivist here. We're descriptivists, all right. I think we've proven ourselves there.
Maybe we should launch a side podcast called the descriptivists.
Oh that's a good one. Yeah, almost as like a Civil War era folk band feel to it.
We'd have to curly cues that one.
That's fine, We're not going to do that. We could get fake ones that we just took on and off for publicity.
For all right, scout mob, all right.
Uh. If you want to get in touch with this, like Joe did, have a little quibble, a little gripe or praise or whatever, you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot com and check us out. Our social links are all up there. You can also send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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