Results: #BornPerfect: The Facts About Conversion Therapy

Conversion therapy is belief that a person's sexual orientation can be changed. In the past some mental health professionals resorted to extreme measures such as institutionalization, castration, and electroconvulsive shock therapy to try to stop people from being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT). Today, while some counselors still use physical treatments like aversive conditioning, the techniques most commonly used include a variety of behavioral, cognitive, psychoanalytic, and other practices that try to change or reduce same-sex attraction or alter a person's gender identity. While these contemporary versions of conversion therapy are less shocking and extreme than some of those more frequently used in the past, they are equally devoid of scientific validity and pose serious dangers to patients—especially to minors, who are often forced to undergo them by their parents or legal guardians, and who are at especially high risk of being harmed. First off, these therapies all assume that there is something to "fix" when a person is LGBT and that alone is harmful, and incorrect. Secondly, it also assumes that we can change who we are attracted to, or who we are "inside", and that itself is also harmful, deceitful (to the person going through the therapy and the person they pretend to love) and wrong. Are you familiar with the term conversion therapy?

All of the nation's leading professional medical and mental health associations have rejected conversion therapy as unnecessary, ineffective, and dangerous. These groups have cautioned that the practices do not work and have warned patients that they may be harmful. For example, the American Psychological Association "advises parents, guardians, young people, and their families to avoid sexual orientation change efforts that portray homosexuality as a mental illness or developmental disorder and to seek psychotherapy, social support, and educational services that provide accurate information on sexual orientation and sexuality, increase family and school support, and reduce rejection of sexual minority youth." Do you agree that conversion therapy is harmful and should be banned?

#BornPerfect: The Campaign to End Conversion Therapy was launched in 2014 and is dedicated to passing laws across the country to protect LGBT children and young people, fighting in courtrooms to ensure their safety, and raising awareness about the serious harms caused by these dangerous practices. Few practices hurt LGBT youth more than attempts to change their sexual orientation or gender identity through conversion therapy, which can cause depression, substance abuse, and even suicide. Conversion therapy can be extremely dangerous and, in some cases, fatal. Many countries have banned this therapy completely. In Canada only Ontario and Manitoba have banned the practice, and in the States, only New Jersey, California, Oregon, New Mexico, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Nevada, Illinois, Vermont, and the District of Columbia have statutes banning the dangerous and fraudulent practice. There are also some municipalities and cities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, and Arizona that regulate the practice. Last month, Washington state joined the list and Maryland is also considering a ban, so there's movement when it comes to eradicating it. Do you support these bans, and feel it should be extended country-wide, both in Canada and the States?

On this site we hear all the time "God doesn't make mistakes" used as a way of saying that LGBT people are some how going against "what God wanted" or trying to change who they are (in the case of transgender). Well, conversely that same argument can also be used to support LGBT people. After all, if God creates us "perfect" then it is who were were born to be -- and if someone grows up "knowing" they were born in the wrong body, then that's who they truly are inside, where it counts. People are born with imperfection on their body all the time, which surgery corrects. The same should be true of "imperfections" in so called "gender identifiers", which limit the person being who they really feel they are. Do you agree?