Finding a Different Path

New Laws Are Making It Harder to Get Help Walking Away from LGBTQ-ism

Across the West, and indeed, across the globe, the wrangling of legislative bodies over the measures to be taken in response to the spread of Covid-19 has kept public attention turned away from other important legislative proposals that by their nature are certain to have deep social impact. In Germany, where I live, one such proposal, which has since been passed into law by the Bundestag (the German parliament) was a ban on the provision of conversion therapy for minors experiencing unwanted same-sex attraction, as well as for adults seeking treatment for unwanted same-sex attraction, if "their consent is based on a deficiency of volitional capacity (e.g., coercion, threat, deception, error) and if the party providing treatment does not explain the harmful nature of the treatment to them" (my translation).

The "harmful nature" of such treatment is, of course, a matter of dispute, making the very wording of the law an exercise in question-begging. But there is more. On the Bundestag's website one can find a summary statement of the law, which declares that "advertising, offering, or arranging such treatments" is also prohibited. The language leaves unclear whether "advertising, offering, or arranging" conversion therapy of any kind is prohibited, or just the kind based on a "deficiency of volitional capacity."

The summary statement aside, however, the law itself clearly bans conversion therapy of all kinds. It prescribes a year in prison as the penalty for violations of the ban itself, and fines of up to 30,000 Euros for violations of the prohibition against advertising, offering, or arranging such therapy.

The ban applies to all persons, not just to those acting in a professional capacity. Parents or legal guardians who "grossly violate their obligations of care and guardianship" by "subjecting" minors to conversion therapy could also be sent to prison. Interestingly, parents who assist with treatment to help a minor achieve his or her "subjectively perceived sexual identity" will not be subject to legal action. But any attempt by parents, legal guardians, pastors, priests, or psychological counsellors to influence a person's subjective notions of sexual orientation or sexual identity is punishable under the law in the Federal Republic of Germany as of May 2020.

Justification by Lies

As icing on the tendentious cake, and just in case anyone should miss the message conveyed by the law's underlying assumptions, the Bundestag's summary of the law provides a justification for it: "In Germany there are still organizations who hold and promote the conviction that non-heterosexual orientations (e.g., homosexuality or bisexuality) or variant gender identities (e.g., transgender identity) constitute a 'disease' requiring treatment." The summary then explains to the eager public the utterly unproven "dangers of conversion therapy" as if they were established scientific facts, adducing as evidence the opinions of the World Health Organization, the World Medical Association, and the German Congress of Physicians.

In July 2020, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, an "independent expert" on LGBT issues (for which one should read "utterly partisan activist"), presented a report to the UN Human Rights Council recommending a global ban on conversion therapy. He strongly condemned such therapy, saying: "Such practices constitute an egregious violation of rights to bodily autonomy, health, and free expression of one's sexual orientation and gender identity. Ultimately, when conducted forcibly, they also represent a breach to the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment."

In his report, Madrigal-Borloz cited the most extreme cases of sexual and physical abuse of LGBT individuals that he could find. He deftly used these cases—which took place in third-world countries with questionable human rights records—to create a damning narrative, which he then, in a deceptive fashion typical of LGBTQ advocates, presented as typical in Western nations such as Germany and the United States. He also implied that practitioners of conversion therapy consider such abuse essential for success.

A similar strategy was used successfully in 2012 to get the New Jersey legislature to pass a law banning conversion therapy in that state. Horrific witness testimony in support of the ban turned out to be based, not on the witness's personal experience, but on a fictional pro-LGBT movie about attempts to cure a high-school girl of her lesbianism, as well as on urban myths concerning the existence of a "conversion camp" in Ohio called New Directions.¹ In other words, New Jersey lawmakers banned conversion therapy on the basis of highly dramatic but thoroughly false testimony—well, on that along with scientifically questionable, tendentiously interpreted studies.²

Interestingly enough, the supposed risks of undergoing conversion therapy almost precisely overlap those associated with the homosexual lifestyle: increased risk of depression, loss of sex drive, and risk of suicide. Yet people who share the same distorted views as the medical authorities listed above refuse to consider that there are any risks associated with homosexuality. In fact, they have successfully lobbied Amazon to ban books that present an honest assessment of the psychological and emotional problems that often accompany homosexual behavior.³ These bans are also exercises in question begging, being based on the assumption that there is never, ever any harm inherent in homosexuality and that no attempt to help those who subjectively experience their same-sex attraction as unwanted can ever be legitimate.

Stan's Case

So much for respecting an individual's right to "bodily autonomy" and the "free expression of one's sexual orientation and gender identity." No such rights are to be respected when they are exercised in contradiction to the philosophy underlying LGBTQ activism. The hypocrisy of both the international medical establishment and of German (and American) lawmakers runs deep here. The principle of "sexual self-determination" they claim to be defending must, if it is to be taken seriously as a guiding ethical principle, also admit to the validity of the views and experiences of those who reject homosexual impulses in themselves and want to be freed from them. That, too, would fall under "sexual self-determination" and "personal autonomy."

I can elucidate this with the hypothetical case of a young man we'll call "Stan." Stan's parents are from Poland, but he grew up in Chicago and was raised Roman Catholic. By his own account, Stan hated every minute of his Catholic upbringing. As a teenager, he expressed his resentment of all things Catholic by purchasing and practically memorizing every new religion-bashing book from the New Atheist crowd he could find, especially ones by authors who trashed the Catholic Church.

Stan continued this anti-Catholic crusade well into college—and yet he found over the years that he increasingly felt an unrelenting, almost irresistible attraction to the very things he claimed to hate most: religion in general and Catholicism in particular. He would attend campus debates pitting Catholic or other Christian apologists against noted atheists just to heckle the religious speakers, but he would also, as covertly as possible, sneak into Mass at the local cathedral. And in the quiet of his apartment, when he was sure no one but his cat could hear him, he would say the rosary. He loathed himself after every encounter with church and prayer, yet, deep inside, he feared they might be real encounters with the God he was sure did not exist.

Stan hates himself for having these religious feelings, which are implacable and in direct conflict with his declared identity as a person of non-faith. Then, one day on NPR, he hears an interview with a psychotherapist who is advocating a new type of therapy for persons in exactly his situation: those plagued by unwanted but seemingly irresistible religious impulses. It's called "de-conversion therapy." And Stan wants it desperately.

But the L(utheran) G(ideon) B(aptist) T(homist) Q(uaker) lobby opposes de-conversion therapy on the grounds that the religious lifestyle has proven health benefits, not least in the area of fulfilled sexuality, and that the health risks of the atheist lifestyle, which include increased risks of depression and suicide, are well-established by science. For these reasons, they insist that no medical professional should be allowed to counsel poor Stan against his religious feelings. Or even advertise such services. On pain of imprisonment.

Fair Application of Principle

If real LGBTQ activists genuinely sought to promote justice and respect for personal autonomy, they would no more demand a ban on conversion therapy than our hypothetical activists would demand a ban on de-conversion therapy for people like Stan. If the principles of self-determination and personal autonomy matter at all, they have to be allowed to work in either direction, that is, to also favor those seeking conversion therapy (also known as "reparative therapy" or "sexual orientation change efforts") to restore normal sexual impulses in themselves. To borrow a slogan from another moral-political context, "my body, my choice" would seem to apply.

But that is exactly the option that is being foreclosed. As Uwe Heimowski and Reinhardt Schink, writing in Pro Medienmagazin in June 2020, put it:

On the other hand, we fear that pastoral and therapeutic counselling of people who are on the search for their sexual identity would fall under this prohibition. The right to sexual self-determination must be guided by the wish of the individual who lives in conflict with his experienced homosexual feelings and impulses, and must allow for a decision to live as heterosexual. Therapeutic support of this desire should not be placed under a general prohibition and criminalized. (my translation)

This is exactly right. If the principles of self-­determination and individual autonomy are valid and can rightly be used as guides for public policy, then they must apply to those wishing to become ex-homosexuals. The total disregard for these persons' rights reveals the true totalitarian character behind the push for bans on conversion therapy.

Similarly, if concern for the mental and emotional well-being of adolescents is truly the motivating force behind the international push to ban conversion therapy for minors, then there should be a concomitant push to foster religious commitment and family involvement, since the same studies that point to "an unsupportive environment" as a risk factor for suicide among LGBT adolescents also point to religion and strong family bonds as protective factors against teen suicide.⁴

Little to Do with Science

That science has little to do with the global drive to criminalize therapeutic approaches to eliminating unwanted same-sex attraction in persons of any age was addressed in February 2020 by Randall Otto in The Public Discourse. In his response to an editorial in Scientific American that called for a federal ban on conversion therapy, Otto laid out the issues clearly:

Since the editors at Scientific American seem to be very concerned with preventing suicide among teens, one would imagine that they would give significant attention to how best to help young people who experience gender dysphoria. Yet the Scientific American website shows little caution regarding the questionable validity of gender affirmation and of social or medical transitioning as treatments for gender-dysphoric children and teens. Instead, its articles strongly affirm both: see for instance "Sex as a Spectrum" and "How to Meet the Needs of Transgender Kids."

Why would Scientific American urge a ban on therapies that may free some from a lifestyle that is associated with greater depression and suicide, and yet never question "treatments" for gender dysphoria that lead to increased confusion, depression, and suicidal tendencies?⁵

The answer to Otto's rhetorical question is clear: the editors of that once-august journal have traded science for social engineering aimed at promoting a distorted view of human sexuality. In the legislative push to force acceptance of LGBTQ lifestyles as normative and to punish attempts to eliminate unwanted same-sex attraction, the health and rights of those seeking relief from that unwanted attraction⁶ are being trampled.

In Germany, the ban on conversion therapy is now law, as it is in twenty U.S. states, three Canadian provinces, and several other nations. That Germany, the most powerful nation in continental Western Europe, has joined these other polities in disavowing the autonomy and self-determination of its citizens who seek freedom from same-sex attraction bodes ill for future resistance to these bans. Right now, German pastors, psychologists, and Christian counsellors find themselves under threat of arrest, imprisonment, and fines for any activity they would undertake in that direction. So do parents. And spouses. The cradle of the Reformation, once regarded by many as the birthplace of the modern legal principle of freedom of conscience, has now joined the ranks of willing executioners of this same principle.  

Notes
1. https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2013/03/25/did-a-gay-activist-lie-to-the-new-jersey-senate-n1548304.
2. firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/09/why-science-doesnt-support-orientation-change-bans.
3. theamericanconservative.com/dreher/amazon-com-homintern-joseph-goebbels-joseph-nicolosi-reparative-therapy.
4. https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/138/1/e20161420.
5. https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/02/60178.
6. https://changedmovement.com.