Recently, President Obama called for a ban on gay conversion therapy. Conversion therapy assumes sexual orientation and gender identity can be changed. Of course, that means changed from homosexual to heterosexual. It can involve anything from prayer to shock treatments. Long condemned by the American Psychiatric Association, it has even been denounced by its greatest (former) proponent, Exodus International. The leader of that “ex-gay” movement even apologized for the damage it had done to LGBT people. Yet, only California, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. have banned its practice on minors. Otherwise, it is still legal throughout the country. Last year a Wisconsin bill to outlaw conversion therapy failed.
That’s no surprise. With Republican control of the state legislature and a Tea Party governor and presidential contender, no socially responsible laws are in the offing. Besides, livid over their marriage equality defeat, conservative fundamentalist Christians remain rabid in their pursuit of anti-LGBT strategies, even if they entail pseudoscience and child abuse.
I know of a local case. A young man from rural Wisconsin was sent to a Christian psychologist to pray away the gay. That was after an unsuccessful exorcism at his local evangelical church. At age 17, naïve and desperate to comply, the boy’s will power failed. While play wrestling with a friend, he brushed his hand against the other boy’s genitals. They were both dressed and that was it. Guilt ridden, he told the psychologist who promptly called the police to report a sexual assault. The boy was duly charged, tried and convicted. He spent six months in jail. Now a sex offender, his parents put him up in an apartment in a neighboring town. Alone and left to his devices, despite forbidden to contact minors, he reached out to another young man he had met in jail. Fearing a probation violation, the other man reported the attempted contact. Just before his 18th birthday, the kid was returned to jail. There he sat. But, in the interim, he managed to call someone in the Milwaukee LGBT community for help. That led to an evaluation by a forensic psychologist who was also a professor of law. His findings concluded the conflicted youth had merely acted out and exhibited poor judgment but was not a sex offender. A hearing followed. The judge, who was unaware of the evaluation, first read it during the hearing, then dismissed it out of hand. He also claimed that although a Christian himself, that would not influence his ruling. The boy remained in jail for several more months. In all he spent more than a year in jail and will remain registered as a sex offender until he turns 32.
Fortunately, he has since moved to Milwaukee and found support through Pathfinders’ program for homeless LGBT youth. He is now employed and self-sufficient. Although the trauma and hardship of the experience remain, he was extremely lucky. Many, if not most, do not survive conversion therapy or its repercussions unscathed. Perhaps it’s time, in a state with marriage equality, we accept LGBT people for who they are.
