“’Conversion therapy’ refers to attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or related behaviors. Sometimes called ‘reparative’ or ‘reorientation’ therapy, these practices stem from the scientifically discredited belief that being LGBTQ+ is a mental illness that should be cured.” Is what the American Psychology Association says on conversion therapy. 

Having attraction to another person of the same sex isn’t unnatural, it isn’t something to be shunned. And religion is not an argument, because religion is subjective. However, let me tear apart your delusional idea that love is a disease that should be “cured.” 

According to the National Wildlife Federation, “Male zebra finches form lifelong socially monogamous relationships that include courtship dances and sex, and that don’t break up when females become available. Female Laysan albatrosses in Hawai‘i share nests, mount each other sexually and raise their young together.” So no, homosexual couples aren’t “unnatural.” In fact, they are more than just natural; homosexuality has been around since the dawn of time. How do hermaphrodite animals go into this claim? How about intersex people? The unnatural argument falls apart the second you ask questions or look at the animal kingdom. 

Now, what happens in these camps? How are the children treated? According to a story told by a survivor, James Guay, in Time Magazine, “For a year, I attended weekly individual therapy sessions where I was encouraged to blame my distant relationship with my father and over-involved relationship with my mother for my same-sex desires. I was also guided to ‘remember’ an original wounding—in particular, sexual or physical abuse—that I had not experienced. The main cures were to build ‘healthy same-sex non-sexual friendships,’ become more ‘masculine’ and date girls.” He was asked to push down anything that made him feminine, to be “normal.” If that doesn’t disgust you, I don’t know what would. Being told you are broken for just loving someone is such a horrible idea to me, and it can’t be justified. 

Does it even work? Does bashing someone with a bible over and over again even work? The answer is an overwhelming no. Once again according to the APA, “A 2015 study in the Journal of Counseling Psychology surveyed 1,612 people who underwent sexual orientation change efforts and found that only 3.2% reported even slight changes in sexual orientation.” And yes, surveys can be biased, but when it comes to something as personal as sexual orientation, I’d say it works. If these are to be believed, that is a 97.8% failure rate. 

Another study in 2020 done in Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, “Many studies report negative outcomes associated with SOCE (Sexual Orientation Change Efforts), and GICE (Gender Identity Change Efforts), such as depression, relationship dysfunction, and increased homonegativity.”  

Conversion therapy is like this: Let’s say a child likes chocolate ice cream. But due to the ideals of the parents, they say the child can’t like chocolate ice cream. So, they send the child away to a place where people who like chocolate ice cream are made to be normal and like vanilla ice cream. The child is subjected over and over how they can’t possibly like chocolate ice cream; something must be wrong with them. And when they leave, they don’t like vanilla at all, but they don’t like chocolate either. They hate all of it. They hate themselves for ever liking chocolate ice cream. And they feel they can never like any ice cream ever again, not even like themselves. 

That, in my book, is Hell. And if you are a good Christian who loves your neighbor, you wouldn’t subject someone to Hell. 

“When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men, and a discharge for loving one.” – Leonard Matlovich, a Vietnam Veteran.