Death by Jesus: Reparative Therapy

What would you do to save your eternal soul?

That is an issue faced every day by LGBT young people of faith when they're told that homosexuality is a choice, and bucking the norm means God will send them to Hell.

But saving one's eternal soul is not the only decision that they have to make:

What would you do to earn your parents' love?

If the parents are devout homophobes, love of a homophobic God may trump love of their own offspring. But that is not all:

What would you do to keep Dad from beating you to a pulp?

This last one is a dilemma faced by sons who are not masculine or Straight enough for their fathers.

If you are already living in a world of pain, it is logical that you might accept further pain to make it all stop. This includes torture in the form of reparative therapy, treatment designed to repair the broken homosexual. And when therapy doesn't work, just kill yourself.

If It Walks Like a Duck

Reparative therapy uses aversion techniques, which are designed for two things: stop a certain behavior through pain, and encourage a different behavior when pain stops.

This therapy is premised on the belief that our minds can be changed through negative conditioning. For example, a young girl really likes chocolate ice cream, but she eats a bad batch and gets food poisoning. From that day on, she might associate the taste of chocolate ice cream with getting sick, so she never eats it again.

A simplistic model of the human mind treats all of our desires and habits just like chocolate ice cream. All we need to modify unwanted behavior is associate it with something bad. Such was the therapy for Samuel Brinton to cure him of his homosexual tendencies (you can hear Samuel's testimony at www.imfromdriftwood.com).

He was home-diagnosed as a potential sodomite at the age of twelve. After a beating from his father that sent him to the emergency room, Samuel was told by counselors that he had AIDS and the government was killing all queer children. He was locked in his room when not in therapy to keep the government from getting him, at least that's what he was told. But his parents told his sister a different story: Samuel had murdered somebody and they were hiding him from the police.

Therapists then got physical. Samuel was forced to hold blocks of ice in his hands while being shown pictures of men holding hands. Treatment moved on to burning his hands with copper coils, and finally electrical shocks sent into his fingertips through tiny needles stuck in them while watching man-on-man porn. The pain would stop when pictures of heterosexual couples were shown.

Why would he put up with torture? Because his parents assured him that God hated him unless he changed. Because his mother made it very clear that she could not love him if he were homosexual. His father was more hands-on. Paternal counseling of the "devil child" consisted of putting a gun to his head as well as inflicting bodily harm.

Samuel is the son of Baptist missionaries, but abuse is not limited to Baptists. The story is repeated in many other Fundamentalist Christian denominations as well as Scientology. Some of the most striking testimonies come from Mormons, and sometimes the abuse occurred right on the campus of Brigham Young University with aversion therapy administered to young people, mostly young men, in secret. Treatment included electrodes attached to the penis so that shocks went directly to the problem. In the interest of scientific observation, a ring was placed around the penis to measure any increase of girth.

It's not just the pain. It's the embarrassment of another person watching your dick to see if you get hard. Similar treatments have been created for women with electrodes attached to the vagina. And you best believe therapists administering these treatments are getting their own sexual kicks.

Evergreen International, a Mormon organization for the rehabilitation of homosexuals, claims it can help people diminish SSA (same-sex attraction) and overcome homosexual behavior. For a mere 14 dollars, you can order a CD that will teach you how to switch teams. This organization has been accused of using shock therapy. To this day, Evergreen remains unapologetic and keeps its treatments as secret as possible.

The result of such abuse can convince the patients to implement a Final Solution and kill themselves. As one Mormon who had been through Evergreen International said, "They are ridding the world of homosexuality one suicidal homosexual at a time."

Sounds familiar, maybe a bit like Abu Graib? The similarity between torturing Iraqis and reparative therapy for homosexuals is not simply the use of coercive pain and sexual humiliation. Torture guarantees that the victim will say anything you want them to say. Truth, either in sincere confession or in actually changing one's orientation from homosexual to heterosexual, is not part of the equation.

But money is. Such treatments do not come cheap.

Pitcherskaia vs. the INS

It has already been determined in a court of law that, if administered against a person's will, aggressive methods designed to change homo to hetero constitute torture.

In 1996, Alla Konstantinova Pitcherskaia sought asylum in the USA. She was subjected to arrest, imprisonment and involuntary psychiatric treatment for being a Lesbian who was politically active for LGBT rights in her native Russia. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) recommended she be returned to Russia. Their reasoning: it was not torture because Russian authorities were only trying to help her overcome what they saw was a defect.

When Alla's case came before the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, judgment was rendered in her favor. Judge Betty Fletcher authored the court's opinion: "Human rights laws cannot be sidestepped simply by couching torture in benevolent terms such as 'curing' or 'treating' the victim." Judge Fletcher was referring specifically to aversion therapy, including electric shocks, to change Alla's sexual orientation.

But They Asked for It

Proponents of ex-gay aversion therapy say that it cannot be torture in cases where a child is forced to go through it, because the parents are thinking of the best interests of their offspring.

Bullshit.

If done to adults, aversion therapy is OK because they ask for it. Once again, bullshit.

Pitcherskaia vs. INS gives us legal grounds to challenge these things and call them what they are: torture, mental and physical, that undermines the health of LGBT people.

Such treatments are unethical for the following reasons:

1. There is no evidence that such methods actually work
2. Reparative therapists do not inform their patients of other therapies to make them happy with their orientation, therapies that have a proven track record of success
3. Those that administer reparative therapies make good money doing so
4. Those who pay the money are therefore being swindled, and the notion that they willingly consent is false because what they consent to is not what is actually offered
5. Reparative therapies designed to produce ex-gays constitute physical and mental torture, and are therefore illegal in US and international courts of law

and....

6. Any adult who shows porn to 12-year-olds should obviously go to jail.

Do we need to bring this to the United Nations? I'm game.