Well, they did it.
If you think Jerry’s moonbeam has expired, you should see Linda…
The California Sate Legislature, spurred on by State Senator Ted Lieu and with the approval of erstwhile “Governor Moonbeam” (nobody calls Jerry Brown this anymore since he went bald and gray, but he’ll always be that in my heart! ), has decreed that if you think your son or daughter may be confused about their sexuality, you’re out of luck, or you’d better move to a state that hasn’t made political correctness mandatory—which is to say, to this degree, anyway, any of the rest. It’s a truly sickening law, and the fact that none of the news reporting of it indicates that the reporters are properly nauseous scares the pants off of me.
I wrote about this despicable measure when it was still a twinkle in California’s jaundiced eye, and I’m not going to repeat myself—except to reiterate that my objections have nothing to do with believing that “gay conversion therapy” is usually anything but a wishful and desperate brainwashing attempt by parents who are homophobic and whose religion teaches them that Satan just chose to give their son the Pervert Virus. Nonetheless, therapists talk, and this is a law that tells them what they can and can’t talk about. Ethics Foul I: abuse of power and violation of Free Speech.
It also attempts to interfere with parental decisions regarding the well-being of their own children, siding instead with the interests of the all-powerful lobby of gay activists who violently object to any conduct or uttered words that dare suggest that their cool sexual orientation isn’t a healthy, normal and equally desirable alternative to heterosexuality. Ethics Foul II: disrespect for autonomy.
Finally, it restricts experimentation and free thought. Jerry Brown, signing the law, said that the therapies “have no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.” Who are the California Legislature and Brown to say that about any “therapy” involving psychiatry, psychology or talking? I happen to think most such therapy is of dubious value—for God’s sake, Woody Allen had been in “analysis” for decades and then married his daughter! Freud has been debunked; psychiatry conferences regularly devolve into shouting matches. My own one foray into “therapy” ended bizarrely after only three sessions, when my much-credentialed therapist–at $250 an hour mind you!—informed me that my perplexing tendency to parry his questions had led him to doubt his own competence and lose faith in his field, so he was quitting and, oh, I don’t remember, opening a Leftorium or something. (He didn’t give me my $750 back, though.) True story. Still, I have friends who swear therapies of various kinds saved their lives, their marriages, or their sanity.
The government has no business cutting off experimentation in an amorphous area like this. It is the ultimate arrogance, and a blatant intrusion into personal choice and parental authority Many think Alcoholics Anonymous is “quackery” (Right, Charlie?). I know “intelligent design” is absurd, but if parents want to make their children stupid and and send them to a private school that teaches that Adam rode around on a diplodocus, that is their right as parents, and the state making it illegal is dictating thought. So is this.
Ethics Foul III.
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Facts: Washington Post
Graphic: Liberty’s Flame
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
I admit this story is new to me, so please excuse my ignorance if I’ve missed the point. My moral intuition tells me that “gay teen conversion therapy” is abusive, harmgul and wrong. It would also be wrong for gay parents to force their kids into “straight teen conversion therapy”. I think the state is obligated to protect its citizens from harm. This law aims to do just that. Did I miss something?
Uh, the whole essay? Did you read the link to the earlier post? Government is not empowered to make illegal every choice that families make regarding their children that are potentially harmful. This is not necessarily harmful. What if the child asks for it? What is the clear definition of gay teen conversion therapy”? Do you trust the government to enforce this narrowly? I don’t. Will it chill therapists from even raising sexual orientation issues with teens? Sure it will.Is anti-smoking therapy abusive? How about anti-sexism and harassment training? Mandatory ethics training?
Would you trust universities to enforce speech codes in an even-handed manner?
Never, and we know that they don’t. See: The Fire
It is not necessarily harmful? Maybe so, but I’d like to see some quantifiable data that looks at the outcomes of this so-called therapy before I’d believe that. Even without hard evidence at the ready, anyone concerned with individual rights can simply intuit that brainwashing gay kids into being straight is a violation of a person’s right to be (or become) whatever their biology/predilection dictates. This treatment is both unnecessary and wrong. Moreover, it seems to be driven by motives of bigotry and intolerance.
Your comparisons with smoking, sexism and harassment have a flaw: those practices are all harmful and damaging to a well functioning society. Being gay is none of those things.
The government is correct to put a stop to a practice that treats being gay like an affliction. Certainly, there may be negative consequences to being gay (due to intolerance), but if that’s the case, then let’s council people on how to deal with those eventualities, not perform some modern equivalency of an exorcism.
“It is not necessarily harmful? Maybe so, but I’d like to see some quantifiable data that looks at the outcomes of this so-called therapy before I’d believe that.”
Talking to a kid about his sexual orientation and seeing if he will come around after sessions of talking to a conclusion that he may not be gay might be harmful? How harmful? More harmful that regular therapy, that leads people to quit jobs and end relationships? Who says? You? Jerry Brown? Why should someone’;s family have to care what you think, or some researcher thinks? Exorcisms aren’t illegal either, nor should they be.
“Anyone concerned with individual rights can simply intuit that brainwashing gay kids into being straight is a violation of a person’s right to be (or become) whatever their biology/predilection dictates.”
That’s some law you’re writing. So you also want to make it illegal to have a therapist talk your kid out of being a geek, or a stunt-man, or a lawyer, right? The problem is that children’s rights are subordinate to their parents’ choices, and this ain’t Sparta.
“This treatment is both unnecessary and wrong.”
YOU say its unnecessary. Maybe the kid wants it. The parents want it. The government doesn’t get to dictate what’s “necessary.” Families don’t send their kids to college, don’t feed them well, don’t give them exposure to culture, don’t make them exercise, don’t give them spiritual education—these are all “necessary,” many believe. If the state believes it, you think that justifies a law, and telling me how to raise my kids, telling the experts I hire to handle these things that their occupation is illegal? You call THAT “individual rights”? Ridiculous and indefensible. And totalitarian.
“Moreover, it seems to be driven by motives of bigotry and intolerance.”
Now you’re dictating motives and thoughts. That’s what I wrote: this is declaring thought crime. News: in the US, it is legal to be a bigot, and legal to be motivated by bigotry, as long as one doesn’t engage in one of the forms of discrimination—CONDUCT—the law prohibits. The law can’t make me go to a Jewish doctor, now should it. You and Jerry Brown have no business forcing me to adopt your “motive.” You want to argue with them, criticize them, be my guest. It is wrong to interfere with my biases, as long as I control them.
“Your comparisons with smoking, sexism and harassment have a flaw: those practices are all harmful and damaging to a well functioning society. Being gay is none of those things.”
Neither is having a big nose, or being scrawny, or not being able to win a Gold Medal in gymnastics, or not being able to sing opera, or being shy with girls. And I’m not sure I agree with you on smoking, either—American society thrived while everyone smoked. So you’re NOT really concerned with whether the treatment is harmful or not—that’s progress, because I’m pretty sure a few sessions of this therapy–and by the way, even ONE is illegal, and how harmful could THAT be>—is a lot less unpleasant than being ripped out of your home and shipped to the Karolys for 12 hours a day of training on the uneven bars. You now want to ban treatment because of what you and Jerry Brown has decided is harmful to society. But this has nothing to do with society. This has to do with a parents decision about what is in the best interests of his kid, and that is his call. Why isn’t California banning teenage nose jobs? There are risks to surgery, and hey, lots of people with big noses have thrived—look at DeGaul! Look at Streisand! Well, so what? The parents think their kid will have an easier time with smaller ears, or nose, or with bigger boobs, or straight, and maybe the kid thinks so to, and maybe they’re right. If being gay is such an unequivocal pleasure, why are gay advocacy groups necessary, like the ones that forced this legislation? Gays are beaten up, get discriminated against, risk AIDS, have barriers to having a family—what’s wrong with a parent deciding, “You know, if this therapy works, my kid will have an easier life?” Nothing’s wrong with it, except that it understandably makes gays feel like who they are is the equivalent of a disease. That’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t give them, or California, the right to stop what makes them feel uncomfortable—and that’s the real reason behind this almost certainly unconstitutional law.
“The government is correct to put a stop to a practice that treats being gay like an affliction.”
And see? You admit it.
“And I’m not sure I agree with you on smoking, either—American society thrived while everyone smoked. ”
Yes, I’m nostalgic for those days in the 60s when my parents smoked and there were smoking ads on TV. Society thrived. Now, after years anti-tobacco activism smoking is way down, but with mainstream pornography, etc. we are an unhealthier society by far.
If you’re going to be arch, sarcastic or tongue in cheek, Mike, you have to do better than this. I can’t tell if it’s a serious comment or not. By the way, smoking still isn’t illegal.
I meant just exactly what I said, Jack, and I thought that I was being very straightforward about it.
I expressed nostalgia for the normalcy of the late 50s, early 60s. Tobacco smoking and all, society was healthier then than it is now with pornography everywhere, the foment of homosexual activists, and creeps like Ted Lieu in politics.
If there was anything besides that in my post, it was irony over the activism that tried to create a smoke-free society as if that was all that mattered, while many other things grew and spread that are rotting our souls.
Thanks, Mike. I don’t know your style well enough to tell—I assure you that there are many here who, if they wrote that exact comment, would be communicating something entirely different. I appreciate the clarification. Yes, we are at the point where even stating something straight-forwardly is ambiguous.
Because the motivations of the legislature is not to protect children.
Controversial Therapy for Pre-Teen Transgender Patient Raises Questions .
It is to appease a loud minority.
I find it incongruous that we can change a person’s sex, but not their sexual orientation.
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. I don’t. Fixing physical problems has always been easier than addressing emotional and psychological issues.
how then is a discomfort with one’s own biology which leads to a desire for drastic surgery to be considered strictly a physical problem?
The physical problem causes the emotional/mental one. The solution is physical. I may be insecure about having one leg, but the problem is a physical one—once I get a good artificial leg, there is no more mental problem. Solving my insecurity if I look like George Clooney is presumably harder.
3. I don’t. Fixing physical problems has always been easier than addressing emotional and psychological issues
I think Michael was getting more at the fact that parents are allowed to subject children to treatments to prepare them for transgender surgery. The incongruity is that those under 18 can have their bodies irrevocably changed by hormone blockeres and later hormone treatments, but they can’t have any counseling.
Well, looks like the only “conversion therapy” to be allowed in the Land of the Fruits & Nuts will be between homoerotic men and boys.
Parents are slowly being stripped of their parental rights. In Washington state the parents have no say over the medical o rmental treatments of children 13 and older. The state has decided they are old enough make those choices for themselves.
How do you think Socrates would address this problem? It is a complex issue. Using the Socratic method, how do you think we could break this issue down to where we get beyond the way it stands right now?
It is a complex issue, though I still think its an easy call from an ethics and government perspective. In medical activities as amorphous as therapy (as opposed to drugs, for example), the default position should be that as long as there is full disclosure from the professional about content and risks, the parents should be given wide discretion in choosing treatment options for their children. This is a political decision by California as much as a medical one, and for that reason is inherently untrustworthy.
Jack, you make references to experimentation. But the targeted “conversion therapy” is not (or is deemed not) experimental, right?
This seems to be a case of trusting bad law to limit and prevent harm, over trusting what is alternately called science and pseudo-science for the same ostensible purposes.
California’s move in state law could be ominous foreshadowing of future politics dominated by religious bigotries, leading to imposition of additional bans on activities such as abortion and counseling for pregnant persons, tattoos, and reparative therapies for gender identity disorders.
The point is that under the law, nobody could try a new “conversion therapy” method, develop one, or test one, because it has been pre-condemned as ‘quackery.” But there is no way to conclude that with therapy. The mind is a mysterious thing. Your last paragraph is exactly right. Our colleague tgt believes that religious training of children is per se harmful. Absent Constitutional protection, would some like-minded legislature ban Sunday school? Why not?
Given the brouhaha over the Ground Zero mosque…
Oh, and a follow-up point on autonomy.
It increases autonomy when decisions about optional medical treatment is put off until adulthood. If my parents choose a treatment for me, that takes away my autonomy; if the decision is put off until I’m an adult able to decide for myself, then that increases my autonomy.
It’s not entirely simple, of course. In making these decisions, parents have to weigh other factors — for instance, are there benefits to beginning treatment earlier than age 18, that won’t be available after age 18? There are cases where there are strong reasons to begin treatment before age 18.
But in the case of conversion therapy – which has no proven benefits, has never been shown to work, and can cause lifelong harm – all factors point in the same direction. There is no benefit to early treatment, and there is every reason to wait for adulthood, to let the patient decide for themself.
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Hi, Jack. I wasn’t successful at posting a long response here, so I posted it on my blog.
I don’t know what the glitch was, Barry–I’m sorry.
No big deal – glitches happen. Should I attempt to post it here again?
Please.
Jack:
None of your three points stands up well to scrutiny.
1. Free speech. That it involves “talk” doesn’t automatically means its protected by the first amendment. If I talk Linus into believing that I’m the owner of the Brooklyn Bridge and sell it to him on a verbal deal, I can be arrested as a con artist, even though I did nothing but talk.
Therapists offering conversion therapy are, first of all, con artists – they’re bilking desperate parents out of money by offering something that they cannot deliver. That’s not protected speech.
More importantly, courts have found time and again that the state’s compelling interest in protecting children from harm can survive a first amendment challenge. As Justice White wrote:
Ferber v New York involved sexual performances, but given the overwhelming evidence that conversion therapy severely harms children, the same principle applies here. The First Amendment is not a license for child abuse.
2. Disrespect for autonomy of parents.
But this law doesn’t restrict parental behavior, only therapist behavior.
It does makes a particular commercial service (conversion therapy) unavailable, but no more than a law forbidding prostitution interferes with a father who wants to buy his son a sex act for his 16th birthday, or a law forbidding drug use interferes with parents who’d like to buy their daughter a joint. Do you object to those laws because they abridge parental autonomy?
There are already laws in California holding parents accountable for making clearly harmful medical decisions for their children, as in the case of a Christian Scientist who allows his child to go untreated rather than get medical treatment. This law is much milder, since it only applies to therapists and cannot punish parents in any way.
More generally, there are a lot of laws against parents injuring their children, either actively or through neglect – laws against child abuse, laws requiring children to be educated, etc.. There are times when protecting the health of children is more important than protecting the right of parents to treat children in whatever way they want.
3. Restricts experimentation and free thought.
So do all imaginable rules and regulations on therapeutic, psychiatric and medical treatment. Should we therefore say that no regulation is acceptable?
Suppose a hynotherapist claims that sexually molesting his patients while they are in a trance is an experimental treatment that he believes will benefit his patients — is that a reason for us to repeal California’s law against sexual misconduct by licensed therapists? After all, to use the same logic as your argument, who are the Legislature to say that a good rape while hypnotized isn’t exactly what the patient needs?
The answer is pretty clear, of course. The legislature are the people’s duly elected representatives, and as such they are the authorized people who pass laws regulating the providers of health care. Of course, they should carry out that duty based on the best scientific evidence, and acting only in cases where the scientific literature shows severe harms for a treatment not counterbalanced by proven benefits.
In this case, the law they passed cited the extensive scientific literature showing not only that conversion therapy has no benefits (and does not work), but that it carries a high risk of severely harming the patient. Furthermore, the group they are protecting – children – are a particularly powerless group unable to protect themselves.
Under these circumstances, this law is entirely appropriate, and we should hope that the other 49 states quickly follow suit.
Finally, you falsely claim that this law dictates thought. That’s obviously not true. In no way does this law outlaw anyone thinking anything. Parents are free not only to think that their children shouldn’t be gay, but to share this opinion with their children, with their friends, and anyone else.
I guess you could argue that outlawing a therapeutic practice that has been shown to be ineffective and harmful is dictating thought. But if that’s the case, then surely ANY regulation of ANY therapeutic practice is dictating thought. Is that your view?
P.S. If gay activists were “all-powerful,” same-sex marriage would be legal everywhere, and 99% of Republicans would be unelectable. Alas, this is not the case. Not even in California.
FINALLY got this, Barry. It was my fault–somehow they were burried in the spam, and I was traveling and didn’t catch them. I apologize. Now then…
I think it is a free speech restriction, because the position that being gay is absolutely genetic and irreversible is as much political as biological, and it can be shown that the banning of the treatment is spurred by the former rather than the latter. You say such therapists are con men. I don’t see how you can say that. Millions of Americans, like Michele Bachmann, believe fervently that being gay is reversible—so do Scientologists. To be com men such therapists have to intentionally con, and I very much doubt that they all are, and don’t know how you would prove that. What about lesbians? The biological evidence that gay women are genetically, rather than psychologically disposed to be gay was much, much weaker the last I checked—how do you know that therapy couldn’t work in some cases…or therapy that hasn’t been developed yet? Sure, I’d be skeptical. But I’m skeptical of acupuncture and chiropractors, too.
Regarding harm: you need an overwhelming proof of tangible and likely harm to justify telling parents what treatment they can seek, and it just isn’t there: the definition of harm here includes political bias, and the presumption that being gay isn’t itself a disadvantageous, even harmful condition. That presumption, again, is political. The argument that this isn’t a restriction on the parents is specious. “We’re not stopping you from eating; we’re just taking away the food.” Come on.
As for the argument that the therapy is harmful—there is no established or sufficiently narrowly defined “it.” To meet fair legislative and constitutional standards, “Conversion therapy” would have to be defined in exacting detail, allowing future, new therapies with the same objective to be tried and tested in blind surveys. This is therapy defined as harmful by its intent, rather than its content. Ban conversion therapy using electroshock? I’m with you. Beatings? I think we can prove that’s harmful. Arsenic? Isolation? Torture? Check, check, check. But the law, as written, would bar brand new methods yet invented, because of a decree that the objective, not the harmful after-affects, should be banned. Well, some parents seek that objective and believe it is appropriate. Next the state will tell us we can’t raise of kids to be racists, or gun-owners, or Episcopals.
It’s an abuse of power, and far too slippery a slope to tread on. This is a perfect example of where the market theory should be allowed to work—if the therapy doesn’t work, then nobody will use it.
Your framing is irrelevant, and suggests that you don’t understand the issue. It isn’t relevant if homosexuality is nurture, nature, or a mix. The relevant questions are: Has conversion therapy, of any sort, been shown to work in the scientific literature? (Answer: no.) And, has conversion therapy been shown to carry substantial risks of harm in the scientific literature? (Answer: yes.) Several reviews of the scientific literature, both in journals and by professional organizations like the APA, have come to the same conclusion on this.
I think the argument that “you can’t regulate, because that limits parental rights” is pretty specious. I note that you didn’t even attempt to respond to my examples. Here’s another one: What if I, as a parent, sincerely believe that a school that practices caning would be best for my children? (Trust me, there are such parents out there.) Does that mean that laws against caning students are an impermissible restriction of parental rights?
Contrary to what you think, laws protecting children do not and can not hinge on the sincerity of the parents’ beliefs. Christian Scientists are sincere, but that doesn’t make it legal for them to withhold lifesaving medical treatment from their children. Any kind of child abuse, no matter how horrific, has at some point been committed by a parent who sincerely believed they were doing the right thing.
The relevant scientific organizations concluded decades ago that being gay is not itself a mental illness. Since the question here is “what services may licensed therapists offer?,” surely the fact that homosexuality is not an illness according to the professional organization that defines mental illnesses is relevant, and not merely “political.”
What is the standard for when a therapy is narrowly defined enough, Jack? Is there a legal authority you can quote on that subject? It seems to me the definition given in the legislation is narrow enough so that therapists can be certain what to avoid doing in order to avoid breaking the law; I am not aware of any legal requirement that it be narrower than that.
In any case, if there is a problem with the definition not being narrow enough to pass legal muster, then injured therapists have a remedy: they can sue. (And doubtless will.) My guess is that when the lawsuits are over, however, it will turn out that there is no barrier in the law to a regulation such as this one. But it’s possible I’ll be proven wrong.
Regarding methods, I don’t think you’re really engaging with the evidence. Patients who have gone through conversion therapy are more likely to have symptoms ranging from depression to suicide attempts. (Indeed, the most famous example of a “successful” conversion in the literature was of a young man who later committed suicide.) It’s shallow to imply that as long as it was only talk therapy and not shock treatment, those patients haven’t been harmed.
We know that conversion therapy is in many cases harmful because of the evidence in the scientific literature. That – not your rather arbitrary list of things you consider harmful — is the standard that lawmakers should use.
That’s silly. No one is telling parents that they can’t raise their gay kids to hate themselves; no one is telling parents that they can’t be as homophobic as they want to be. The only thing parents can’t do, according to this law, is hire a licensed mental health professional to perform a therapy that has has never been shown to work and has been shown to carry a risk of severe harm.
Nor does this law apply outside the borders of California, by the way. If someone outside California creates a conversion therapy that is scientifically shown to work and not cause harm, at that point the legislature can rationally revisit the issue. But to allow a therapy that does no good at all, and considerable harm, to keep on harming minors because maybe an entirely hypothetical new treatment will come along, would be not only irrational but irresponsible.
Slippery slopes are a desperation argument used by people who don’t have any rational argument or evidence to support their view.
Nonsense. Supply and demand theory only works if you assume that the consumers are well-informed. But in this case, we know that most customers are not well-informed; most customers are not familiar with the scientific evidence, and instead are depending on the licensed therapist they hire to be familiar with the what the science says and not to offer potentially harmful treatments that have never been shown to work.
The reason we have licenses and other regulations on professional medical practices is because we know that this is an area where consumers don’t have nearly enough information, and furthermore are likely to be desperate and unlikely to comparison shop. In such a circumstance, it’s illogical to believe that children need no protections at all other than supply and demand.
But Barry, we just don’t ban therapies because they aren’t supported in “the scientific literature.” Many Eastern healing and spiritual techniques can’t be validated this way. (Look up Reiki, for example. ) Faith healing isn’t banned. Courts have over-turned bans on fortune-telling and psychics as violations of free speech guarantees, and this is right in line with those cases.
The test subjects in studies of conversion therapy methods are not the ones who claim to be helped by it, and all that means is that the “results” claimed can’t be verified.
You know I agree with you—I think the therapy is crap. I cannot say that all such therapy, including future therapy, will be. There is no therapy that can “cure” pederasts, but we don’t ban the attempts. And while I do not regard being gay a malady, that’s a social/political opinion, based on a choice of definitions, not a fact.
We do ban some therapies and treatments that are known to cause harm, Jack. That’s why fen-phen isn’t legally available; it caused harm. (And fen-phen, unlike conversion therapy, had been shown to do what it claimed, which was to facilitate weight loss in some patients).
And by the way, you keep on ignoring that conversion therapy isn’t even being banned. The only thing that’s being banned is conversion therapy on children, who can’t decide for themselves yet. Nothing in this law will prevent anyone 18 or older from choosing conversion therapy for themselves.
This only makes sense if you’re claiming that ALL the studies used a bad sampling method. Evidence? Links?
Therapists, unlike psychics, need a license to be able to legally operate, and so are held to higher standards than psychics. Do you disagree with that?
And I don’t know if it’s “a fact” that homosexuality is not a malady in some metaphysical “Truth” sense (although I don’t think it is). But it is a fact that homosexuality is not a malady according to the official diagnostic manual used by American mental health professionals. I don’t think it’s wrong to require licensed professionals to provide care that hasn’t been found to be all harm no benefits in the professional literature.
Barry, kids can’t decide for themselves to get braces. And Fen-phen is banned for everyone. The legislature knows that it can’t get away with banning the therapy, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, so it is using the illicit argument regarding children. The state has no business deciding for the children unless what it is banning is clearly dangerous. You can’t compare talk therapy to dangerous drugs.
Why not?
The reason we know that conversion therapy is dangerous, and the reason we know that drugs are dangerous, is the same reason: studies of each treatment have shown that they are dangerous, in the sense of harming some patients in predictable ways.
Your definition of “clearly dangerous” appears to be “Jack arbitrarily declares they’re dangerous”; certainly you have cited no studies or authorities to support your claim that conversion therapy is not dangerous.
Suppose that I had a therapy for ungracious children that consisted of nothing but me sitting them in a chair for three hours a day and berating them. Suppose as well that after 30 years of this, a pattern of depression, self-hatred and suicide became noticeable among my ex-patients. Would you honestly say that it is impossible that my therapy did any harm, because I didn’t do anything but talk?
It is true that, as the Supreme Court has said, the government has a very strong interest in protecting children, which means that it’s a little easier to regulate to protect children than it is to regulate things for adults. I don’t see that as always illegitimate or wrong. A lot of things that we think are too dangerous for children to use or do, we allow adults to use or do.
And yet the government does not ban hormone blockers for children for the purpose of prepping them for sex change operations.
What’s your point, Michael? Please spell out the argument for me.
You can’t compare then because while harmful drugs harm everyone, and in roughly the same ways,, talk therapy’s effects vary according to the individual. It’s a completely different issue, and I’m rather surpised you won’t acknowledge it. Is the therapy more harmful for a teen than living with parents who reject him because he’s gay? Is there data on that, because I can’t find it. How do you do a fair and blind test of gay conversion therapy? How would you learn about “success stories”? I know how you test drugs—what, they got volunteers to undergo the therapy as teens and did longitudinal studies? How do we know what they provided was the best therapy or the only therapy? Fen-Phen is Fen-Phen, but there are a lot of different kinds of talk therapy, and the therapist makes a big difference too, while who gives you Fen-Phen doesn’t matter at all, does it? My guess is that the therapy data is weak at best, and the “harm” being identified is that gay activists think being “converted” or having it attempted is per se harmful.
And distinguish the fortune teller case, please.