The City of Minneapolis is likely going to vote to bar “conversion therapy” for people under 18.
I’m going to add a bit of emphasis:
The controversial practice aims to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay to straight. It has drawn the ire of many in the LGBT community and others, who say it doesn’t work, has no scientific basis, and amounts to psychological torture.
Of course, the “scientific proof” one way or the other is all “social science”, which isn’t “science” at all.
And if it’s “science” we’re concerned with, it’s worth noting that the idea that “homosexuality is genetic” is a political, not scientific, conclusion.
But with that out of the way – I don’t disagree. Society has known for decades that forcing someone to act like someone they’re intrinsically not is a terrible thing that causes horrendous psychiatric damage when forced upon the subject. This was generally well-known – if frequently contested or ignored – even when I was in high school.
As, indeed, the MPR story on the subject notes:
Roger Sanchez of Minneapolis said he wishes such a ban would have been in place when he was a teenager. Sanchez, who is gay, said his father and a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints both urged him to get psychotherapy to change his sexual orientation.
It did not involve shock treatments or anything physically invasive, but Sanchez said what he went through was damaging because it made him believe he was somehow disordered.
Bully for Minneapolis.
Now – if “therapy” to “convert” gays to straight-dom is bad, because (social) science…
…then why is forcing boys to act like girls – verbal, cooperative, social, rather than physical, competitive and restless – any better in any way?
Because science, and a look at the state of boys and young men today, certainly shows the social catastrophe that a generation of changing and medicating that natural male energy, rather than teaching boys to channel it and use it productively, has had on society.
When does that come up on the agenda?
