I got this letter from a left-wing PR group yesterday, asking people to come out to protest against “conversion therapy” – the controversial practice of trying to “convert” gay kids to being straight – and, I suspect, ban the practice:<\/p>\n
Dear Rudolph,<\/p>\n
OutFront Minnesota\u2019s Lobby Day is this Thursday…Contact your legislators right now and tell them that no child should be subjected to dangerous and discredited conversion therapy…<\/span>It\u2019s those same conversations with legislators that will make the difference in whether we can protect youth from conversion therapy in Minnesota.<\/span><\/p>\n
…<\/span><\/p>\n
With pride and respect,<\/span><\/p>\n
Marty Rouse
\nNational Field Director<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe thesis is that trying to use therapy to try to undo a key component of a person’s personality and identity can be traumatic, damaging and a bad idea deserving to be banned via the weight of government.\u00a0Now, if someone\u00a0<\/span>voluntarily\u00a0<\/em>wants to give conversation therapy a try, I’m not sure where it’s the state’s interest…<\/span><\/p>\n
…but let’s focus on the basic principle; dabbling in engineering peoples’ identities can cause all sorts of psychological harm. \u00a0And psychology\/psychiatry have known for decades (or as close as those two deeply inexact sciences ever get to “knowing” anything, anyway) that trying to force people to change their personality causes huge problems.<\/p>\n
And just so we’re clear; I agree. \u00a0 I agree that forcing people to be someone they’re not causes long-lasting, terrible damage to the human psyche.<\/p>\n
And that’s true whether you’re trying to “cure” homosexuality…<\/p>\n
…or boyhood, which has been turned by our feminized<\/a> academic establishment into<\/a> a semi-treatable<\/a>\u00a0psychiatric\u00a0pathology<\/a> (subject<\/a> to diagnosis by people with BAs in Education rather than MDs and PhDs) that needs to be wiped out<\/a>.<\/p>\n
So how about it? \u00a0Should we treat\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>assaults against the human psyche as abuse? \u00a0Or just the politically-incorrect ones?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got this letter from a left-wing PR group yesterday, asking people to come out to protest against “conversion therapy” – the controversial practice of trying to “convert” gay kids to being straight – and, I suspect, ban the practice: Dear Rudolph, OutFront Minnesota\u2019s Lobby Day is this Thursday…Contact your legislators right now and tell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[324],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53059"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53066,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53059\/revisions\/53066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}