Jake Van Gogh
Sep 3, 2018 · 3 min read

Don’t “pray the gay away’, pray you learn actual compassion and understanding of people different from you.

As a society, we’ve been making great strides in moving forward in the fight for equality, however….

There’s still an ugly little thing we need to tackle.

You probably already know where I’m going with this, but we need to talk about the segment of our society who think that sexual orientation can be changed. Essentially through either prayer or “therapy” and I use the word therapy very loosely here as it is not something that any major body of professionals would dignify as such

Let’s begin.

First. The Resolution on Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts Research Summary by the American Psychological Association reads as follows “The longstanding consensus of the behavioral and social sciences and the health and mental health professionals is that homosexuality per se is a normal and positive variation of human sexual orientation”

The American Psychological Association goes on to say….

“APA is concerned about ongoing efforts to mischaracterize homosexuality and promote the notion that sexual orientation can be changed and about the resurgence of sexual orientation change efforts”

“The APA concludes that psychology must rely on proven methods of scientific inquiry based on empirical data, on which hypotheses and propositions are confirmed or disconfirmed, as the basis to explore and understand human behavior “

“Be it further resolved that the American Psychological Association concludes that there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation;”

But why should we end there, The APA’s former president Dr. Barry S. Anton said in a 2015 response to then President Obama’s call for society to accept young people rather than reject them because of their gender and sexual orientation:

“So-called reparative therapies are aimed at ‘fixing’ something that is not a mental illness and therefore does not require therapy. There is insufficient scientific evidence that they work, and they have the potential to harm the client,” said APA 2015 President Barry S. Anton, PhD. “APA has and will continue to call on mental health professionals to work to reduce misunderstanding about and prejudice toward gay and transgender people.”

Now that we’ve got that out of the way. Let’s acknowledge something scary.

As it currently sits, gay conversion therapy is still legal in 39 states.

California was the first state to ban the practice for minors in 2012, and I don’t know about you, but 11 states in 6 years isn’t a drop in the bucket. We can make real change and work to get gay conversion therapy banned across the US within our lifetimes, possibly much sooner.

But we first need to come to an understanding as a society, that no matter what our race, our religious belief or lackthereof, that sexual orientation is not something that we should seek to change, nor is the notion of sexual orientation change efforts something that is backed up by scientific empirical evidence, nor does any major body of research or school of medicine worth their weight support such efforts.

References:

APA. (2015). American Psychological Association Applauds President Obama’s Call to End Use of Therapies Intended to Change Sexual Orientation. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/04/therapies-sexual-orientation.aspx

APA.(2018). Resolution on Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/about/policy/sexual-orientation.aspx

Jake Van Gogh

Psychology Major, Political Voice, Content Creator. Facebook-@jakevangoghofficial

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