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Conversion Therapy
Laws Against Conversion Therapy Are Under Attack
Personal Perspective: Conversion therapy is emotional and sexual abuse.
Posted March 16, 2025 Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
Key points
- Conversion therapy has been banned for youth in 22 states and the District of Columbia—and with good reason.
- Many practitioners are unlicensed and operate Christian retreats that are not affected by state laws.
- Many clients talk about feeling traumatized, degraded, or ruthlessly shamed after undergoing such “treatment.”
Recently, the Supreme Court decided to take up the case in which a Colorado therapist and practicing Christian, Kaley Chiles, is challenging the constitutionality of that state’s law. banning conversion therapy. It’s the latest significant salvo in the continuing war against all things LGBTQ across the nation.
Conversion therapy includes its rebranded cousins variously calling themselves reparative therapy, reorientation therapy, sexual orientation change efforts, gender identity change, and even sexual addiction therapy.
Historically, the most widely used "treatment" that started in the 1980s by Joseph Nicolosi was what he called NARTH (National Association of Reparative Therapy), which is now rebranded as Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity to sound more sex positive, which it is not at all.
Amazon has taken down all of Joseph Nicolosi's books due to the damage it has done to those who are LGBT.
Numerous studies have shown that these "therapies" have caused significant trauma on people subjected to them. In 2002, the journal Professional Psychology published a study showing that 77% of conversion therapy participants reported one or more symptoms of depression, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, internalized homophobia, self-blame, intrusive imagery or sexual dysfunction. Such result are from a practice that purports to help people?
Additionally, even when someone has been described as “cured” of their attraction to the same sex, the recidivism rate is near 100%. So, it seems clear to any reasonable observer that the practice of trying to change someone’s sexual identity is ineffective, to say the least.
But the practices persist, and a network of anti-LGBTQ activists is now trying through the courts and state legislators to overturn states’ decisions to ban conversion therapy. Meanwhile many practitioners in those states are unlicensed and instead operate Christian retreats or “camps” not affected by state laws and where religious beliefs triumph over reason. Most people running such retreats have neither the training, licenses nor credentials to understand what they’re dealing with. Their beliefs range from thinking a gay person is mentally ill to believing homosexuality is “an abomination to the Lord.”
I have heard dozens of stories from clients about how they felt traumatized, degraded, and ruthlessly shamed after undergoing such “treatment.” I’ve also heard stories about participants in these conversion camps being forced to view homoerotic images, during which they are given the choice of either receiving electric shocks to their genitals or given a chemical that makes them nauseated. One male said he decided against the shock to the genitals because other kids in the camp told him that it would cause erectile dysfunction.
The scope of harm
Conversion therapy can be seen as a form of sexual and emotional abuse. It is only about changing behavior. It can do nothing to change one’s sexual attraction or eroticism—thus the astronomical recidivism rate.
The Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law estimates that nearly 700,000 LGBTQ adults in the United States have undergone conversion therapy. Consider the spiraling harm that happens when, for instance, someone who has supposedly converted, denying their own true sexual identity, then marries and has children, only to later secretly seek same-sex relationships. Everyone in that nuclear family could be traumatized.
As it is, LGBTQ youth face many mental health problems. According to a survey done by the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ support organization, LGBTQ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers (Johns et al., 2019; Johns et al., 2020). Nearly 2 million youth (13-24) seriously consider suicide each year in the U.S. In addition, 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the year in which the survey was conducted. Most of the distress is due, I’m convinced, to rejection from parents, peers, and churches.
Who’s grooming who?
I got a comment recently from someone online who basically said if a kid doesn’t want to be gay, why shouldn’t he have somewhere to go to try to get straight? Kids are already being groomed by gays to become gay, he said.
My response was, well then, we should have camps for straight kids who want to become gay. As crazy as that may sound, I don’t find it any crazier than putting a child in a situation where someone is intensively trying to groom him to become heteronormative. Conversion therapy forces someone to reject their natural erotic and sexual orientation and and conform to another person's idea of sexuality. To me, that’s sexual abuse. All you’re doing to that person is making them feel shame and then forcing them to deal with all the other resulting negative emotions.
Standing tall
In my lifetime I’ve seen a lot of progress in people accepting ideas like gender fluidity, gay marriage, bisexuality, and more. What I believe is happening now—as evidenced by this Colorado case, the more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures since 2023, as well as another Supreme Court case that will be heard in September attempting to ban gender-affirming care—is this: Kids today are exposed to far more information about sexuality and are courageously exploring their own sexual identity.
When I was growing up, someone who was confused about sexual feelings they were having had no one and no place to turn to figure out who or what they were. Today, many kids don’t have the same prejudices and ignorance about sexuality that their parents have. That’s a good thing.
But when such rapid change happens, there is always a backlash from those who are frightened by it. Politicians, aware of the fears of their constituents, may play to their audience, stoking anger and promising to turn the clock back to a simpler time. We therapists know better. Millions of sexually educated parents know better.
I encourage everyone who knows better to begin having conversations and thinking about what actions they can take to protect those most vulnerable among us.
