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Good day, everyone.
This is Chuck here on a Saturday with a Selects episode. about conversion therapy, boo.
And you know what?
Regardless of what you think about conversion therapy, it doesn't work.
And so that's why this episode is titled How Conversion Therapy Doesn't Work from November 2019.
And if you're wondering before you listen, what is conversion therapy?
That's when parents try to make their LGTBQ, let's just put it in that whole bucket, child not that.
And it's just not possible because that's who they are.
So I hope you enjoy this episode.
And if you don't, keep it to yourself.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
There's guest producer Josh over there.
Don't be confused, everybody.
There are more than one Josh in the world.
I hear you finally admit that.
It's taken a long time.
A lot of therapy.
Hey, nice segue.
It's like a short stuff.
I'm like, let's get to it.
Let's get going.
Well, I have a COA to issue.
You know what cracks me up is people who are still like, what does that mean?
You figure it out.
You can email us.
Eventually some people will.
Yeah.
So my COA is just a personal COA that I'm going to try and just disguise my disdain for this entire topic.
Okay.
Okay. but I might not do a great job about it.
Well, you've already shown your hand.
All right, good.
That's my COA.
Yeah.
I don't think there's too many stuff you should know listeners who are probably into this.
Yeah, but part of the problem as we'll see later in this episode is part of the problem with conversion therapy's coverage in the media is that it has largely been fairly even-handed and described as, like this controversial therapy and not said, this scam and this junk science fraud perpetrated by zealots, super harmful yeah, yeah.
So that's where i, that's where i am, you know.
That stuck out to me too, that in the late 90s we'll talk about it um, especially when it was treated even handedly yeah, and it made me think like we should do an episode on that Like, should the media treat all sides of an issue equally?
And if it does, does that just like perpetuate ignorance?
Or if it doesn't, does that like support fascism?
Right.
Like it's a hornet's nest.
I really think we should do it sometime.
It is.
That's a good call.
Thank you, Charles.
I don't know how we – I mean I guess it could be researched.
Yeah.
Surely somebody has done a think piece on it that we can springboard off of.
You know?
A think piece.
Mm-hmm.
That's right.
Those are great.
That's what we do most of our research on, is think pieces.
This is from one of our great writers, Julia Layton.
Mm-hmm.
And she put a lot of this stuff together for us.
Yeah, she did a good job on this.
I like the additional histories you found out, though.
Yeah, because this—so we'll define it first, and then we'll talk about some histories.
But this stuff goes back. way further than you would think.
But what we're talking about today is called conversion therapy, reparative therapy, ex-gay therapy, where Reparative therapy is trademarked.
By the way, we should say.
Well, you couldn't hear it, but under my breath I said, TM.
More like TS.
It was, yeah, it was trademarked by a psychologist named Joseph Nicolosi.
Yes.
Senior.
So, what conversion therapy is probably what we're going to mostly call it, though.
What it's, What it is is it's an alleged psychological theory and practice that is based on the idea that all people are born heterosexual.
Right.
And because of certain events.
Past traumas usually.
Traumas typically, but also the family dynamics play a huge role.
Yeah.
People who would otherwise are meant to be heterosexual can be accidentally steered into homosexuality.
And therefore can be purposefully steered back.
Right.
Cured.
Yes, cured.
Of being gay.
Right.
Back to the righteous land of heterosexuality.
Yeah.
And as you can imagine that this is a very popular with the fundamentalist Christian right.
Sure.
And I mean like that's not even – like a guess, like it overtly is.
They've adopted and taken on ex-gay, the ex-gay movement, as basically one of the what's it called in a tent pole, a tent post.
Sure.
One of the planks in the Christian rights platform for social change.
Oh, it is a, it was officially part of the 2016 Republican Party platform even.
What?
That's right.
Wait, the whole RNC?
Yeah, which has been called – the 2016 platform has been called by far the most anti-LGBTQ platform in the nation's history.
Wow.
I mean, yeah, if that's a plank in the party's platform, that's pretty significant.
Like they don't throw just anything in there.
No, they don't.
So with the ex-gay movement and conversion therapy –
I saw it described, at least back in the late 90s, as a front in the culture war that's as strong and as significant as abortion.
Like the Christian right in particular, has basically dedicated itself to stamping out gayness and by converting gay people to straightness.
The problem is there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that that is even possible.
Right.
And the problem is, when you try and stamp out gayness, that creates a good beat that you can dance to.
It makes that sound.
They're like, no, no, no, no, no.
Stop stamping.
Yeah, exactly.
Actually, I went to – well, should I say this?
Oh, I don't know.
Sure.
Why not?
Because this is the truth.
I went to a church camp once when I was a youth.
Oh, I figured a story or two like this was going to come up.
They talked about – stomping your feet to the music or whatever they were playing, and they literally said don't alternate feet because that's too close to dancing.
Wow right yeah, and these weren't like I mean, these were pretty mainstream Baptist church camps.
It wasn't like I went to some snake handling thing.
No, not at all.
We did a really good episode on that.
Yeah, that was a good one.
So anyway, Stomp your feet, everybody.
Just don't alternate.
So you stomp them both at once?
No, just stomp one foot.
Just stomp your right foot.
I was going to say, that's just jumping lightly.
Okay, so that's what we're talking about is conversion therapy.
And, like I said, it became part of the Christian rights kind of philosophy and part of their culture war, the culture war they're fighting.
But it goes back way further than that.
I think it was the late 90s when the right kind of adopted it.
As a matter of fact, like into the 19th century, there were –
People who subscribe to this, but they were all psychologists.
This is back at the time when you could be a ghost investigator and say, I'm a psychologist.
This is the times when you could say, you know, this cigar reminds you of your mother.
You know what I'm saying?
Right.
And you could be a psychologist.
You could be a father of psychology at that point.
Yeah.
You dug up a great article from Historycom called Gay Conversion Therapy's Disturbing 19th Century Origins, by Aaron Blakemore.
And Aaron – Nice attribution, Chuck.
Yeah, well, Aaron wrote a great article.
And in it she talks about, in 1899, this hypnosis – well, again in the days where you could be a hypnotist and be a legitimate scientist at the same time.
Should I get into stage shows or psychology?
That's right.
Maybe both.
Where's the money?
But he was German, of course, and he claimed to have turned a gay man straight after 45 hypnosis – sessions and some other therapies.
And that's sort of the first evidence of what we would later call conversion therapy starting up.
Yeah.
Although I'm sure even before that people they probably didn't call it conversion therapy.
But if you were an effeminate man you were no doubt probably beaten by your parents and shunned by your community.
Right.
I think one of the other things it's kind of a hallmark of this long tradition of converting people into from being gay to straight or trying to is this idea that there's something wrong with you if you're gay.
Right.
And that that idea can actually become hung up on the individual, the gay person, so that they actually do seek out help in becoming straight.
But the problem is, in seeking that help, they're going to be frustrated and they're ultimately probably going to be.
They're going to have feelings of shame guilt inadequacy, that they're not capable of helping themselves.
There's something wrong with them.
Why can't they just be straight kind of thing?
And then if you're a minor and your parents are forcing this on you, then that raises a whole other can of worms of ethical dilemmas.
Sure.
But from the outset there were probably people who sought out hypnotists and other psychologists for help.
It wasn't just people walking around kidnapping gay people and taking them off the street and trying to convert them.
Right.
It could have very well been some man that's like wait a minute.
I don't feel normal feelings because I'm looking at Joe out there in the field and things are happening.
Right.
If you know what I mean, Doc.
And they're like, well, come on in.
Watching him swing that scythe and take his sweaty shirt off, wring it over his face, that kind of thing.
Right.
So just sit down and follow the wristwatch with your eyes.
Right.
Or I guess the pocket watch.
That would be a weird technique.
Swing your arm.
I'm moving my wristwatch.
But from that same history.com article, there –
She talks about some of the early attempts, like with electroconvulsive therapy, lobotomies.
I think we even talked about some of the lobotomies episode.
Man, they would give you a lobotomy for anything.
Oh, sure.
What about testicular transplantation?
Right, because that was a theory from a doctor, an endocrinologist, named Eugene Steinach, who thought that your testicles were the root of the problem.
Well, a lot of people did.
Yeah.
You could have gay testicles, literally, and they would swap them out for straight ones.
Right.
And there's no.
I could not find any evidence, one way or the other, that any of these testicular transplants worked or were successful.
I don't think they were.
But I didn't see anything that said like all of them just failed or whatever.
But like what happened?
Did they just shrivel up and fall off or something?
Do you mean if it actually like medically took to the body?
Yeah, that's what I mean.
Okay.
You're saying like did it convert them?
Did it work?
Right, yeah.
No.
That's the answer.
But, yeah, I didn't know that you could, in the 1920s, have a testicle transplant successfully.
That's what I'm saying.
Like surely I mean at some point and we must have talked about this in the Michael Dillon episode.
We talked about the – I don't think it was – but it wasn't a transplant.
It was just a straight-up removal, an orchiectomy, I believe.
Castration.
But at some point testicles have been – transplanted onto a person successfully.
When did that happen, is my question.
It probably did to a dog first.
Right.
But, I mean, think about it.
Like, if it didn't work, well, sorry, you're castrated now.
Yeah.
They probably didn't say sorry, though.
No.
But we took your gay testicles.
The heterosexual testicles just didn't pan out.
Right.
But now you don't have any testicles, gay or otherwise.
That's right.
Some of the other awful techniques that they would use back in the day were – chemicals that they might have to make you wretch and vomit when you look at, you know, pictures of people of the same sex.
Yeah, that's called covert sensitization yeah, yeah.
Or if you're cross-dressing, maybe same thing, sure.
Or look in a mirror and be disgusted with yourself and wretch and vomit, yeah.
And, very sadly, if you have say, like a um, as someone you are in a relationship with that you love, they might show you pictures of that person and and um carry out aversive therapy or aversive conditioning.
What's weird is you said these are things they used to carry out.
From what I've seen, this stuff still goes on today.
Yeah, some of it.
So what we're talking about, though?
Back in the 19th and most of the first half or so of the 20th century, this was all like the domain of psychology.
And then eventually gay psychologists—
And other straight psychologists too were basically like, this is wrong.
Like the science is not adding up.
This is just incorrect.
Yeah.
There were medical doctors too though.
It wasn't just psychologists.
Right.
Sure.
Yeah.
So eventually in 1973, the American Psychological Association said, hey, big news.
We're no longer going to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Right.
And a certain part of the population went –
Yeah, it's 1972.
Why did it take this long?
Right, exactly.
But that was a big deal.
And at that point, psychology mostly abandoned the idea that being gay was a disorder of any kind.
And therefore, there was no point in researching how to cure someone of being gay.
And so it turned its back on this whole history of... Conversion.
Conversion.
But it didn't fully die away...
And I believe, starting in like the 80s, the Christian right started to kind of pick up on it and kind of breathe new life into it again.
That's right.
Think we should take a break?
Yeah.
That's a robust and a half setup.
Is that?
Oh, I thought we were already into it.
Oh, my gosh.
No, it wasn't just the setup.
It was more.
You're right.
We'll be right back.
Podcast health stuff.
We are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night.
Yes, i'm dr priyanka wally, a double board certified physician, and i'm harry kundabolu, a comedian and someone who once googled do i have scurvy?
At 3 am.
On health stuff.
We're talking about health in a different way.
It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also what our health says about us and the way we're living, like our episode where we look at diabetes In the United States.
I mean, 50 of Americans are pre-diabetic.
How preventable is type 2?
Extremely.
Or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are.
Oh, it's hard to explain to the rest of the world.
Your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible, but you don't even know.
You don't know.
You don't know.
It's going to be a fun ride, so tune in.
Listen to health stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
She said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night.
Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying.
Suicides that don't make sense.
Strange accidents and brutal murders.
In what seems to be a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad.
Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people.
There are people out there that absolutely know what happened.
Listen to Paper Ghosts, The Texas Teen Murders, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Robert Smith.
This is Jacob Goldstein.
And we used to host a show called Planet Money.
And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History.
About the best ideas and people and businesses in history.
And some of the worst people.
Horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business.
Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing.
It's like not having it at all.
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There's a lot of mavericks in that story.
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So let's talk a little bit about – because there's a couple of schools of thought here and I hesitate to one – to call the one more bona fide.
But there's conversion therapy that can happen at a licensed therapist office and there's conversion therapy that can happen in somebody's basement or the basement of a church.
I was going to say basement too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or a room.
It doesn't have to be a basement.
I know, but a basement makes it seem more sinister.
That's probably why I said it.
So there are two sort of ways that can happen.
We're going to talk a little bit about the first way, the patented way, reparative therapy, trademark by Joseph Nicolosi Sr.
That guy doesn't even get the Italian accent, man, and I don't blame you.
He doesn't.
Which we should say.
By the way, in July of this year, Amazon stopped carrying – his works on their website.
Yeah, because they considered them – they promoted fraud.
That's right.
Which we'll get to.
Yeah, which is interesting.
But this guy is like a psychologist.
Yeah.
He's a trained psychologist who basically said I'm going to take everything I learn and direct it toward curing gay people of being gay.
Yeah.
I don't know much about – do you know much about his religiosity or –
I think he was Jewish.
Okay.
And born in Brooklyn from what I understand.
I read a really, really great article not a think piece, but a memoir in the American Prospect from American Prospector.
From 2012, yeah.
That's different.
They're gold.
By Gabriel Arana.
Okay.
It's called My So-Called Ex-Gay Life.
It's definitely worth reading.
But it's a great look at conversion therapy but also is like overlaid with his like personal experience with it.
Okay.
At any rate, his contention was that, like we said, you develop homosexuality or homosexual feelings, at least because of a result of environmental conditions, childhood traumas, and they call it same-sex attraction SSA.
And that could stem, in his opinion, from a few different things.
Desire for adventure, peer acceptance, loneliness or boredom or curiosity, approval or affection from males.
And a lot of this is centered on men, although it's certainly women have been involved in this as well.
Yeah, we'll get to that.
Yeah, but a lot of this over the years is making gay men straight.
Oh, yeah, I see what you mean, yeah.
But it's not exclusive to that.
No, it's not.
General rebellion, which is pretty funny.
And then sexual molestation by another male.
And I think that is a very, like, I think that...
The idea that that leads to being gay is very widespread in culture, well beyond the Christian right or people who believe in conversion therapy.
The idea that if you're sexually abused by a man or somebody of your same sex, you become gay, which is just wrong.
But I think a lot of people still believe that.
I know that's what I thought when I was a kid.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, it's not wrong.
Well, no, it's utterly wrong, but yeah.
And the whole basis of Nicolosi's theory he takes back to a study from 1992 called Demography of Sexual Orientation in Adolescents.
And this was an actual study from the Journal of Pediatrics that looked at patterns of sexual orientation in high school students in Minnesota.
And what they found out was that younger teens in Minnesota in this study were more likely to express sexual confusion about their orientation when they were younger than And as they grew older, they were less confused about their sexual identity and orientation.
Right.
And that's a legit study.
Right.
And I think that probably anyone who's ever been an early teenager and a late teenager can be like.
That sounds about right.
Exactly.
You know?
But the extrapolation that Nicolosi did was what the problem is.
Right.
So Nicolosi was saying like yes, that shows that like you're in a dangerous position place earlier on, and that if a couple of things happen in a certain way, you can be veered off of this natural path toward heterosexuality, into homosexuality.
Right.
And also more dangerously, that means we got to get them while they're young.
Right.
So one of the other things that he really based his practice on was this family triad of a domineering, over-attendant mother.
Mm-hmm. a passive, detached father, and a sensitive child.
Boogie nights.
Kind of.
That was a good one.
In that triangle, you would almost certainly have a gay kid if somebody didn't intervene.
So he decided his career was intervening in that kind of stuff.
But that in and of itself has never been proven to create gay kids, like whether you believe in conversion therapy or not, if you have a domineering mother and absent father and you're like a sensitive type who likes dolls, even it doesn't mean you're going to turn gay.
This is the basis of that, though, is that yes, you will turn gay.
And still, to this day, this idea is allowed to live, because science has never fully satisfied the question like are we born gay?
Do we develop being gay?
And it looks like it's on a pretty strong track toward a genetic basis of homosexuality.
Right.
But it's still, nothing's definitive.
And so people can say well, maybe we do develop, you know, in adolescence you know being gay or whatever, because science has not filled this void quite yet.
Yeah.
And the way uh Nicolosi will would write about this stuff and describe it as in a very sort of professional, innocuous type way, where a casual reader uh might say well, this seems totally valid and above board.
Yeah, a Newsweek reader.
Yeah.
Or an Oprah viewer.
That's right.
This is one of the things.
I think this is from one of his books.
And this is how he describes the relationship from patient to therapist.
The client has come to the therapist seeking assistance to reduce something distressing to him.
And the RT psychotherapist agrees to share his professional experience and education to help the client meet his own goal.
His own goal.
The therapist enters into a collaborative relationship, agreeing to work with the client to reduce his unwanted attractions and explore his heterosexual potential which again, it seems very innocuous.
And there are plenty of cases where a grown man or woman of their own volition goes and seeks this out.
Right.
But what they don't say is what happens many times is – a parent forces their young child to do this.
No, that's a big one.
Yeah.
That's a big one.
In this American Prospect magazine.
The author was like in his early teens when he went to Nicolosi's therapy.
But he said everybody else in the group was in their like 40s or 50s.
So it was definitely both.
Yeah, yeah.
But there's something here that's really important because, like you said, if you just read this stuff –
It does sound innocuous.
It's all very much based on things like cognitive behavioral therapy, like stuff that works, which means that this works in a weird twisted way, which we'll talk about, but not in the way it's ultimately meant to.
It works in a bent way.
Yeah, I mean.
Do you want me to explain now?
I feel like I should.
I take issue with the word works at all.
There are situations where it might prevent someone from acting on a homosexual impulse.
That's what I mean.
Yeah, but that doesn't change the nature of their sexuality.
No, right.
And ultimately preventing someone or training someone to not act on their sexuality is damaging in and of itself and causes all sorts of other problems.
But maybe good enough for a really religious family.
Yeah well, that's what I read.
Is that, over time, as the Christian right adopted the idea of, you know, championing the ex-gay movement, that part of that was accepting gay people who refrained from gay sex?
Right.
So if you were like, I'm gay, I'm never going to be straight, I tried.
Right.
But I don't have sex with men.
But I won't commit the sin of— You would be welcomed in church.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what I was saying, though, is with Nicolosi's thing, the—
There's something fundamentally wrong with it.
And that if somebody came to you and said, I'm tired of being white.
Right.
Or black or Hispanic.
Or straight.
I can't stand it.
Yeah.
You wouldn't say oh well, let's figure out how to make you not black or white, or Hispanic or straight.
Right.
Let's figure out how to change you.
They would say, any therapist worth their salt would say, well...
No, there's a lot of great things about being white or black or Hispanic or straight.
And let's focus on that so that you can own your identity.
The conversion therapy does the opposite.
It says, yes, let's figure out how to get the gay out of you.
Right.
Let's change your identity because...
This group of society has said that it's unacceptable.
That's right.
And that is an extraordinarily damaging position to come from.
And that is the basis of conversion therapy.
Yeah and, as we'll see later on, the AMA's official stance is that it is and we'll read the quote later that it is a damaging prospect and creates real harm.
An American prospector.
So this approach by Nicolosi has four steps to it.
The first one is interesting because it's the disclosure of the therapist's personal professional, philosophical and religious views on homosexuality, which includes Nicolosi, says the gay affirmative therapist also discloses his philosophical views to the client.
But from a gay affirmative perspective, does he just put that in there to like cover his bases?
No, it's true though.
Because you wouldn't send your son or daughter – to a gay affirmative therapist to convert them.
Right.
I think this is what he's saying.
You've been to therapy before, right?
Sure.
Have you ever noticed that when your first session, the therapist tells you a lot about themselves and what they think about mental health or life or whatever?
Yeah, and I'm always like, wait a minute, what about my problems?
Yeah, I thought we were talking about me.
I'm getting charged for this?
I don't care about your family.
That's what he's saying that they do.
But because this is about being gay.
That's what they're going to talk about is their views, or whatever.
Interesting.
They're going to share their opinions of it and that they think that there's problems with it.
You know what my line is at the therapist when they do all that stuff?
I'm like, great, that's really interesting.
At the end, I'm like, you want to start the clock now?
Right.
Nice.
Either that or I can prorate.
Number two of the four steps is encouragement of the client's inquiry.
So basically asking the client the questions, examining their feelings to try and discover like, what lies beneath.
Right.
Number three, resolution of past trauma.
If it is in fact one of the reasons they suspect this person has gone down the road to homosexuality.
And then education regarding features of homosexuality which – includes everything from what motivates you to do this to you know that if you are gay, then this lifestyle ends in a very bad way for you.
Right, that there's a lot of physical harm, social harm.
Emotional harm.
Yeah.
Right.
So what's weird though, is like I can't – even though I totally disagree with what he dedicated his career to.
He doesn't seem, at least from what I've read, including that American Prospect article, from somebody who was a patient of his for years, he doesn't seem to have been like any sort of evil man or anything like that.
I don't know if he just thought like this was a real thing and he was really helping people or what.
But, for example, there's this one quote from Gabriel Ariana who said that –
He had been like experimenting with sexual encounters with other men as a teenager.
And he said that he'd been meeting men off of the Internet.
And he told Nicolosi, like he's like, I trusted the guy enough to share this in therapy.
And he said that Nicolosi told.
He said he told me to be careful meeting men off the Internet, but that I shouldn't dwell on it or feel guilty.
He said my sexual behavior was of secondary importance.
If I understood myself and worked on my relationships with men, the attractions would take care of themselves.
I just had to be patient, which is – I mean, that's a pretty great thing for a therapist to tell a patient.
Right.
Don't dwell on it.
Don't feel guilty.
Just accept it and move on and learn from it or whatever.
But then the second part.
Right.
That's where it goes downhill.
Yes.
And so the thing is, though, with conversion therapy in most cases, Nicolosi is –
Like he's almost a shining example in a weird way, whereas other people associated with it are – it's very easy to paint them with just one brush.
So we should talk a little bit about the argument against – a little bit more about the argument against, which includes a little bit more history.
We talked about the earliest stages of conversion therapy in the late 1800s.
But it really kind of picked up steam in the United States in the 1960s.
When the civil rights movement, you know, when gay people started coming out of the closet more, presenting themselves more in public, gay bars popping up, things like that.
Stonewall?
Stonewall, of course, which you know.
Anytime something like that is becoming a little more accepted in the mainstream, there's going to be another side that really roots down and digs in.
And that's sort of how the modern gay conversion therapy movement was born was out of homosexuality becoming more accepted.
I read a really interesting journal article from 2007 by Robinson and Spivey.
It was in Gender and Society, the journal.
And they basically looked into the ex-gay movement, not necessarily the psychology community's basis of it, but later on the adoption of it by the Christian right.
And they explained why the Christian right would be interested in that.
And they were interested in it and dug in, like you said, because they saw homosexuality and feminism, in particular, as signs of a decadent society that would eventually cause us to crumble and collapse.
And this is according to Robinson and Spivey.
I haven't actually interviewed anyone on the Christian right who believes this.
But they are academics, and this was a peer-reviewed journal.
Right. that masculinity is the antidote to that.
It's the antidote to homosexuality.
It's the antidote to feminism.
And that it was up to each man to be a strong leader among women and children and to be as masculine as possible.
That's how you did that.
Yeah, I mean, I heard sermons every Sunday.
Well, not every Sunday.
But I heard sermons on many Sundays where they were still saying, wives, submit to your husbands.
Yeah.
Straight out of the Bible.
Yeah, and like most of the antidote is dads, you're being way too passive.
You need to step up and be the leader of your family.
But also moms, you can help by saying, oh, you have a question?
Ask your father.
I defer to your father.
Go ask your father.
Right.
And just, yeah, being passive.
Well, which goes back to that triad you mentioned earlier about the domineering mother, the passive father.
Yeah.
That's basically the basis of the whole thing.
From what I could tell, is that at least among the Christian right that if the father is not the dominant and leading figure in the family, that's where the trouble comes from.
And that can produce homosexual children.
Interesting.
Yes.
So something we failed to mention as part of the AMA's – change in 1972, or was that the APA?
APA, APA was they said, and this is an important distinction, is that homosexuality they deemed a normal variation, not deviation, but a variation right in human sexual orientation and like other normal sexual orientations, can't be changed.
In other words, you can't make a straight person gay, any more than you can make a gay person straight.
Right is What that equals.
And because of that, as we'll see later on, that became the basis for this idea that conversion therapy is, in essence, a fraud.
Right.
Because it purports to do something that can't be done.
That's right.
Should we take another break?
Oh, man, really?
They're coming hard and fast.
We can wait a while.
Like men swinging scythes in sweaty shirts on the field.
Yeah, let's take another break and we'll talk about what might happen in conversion therapy right after this.
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All right, Chuck, I'm excited about this part.
You're excited about the horror show of conversion therapy?
It's not all horror shows.
Some of it is just outright laughable.
Yeah, so statistically about— Also, I'm sorry, everybody.
I want to say something, too.
Okay.
We typically try to be super objective.
Uh-huh.
This one is very tough.
We have science on our side, too.
This was really hard for me to research.
Yeah.
Nothing is ever hard for me to research—
This one was.
It was like turning over a log and finding maggots writhing underneath.
That was what researching this one was like.
I just kept putting it off.
I know.
I would just keep leaving it and just going and watching The Office or something like that.
Just anything but researching this.
Because it's super sad.
It is.
That children are taken at their most vulnerable time in adolescence, when they don't know what's going on and they're told that they're wrong and they're sinning and they're dirty.
That is a part of why it's sad.
Another part to me of why it's sad is that the idea that grownups would direct this much thought and attention and effort into slamming their head up against a wall to try to change someone else to a way they think they should be.
Right.
That, I think, is...
That's at least as sad to me as the children being misdirected like this, because a kid can go on and grow up and be like geez.
My family was super messed up.
I'm really glad I don't speak to them anymore because I'm much happier over here.
Right.
Well, that can't happen in the ideal circumstance.
Sure.
Or the ideal circumstance is that the family is just like, hey, we're really screwed up.
We're really sorry.
Right.
We love you no matter who you are.
Yeah.
But the idea that there's a group, a social movement – dedicated to just eradicating another group of people.
Yeah.
I find that very hard to swallow.
Yeah, agreed.
So apparently statistically about – or close to 700000 people in the United States have undergone conversion therapy.
And we should mention that – it's a real problem in places like Africa and Asia and South America.
Yeah.
Where you can still be in prison for being gay.
Yeah.
Like Uganda is a big, a big place for that.
Conversion therapy is like on the rise in those places and other places.
Right.
But we're talking about the United States in this case, 700,000 people.
And like we said, sometimes it is in the, with a licensed therapist.
Sometimes it's done by a religious advisor in a, basement or at a church.
You know what that reminded me of is.
Another thing we need to talk about sometimes is exorcisms like church exorcisms.
Oh, we've done exorcisms.
We did, like, straight-up Roman Catholic exorcisms.
Oh, okay.
I'm talking like the kind that somebody does in the basement of their house because they're supposedly an exorcist or something like that.
Sure.
Backdoor exorcism?
Basically, yeah.
Black market?
You'll see.
You'll be like, oh, man, we should be talking about this.
All right.
Well, I agree already.
I trust you.
Okay.
So...
The AMA says that conversion therapy programs may utilize harmful psychological techniques.
We were talking earlier about aversion therapy and given chemicals.
They can still be given noxious stimulus.
And I didn't see exactly what that entailed or could entail.
There was a guy named Robert Gilbraith Heath who was the father of implanting electrodes into the brain to deliver shocks.
And one of the things he directed that toward was curing gay people.
I don't think anyone in their basement is implanting electrodes or whatever.
Right.
But there are things like giving people like nausea, nausea inducing medications is one.
Right.
Showing them pictures that might nauseate them and then figuring out how to associate that with masturbating to thoughts of other man, or something like that.
Yeah, I mean, we should talk about a few of these specifically.
I mean, all you have to do is look up on a search engine conversion therapy horror stories, and there are plenty of people out there saying what happened to them.
Yeah, look up also conversion therapy super happy, fun stories and you're going to come back with almost nothing.
Google zero results.
There was one teenager who said that he was forced to wear a backpack with 40 pounds of rocks 18 hours a day to just signify the physical burden of being gay.
One person's family gave them a fake funeral closed casket funeral in front of him, where they said that he died of AIDS and they said their final goodbyes because he went down the sinful path.
Pretending he wasn't there, like that he was dead and in the casket.
Yes.
Talking about him in third person.
That's right.
His family.
One reported being told to strip naked in front of a mirror and say disparaging things about themselves.
I just do that normally, though.
Well, I did read one account where they basically said the whole idea is to break you down to nothing in the worst way possible and then build you back up again in the image that they want.
So I get the impression that that is one route, but that is not necessarily what you're going to get at any place you go for conversion therapy.
There's other ones that say... That's the problem is we don't know because so many people don't talk about it.
Right.
There's some that that, like you would go to that say okay, we're not going to abuse you or anything like that.
But the basis of our beliefs in this is that you are gay because either you had an absent father, a domineering mother, some combination of the two, or you always like, wanted to be like, loved and, you know, popular and among your male peers, and you didn't get that.
So now you are misdirecting this need, this unmet need, toward having anonymous gay sex on the dance floor with some dude in Miami or whatever.
So we need to figure out how to meet that need and have you hang out with guys who will tell you how cool you are and how popular you are.
Yeah, like tailgating or something.
Kind of.
And while we're at it, we're going to do that by... accenting the masculinity.
We're going to teach you how to be masculine so that you can hang out with dudes in the real world and they will think you're cool.
So things like, we're going to teach you how to change the oil in your car.
We're going to teach you to sit without crossing your legs.
No joke.
There was a guy who's kind of... We're going to teach you how to man spread on the subway.
There's a guy who's kind of a prominent thinker.
I think he was... I saw him as a sexologist maybe, a Christian sexologist.
Gerhard...
It's pretty great.
I think I nailed it.
He said that homosexual men need to unlearn avoidance of getting their hands dirty doing manual work like chopping wood, painting a house using a shovel.
I say no thanks to all three.
I'd chop wood.
That's kind of fun.
It is fun.
And that not necessarily just here's an ax, start chopping wood, you're going to just suddenly become cured, but that that is part of it.
And in this thought, this tack, where they're not abusing you, they're not degrading you or anything like that.
They're teaching you masculinity and manliness.
That the ultimate aim and goal of that is to go get married and have a kid.
Right.
Or kids.
Right.
And that that is a big part of conversion therapy.
It was for a very long time was saying –
You might still be gay or whatever, but you're not really gay.
You're now married, and you have a kid, and that is what you're dedicating yourself to.
That's right.
You're a wood chopping, football throwing dude.
With a pencil-thin mustache.
Oh, no, no, not that.
So in 1974, we should talk about George Reckers.
He was a psychologist who tested whether or not this was an effective treatment, and He had a four—this wasn't his boy, but this was his client.
I guess client's a weird way to put it.
Sure.
This child was forced to go to this person at four and a half years old.
And this is a boy manifesting, quote, childhood cross-gender identity.
And they said this is based on the clothes that this boy wears.
And now, of course, looking at this, it was probably a transgender child.
Yeah, or gender-fluid.
Yeah, I mean it's hard to tell because this was 1974 and the way they wrote about it.
It's hard to kind of piece it together.
Yeah, and it's also, like, just how much of this behavior did this child exhibit?
Like, it makes it seem like this is all the kid did was act like a girl when he was a boy.
Right.
What else was he into?
What else, you know?
Yeah.
It's just such a narrow picture of the subject.
Yeah, of course.
So in the end, Reckers did something super damaging.
He trained— the boy's mother to be the therapist.
Like, here's what you need to do so this kid can get 24-7 therapy from you.
And basically punish feminine behaviors, reinforce masculine behaviors at all times.
And they said that hey, this is working because every time this boy gets punished for doing something feminine, he stops and, like chops wood or throws the football and gets a reward.
So, because he's four and a half years old, he's doing the things that their parents – congratulate him for and reward him for.
Right.
And not doing the things that he's getting punished for.
Exactly.
The punishment is what stood out to me.
It's just so sad that the mother was instructed to reject him, to basically ignore him when he acted like a girl.
But not ignore him, like pretend it's not going on, like let him know that she is giving him the cold shoulder and that that's how he learned.
Right.
That is just devastating.
It's heartbreaking.
And what's heartbreaking is this is used, was used as an example, like, see, this works.
This four-and-a-half-year-old is now acting more masculine and is not going to grow up to be gay.
And this child died by suicide at the age of 30.
Yeah.
Like that's the end result of this road.
That's where it ends up.
And that's what I meant earlier when I said like it does kind of work because it follows psychological techniques that actually work.
But it works in like kind of a bent way where, yes, you can train somebody.
You can mold a four-year-old to behave in a certain way by conditioning them.
It's possible.
You can get somebody to do just about anything like that.
But the ramifications, the results, the damage to the individual's identity that will eventually come out later are widespread and sweeping.
Yeah.
And that's the point.
Yes.
That's why you shouldn't monkey around with somebody's identity using proven psychological techniques.
That's what's so evil about the whole thing.
Yeah.
I mean, my daughter's four and a half.
I had a hard time even getting through this stuff.
And then also, if somebody – this is the other thing too.
If you're a conversion therapy advocate or activist or practitioner and you say no, there are people out there who are distressed, who are experiencing psychological distress for being gay –.
Yes, that's true.
I guarantee that there are people like that out there.
But directing them toward working on not being gay is not the answer.
Yeah, go to regular therapy.
And learn to love that you're gay.
And go find a church that accepts gay people.
There's step two.
Yeah, because they're out there.
Let's talk about the science of it because the— We are so contributing to a decadent society.
In 2009, there was a report from the APA Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation.
Quite a read.
And this was the actual final stance was sexual orientation change efforts can pose critical health risks to lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
Critical health risks.
Not emotional, not – I mean it's part of emotional health too.
But critical health risks.
And if you read the review of research and peer-reviewed literature and – the findings of what it can result in, it reads like the worst pharma ad disclaimer you've ever heard.
Depression guilt helplessness hopelessness shame self-hatred hostility dehumanization betrayal, social withdrawal, substance abuse stress, sexual dysfunction, loss of faith and suicidality.
And on that last note, homosexual teens attempt suicide more often than heterosexual teens.
And then among those homosexual teens are.
You're twice as likely to try that if your parents have rejected you and three times as likely if you have undergone conversion therapy.
Three times as likely?
Yes.
Compared to a heterosexual teen?
That's right.
Man.
Well, there you have it.
That was just the APA.
A bunch of different associations like legit associations, medical and psychological associations have come out and condemned in no uncertain terms conversion therapy.
Right.
And all of these condemnations basically follow two different texts.
One.
There is no science backing up the idea that you can change somebody from homosexuality to heterosexuality.
Right.
And number two there is science backing up the idea that trying to do that causes damage to the individual.
So don't do that.
And, as a matter of fact some, some countries and um states in the united states uh, have said we're, this is outlawed, you can't do this anymore.
Everybody, which is really touchy stuff, because again, the christian right kind of adopted it and um, and we don't.
We don't really infringe on religious beliefs, but that's how strong these condemnations have been, that they're saying we'll kind of start to wade into that with this one.
Yeah, and we'll talk about the legalities of recent years in a sec, but before that, between the 70s and the APA's stance changing things a little bit, then through the 80s and 90s, where conversion therapy was really sort of hitting its peak, I think in America there were a few high-profile cases that were exposed that have helped sway things a little bit back to sanity in more recent years.
Yeah.
So before those high-profile cases, and I mean right before them, I think in 1998, a coalition of church groups got together and sponsored an ad campaign, something like a 600000 ad campaign.
Yeah.
And things like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, all this.
And this ad featured John and Ann, I believe Ann Polk.
Mm-hmm. both of whom were formerly gay but were now ex-gay.
And married.
And married and had a kid and said, gay conversion helps.
And at the time there wasn't a lot of ink on the other side saying actually this is totally discredited.
And it captured everybody's attention.
And this is when the Christian right came in and said we're going to make this huge push in the culture war.
And it really worked.
That's when that Newsweek story came out.
Yeah, they were on the cover of Newsweek.
He was the –
He was a leader of an ex-gay organization called Exodus International.
John Palk was.
Right.
And it brought a lot of attention.
Yeah, he was the poster boy.
Yes.
And Exodus International in particular became one of two main umbrella organizations.
They were kind of like the, I saw it put the spiritual version of this, the ex-gay movement.
And then something called NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, was like the scientific branch of the ex-gay movement.
And so Exodus International became a very well-known, prominent organization in the late 90s.
But within two, three years it would basically be the poster child for how conversion therapy doesn't work.
Right, because John Polk is gay.
In 2000, just two years later, he was photographed coming out of a gay bar in Washington, D.C.
At the time, he refuted that.
He didn't refute that he was there.
He said what you always say.
I didn't know it was a gay bar.
I went in there asking for directions.
No, I saw he wanted to use the bathroom.
No.
Either way.
I just read the articles.
And then they were like, but you were in there for a couple of hours.
Did you get the directions and use the bathroom?
It clearly says blue oyster in neon.
Yeah.
Have you not seen the Police Academy movies?
That was the name of it in the Police Academy, right?
The Blue Oyster Bar.
Oh, goodness.
And John Paul, we should say, now lives life as a gay man and is a chef.
He's been on like some celebrity chef shows.
Is that right?
Uh-huh.
Cool.
And he is— Living his best life.
He's living his best life from what it looks like.
So he's no longer married any longer to Ann, right?
Actually, that I don't know.
Because there are some, but we'll keep going.
I don't think he is, but there are a couple of people that are.
In 2003, Michael Johnston.
He was another person touted as an ex-gay success story, founder of National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day.
He actually was found out to be having sex with men that he met online and infected them with HIV.
Very big deal.
And then there's Ted Haggard, of course, in 2006.
I remember this.
Yeah, he was a preacher and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, or was at the time, I guess.
Very much an anti-gay leader in the religious circles.
And this one sort of unfolded little by little.
Like, hey, this guy came out and said, this guy had a relationship with me for like three years.
We did crystal meth together.
And then Haggard came out and said.
So cliche.
You know what?
I have to admit I sinned.
I bought crystal meth, but I didn't use it.
I threw it in the trash.
I was just.
Because I wouldn't succumb to the sin.
Is that what he said?
Yeah.
He says he did buy crystal meth.
And because I assume that was proof and he said that he didn't use it at all.
He threw it in the trash before he used it, where the other guy was like no, he did tons of meth and had gay sex a lot.
Oh, I know he's talking about.
I'm like day four of us staying up.
He like freaked out and threw it in the trash.
But then he went back and got it and the proof was that he paid for it by check Maybe.
No.
No, probably not.
I don't think meth dealers take checks anymore, do they?
I don't think so.
And then he was outed by having a relationship with an underage boy, a sexual relationship.
This was Ted Haggard again?
Yeah.
Wow.
And the boy sued and it was settled by the church with a dollar figure.
I think it was like 180 grand.
And then finally, in 2011, Ted Haggard comes out and is like all right, so I did have a relationship with a boy, but we never –.
Touched each other.
I just masturbated in front of him.
I threw him in the trash.
And in 2011, he said, you know what?
I'm bisexual.
I'm going to admit it.
I am bisexual.
But I am going to choose to live my life as a faithful heterosexual husband to my wife.
I wonder if after he admitted that, it came out as bisexual, what that felt like.
If he felt like a weight was lifted or if the anxiety associated with it was just so much, or you know what his wife knew or didn't know or thought about it.
I'd be very curious to know what that, you know, what life has been like for him after that.
I mean, he's a preacher again.
Because I mean more power to him if he's like I'm a Christian and I'm just not going to have gay sex.
That's as much a personal choice as having gay sex.
You know?
I mean, the whole underage boy thing, that's a huge problem that I think.
Yeah.
I'm hoping was addressed, but I wonder what his life is like now.
Well, I mean, like I said, he's preaching again, I think in Colorado.
He's probably a stuff you should know, listener.
Haggard, right in.
We'd like to hear from you, sir.
You want to talk about the law?
Because right now... Oh, wait, there was one more.
Chuck, there's a big one.
Who?
Alan Chambers?
Yes, so...
John Polk.
When he was outed cruising the Blue Oyster in DC back in 2000 he was running Exodus International.
Yes.
He was replaced a couple years later by Alan Chambers.
And about a decade after Chambers took over Exodus International, he said, I'm gay.
I've been gay.
Conversion therapy doesn't work.
We're shutting down Exodus International.
Yeah, and I apologize to the LGTBQ community.
Yes.
So, within about a decade or so of the Christian right adopting the ex-gay and conversion therapy pillar post as part of the platform for their culture war, the biggest organization, one of two biggest organizations dedicated to conversion therapy said no.
It doesn't work.
We're sorry, gay people, for all the damage we've done.
That's a pretty big turn of events.
It is.
Yet it still continues.
So that led to a bunch of laws that are trying to keep it from continuing.
Yeah, and the laws are basically usually around minors, saying you cannot force a minor to do something like this.
Not, hey, the whole thing is outlawed.
If you're an adult and you want to go – do this, then that's up to you.
As of 2019, this year, 18 states in Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have similar bans enacted.
And also it's important to point out that those bans are about the legitimate scientific community.
Like you, will have your license revoked.
It doesn't say anything about a preacher that you go to or a youth counselor or any sort of non-licensed church therapist.
Right, it's only scientists or licensed counselors or psychologists or psychiatrists or doctors, I'm sure, who can lose their license if they practice it.
That's right.
But yeah, that's because there's religious freedom.
I guess you can still do that to minors, though, if it's a religious group doing it?
That is what I'm not sure about.
Well, it depends on the state.
So there was a group or there was a counseling organization called Jonah.
And Jonah... Is this Goldberg and Burke?
Yes.
They ran Jonah, which stood for... I can't find it anywhere.
I got it here.
Jews offering a new alternative for healing.
Okay.
They were not only found practicing in New Jersey conversion therapy, so they both lost their licenses or
They were also sued in a civil suit by former patients for fraud and lost.
It's interesting.
I mean, you think about it.
Wait a minute.
If this is not possible and you're charging people for it, that's fraud.
So they had like a 35 million settlement levied against them and lost their licenses, but then they just set up shop under another name, apparently the same year of the verdict in the civil suit.
But for the most part, if you're a state and you pass a law banning conversion therapy to minors— among medical practitioners or counselors the courts are going to uphold that law.
Yeah, it's been upheld in California and New Jersey.
Most of the challenges are on the grounds of free speech.
And the New Jersey.
When they upheld the New Jersey or maybe it was Maryland the judge said we're not infringing on your free speech.
You can say whatever you want.
Mm-hmm.
But you can't practice this therapy.
Right.
That's different than free speech.
Right.
You can believe what you want and say what you want.
But you can't do this as part of your, you know, licensed therapy.
It's the same thing as like if you carry out quack cancer treatments.
Right.
That is harmful.
Like you're poisoning your patients or whatever.
Mm-hmm.
And, like they become, they lose the use of their arms and legs because of a treatment that you gave them for cancer that the American Medical Association has specifically said is damaging and harmful.
You're totally going to get held accountable for that.
You're lucky to just lose your license in that case.
This is the exact same principle.
Yeah.
For sure.
So because it deals mostly with minors or exclusively with minors, the courts have upheld it.
But New York City actually is widely considered to have overstepped its bounds and actually misstepped in this kind of culture war about conversion therapy, in banning the practice among minors and adults.
Right.
And that got New York City sued.
And New York City was like well, the Supreme Court's actually gotten pretty – conservative lately, i don't know if we should test this.
And they repealed the ban.
Yeah, as a as a strategy right to keep it from getting tested in the supreme court, where the supreme court could say no, all laws against conversion therapy are unconstitutional.
You can't outlaw it or ban it in any form.
Yeah, and i think the supreme court already refused to hear one case which actually upheld the state's outlaw of right conversion therapy right.
Very interesting.
There's a movie I haven't seen yet called The Miseducation of Cameron Post.
It's a 2018 film from the 2012 novel by Emily Danforth.
I haven't seen it yet, but it's about a girl who undergoes conversion therapy.
And it's Chloe Grace Moritz.
You know her?
I do.
I can't put the face with the name, but I know both.
Yeah, you've seen her for sure.
Sure.
If you want to know more about arrested development, conversion therapy, all that stuff, you can well, I guess, start researching online.
See what you think.
And since I said see what you think, it's time for Listener Mail.
I'm going to call this complaint.
Pedantic complaint.
Okay.
A right to complain.
Josh, in the episode on historic districts you kept referring to them repeatedly with the indefinite article an rather than a An historic district.
I said and.
That's what he says.
That sounds unusual.
I don't usually do that.
Really?
I guess I was just being unconsciously correct.
So is that correct?
Yeah.
So what's the rule?
Because I don't even know it.
Huh?
What I just said.
That's the rule?
That's the rule.
What I say?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
I try not to exercise it too much.
Okay, good.
Only when I'm right.
Joe says this.
I realize this infuriating practice has become popular in recent years in the US.
I feel passionately that it must be discontinued, especially primarily by those voices or attended by large audiences like you.
You are no doubt aware of the letter H as a consonant necessitating the use of the indefinite article A rather than N.
Citation all grammar books ever.
I should limit the scope of my gripe with an important caveat, cockneys.
They should probably continue to say N because they pronounce it historic.
This guy doesn't even know that the rhyming slang episode is coming out.
How weird.
But guys, that's not really what I write today.
I love the show.
I wanted to tell you I wanted to wait for a halfway plausible pretense to make the email a little more fun, which I hope this has been.
Any chance on an episode of How Pedantry Works?
Keep up the good work, Joe.
Thanks, Joe.
He's spoken fun.
Turns out he's good peeps after all.
Yes.
Is the and before an H, is that a thing?
Oh, yeah.
I didn't know that.
Is it?
Yeah, I think I don't know if it's proper or not, but I understand where it comes from, because the vowel that comes right after the H is usually so heavily pronounced in relation to how it's pronounced when it comes after other consonants, like an historic.
An historic district sounds okay.
An honor.
An honor.
A honor.
Which one sounds better?
Like I was bestowed an honor.
Yeah, no, say it the other way.
But you wouldn't say.
It's like dog vomit coming out of your mouth.
In high school, I had an history teacher that was great.
Oh, man.
You know, it's really weird.
Did Joe tell you to say that?
No, I just thought of it because and historic.
I had a history teacher.
I had a historic.
Yeah, both work.
How about this?
We're both right, Joe.
Try not to focus on such stupid stuff.
I'm curious if there is.
I really want to know the rule now, because I know it's a consonant.
But if people are saying it these days, is that just some sort of fighting the system?
That's the descriptivist way.
The prescriptivist is like, no, it's this way.
Right.
Joe's the prescriptivist here.
We're descriptivists.
All right.
I think we've proven ourselves there.
Maybe we should launch a side podcast called The Descriptivists.
Oh, that's a good one.
Yeah.
Almost has like a Civil War era folk band feel to it.
We'd have to go curly cues, though.
That's fine.
We're not going to do that.
We could get fake ones that we just took on and off for publicity.
Right.
Scout mob.
Right.
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