Conversion Therapy

[blazerb]

I don't see that anyone has posted about this yet. Our leaders are urging the Utah legislature not to ban conversion therapy for minors. It's everywhere, but here is one article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lds-church ... n-opposes/.

I would have thought that Oaks would know this does not work since he was president of BYU when they did all the awful experiments. I'm just sad.

[nibbler]

I would have thought that Oaks would know this does not work since he was president of BYU when they did all the awful experiments. I'm just sad.

Maybe that's part of the reason they're fighting this. Similar practices occurred under Oaks' supervision and those practices are now considered illegal. It makes for bad optics. Of course I believe fighting the proposed law makes for even worse optics, but I'm no church leader.

[blazerb]

I just learned that the experiments performed at BYU should be called "aversion therapy." My bad. Still conversion therapy causes suicidal ideation, without doubt.

[Hagoth]

I would have thought that Oaks would know this does not work since he was president of BYU when they did all the awful experiments. I'm just sad.

Maybe that's part of the reason they're fighting this. Similar practices occurred under Oaks' supervision and those practices are now considered illegal. It makes for bad optics. Of course I believe fighting the proposed law makes for even worse optics, but I'm no church leader.

Or maybe Oaks believes that you need to keep trying until you get it right, regardless of the carnage strewn along the way.

[Red Ryder]

Here’s first hand accounts of the aversion therapy program at BYU.

https://youtu.be/Xm5iX5ngkzk

[moksha]

Wonder what the Church's position would be on religious deconversion therapy?

[alas]

Here’s first hand accounts of the aversion therapy program at BYU.

https://youtu.be/Xm5iX5ngkzk

Aversion therapy is a bit different than the conversion therapy this law is about.

Aversion therapy is when pain, nausea, or other averse stimuli is associated with an undesirable behavior. Such as conditioning the subject to associate sweet food with nausea to help an obese person with dieting. Or using an electable on your wrist to give yourself a small dose of pain when you have an obsessive compulsive thought. It has legitimate uses in psychology, but as far as my professor 40 years ago taught us, is unethical and useless in changing sexual orientation. So, according to the American Psychological Association, changing sexual preference isn’t one of the ethical uses of aversion therapy for at least the past 40 years.

Conversion therapy is when things like getting men to bond with other men as bros by playing basketball together is used to try to change sexual orientation. (Ho boy did I think that one was stupid when a fellow social worker was quitting his job and going to this other agency to to this) There have been several methods tried according to different theories as to the cause of homosexual behavior. If the psychologist thought a domineering mother cause homosexual behavior, then he would try some method of compensating for the supposed damage by the mother. Conversion therapy has also been held as useless and ineffective by the APA for over 40 years because when I was getting my psych degree in the early 80, I was taught that this kind of therapy had been proven ineffective. Now that we know the cause of homosexual behavior is probably some combination of genetics, prebirth hormonal conditions, possible exposure of the mother to certain chemical, and maybe some unknown environmental influences after birth, the various Freudian theories have been debunked.

At this point, any psychologist doing either type of therapy should be sued for malpractice.

But, I could rant about this for hours and it is bedtime.