Conversion Therapy

The British Government is planning legislation to make Conversion Therapy (CT) illegal; although a coalition of LGBTQ groups is pressuring them to proceed quicker. CT refers to a collection of psychological techniques, designed to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Once widely practised, CT is now seen as an infraction of people’s human rights. Moreover, most of the testimonies about change have been revealed to be short-lived, or mere wish-fulfilment.

CT includes a variety of approaches. At one extreme, is Aversion Therapy, a crude manifestation of behaviourism, in which for example a person is subjected to electric shocks, when shown pictures of naked members of the same sex. Besides being ineffective in longterm change, it is also highly abusive. 

At its most benign, CT may involve approaches similar to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Here the aim is not to change actual attraction, but control or diminish unwanted patterns of behaviour or thought. My impression is that this talking therapy is as effective, and therefore ineffective, as most forms of CBT. When I had CBT for depression, I was encouraged when the therapist explained that I would probably get depressed gain, and should continue to practise the techniques I’d learned, but would probably need a ‘top up’ at some later time.

Today, however, CT is interpreted to include prayer, when offered to change someone’s sexual orientation. I agree it’s unhelpful, and ineffective. But it is hard to see how government can legislate against prayer, even when wrongheaded. In our ongoing personal relationship with God, people pray for all kinds of inappropriate things, even when educated by pastors not to do so – e.g. to heal learning disabilities. . Only a prohibition of spontaneous prayer, and an imposition of written liturgy, could stop it, and then only in corporate settings.

The worry, however, within a pastoral support group I run, for people with same-sex attraction, is that a new law could be used to close us down. This is because campaigning groups define CT to include ‘suppressing’ someone’s sexual identity. This is not something we do. Indeed, it is only with recognition and admission of temptation and sin, that we can proceed to resisting, repenting, and being restored from, sin.

Nevertheless, from the perspective of LGBTQ lobbying groups, we could well be seen as encouraging people to deny their identity. Although, their language does pose some difficulties. For example, it is said that such interventions would mean denying the ‘essence’ of their sexual identity. But this lapse into philosophical essentialism is to ignore the variety of experiences which gay people have, including those, like us, who choose to follow a Biblical sexual ethic.

Our fear of suppression, however, still exists, in our position of ignorance of what is actually being planned legislatively. While there is a history of homophobic repression of gay people, the shoe is now on the other foot. A movement of (gay) liberation, founded on a desire for freedom, now appears to be calling for the denial of freedom to others.