Spoiler alert: Almost certainly not.\u00a0 But hear me out for a bit.<\/p>\n
The Christian Medical Fellowship blog had an article posted yesterday<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0about what it praised as a balanced documentary\u00a0concerning “sexual orientation change efforts” – gay conversion therapy to you and me – on Radio 4 on Sunday.\u00a0 Actually, it wasn’t a documentary – it was a short article on Sunday<\/em>, the station’s religious-affairs-quota-filling hour (go to about 30:50 here<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>), and it’s no more a documentary than is the\u00a0sports bulletin\u00a0– and the balance is “BBC balance”, which means giving equal airtime to the fireman and the fire.\u00a0 But anyway, that’s not what struck me.<\/p>\n Neither am I particularly bothered for the sake of this post about whether or not psychotherapy can make any difference to sexual orientation.\u00a0 I’ll simply allow, for the sake of the argument, that it can at the very least make a difference to sexual behaviour, and maybe to orientation tout court<\/em>.<\/p>\n What struck me was a\u00a0couple of things that Peter Saunders says on his CMF blog post about the use of such “therapies”.\u00a0 One of the striking things was this:<\/p>\n Di Hodgson, chair of the\u00a0Diversity, Equalities and Social Responsibility Committee\u00a0of the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), questioned the very principles underlying the therapy:<\/p>\n “I think there is very conflicting evidence. But in some ways, to me, that\u2019s really not the right question to ask, if I may say, because whether or not something works doesn\u2019t mean that it is ethical or in the public interest or the right thing to do for someone. So we have taken a view in a way which is regardless of the scientific findings. We still believe that it is unethical to seek to agree or to work towards changing someone\u2019s sexual orientation through psychotherapy.”<\/p>\n I thought this was quite an extraordinary admission by someone speaking on behalf of an organisation that seeks to de-register therapists who practise \u2018change therapy\u2019 on the pretext that it does not work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hmmm.\u00a0 Yeah, but no.\u00a0 It’s not remarkable at all.\u00a0 Hodgson’s personal agnosticism about the effectiveness of the therapies and the UKCP’s position that they are ineffective don’t have to be the same, because Hodgson and the UKCP aren’t the same entity.\u00a0 There’s no reason to suppose that she should be bound by the opinions of the body she represents, or vice versa<\/em>.\u00a0 And, anyway, the difference is small.\u00a0 She (negatively) doesn’t think they work; the UKCP (positively) thinks they don’t.<\/p>\n But there’s more substantial stuff to be said. \u00a0I don’t know if Saunders has seen Iron Sky<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span>, which is a gleefully silly film set in 2018 about an invasion of Earth by Nazis who’ve been hiding on the moon since 1945.\u00a0 One of the plot points involves a drug that has the ability to turn black people into white people.\u00a0 Let’s imagine that this drug actually exists, and is undergoing trials to determine how effective it is.\u00a0 There’s currently conflicting evidence about whether or not it actually does turn black white, and whether or not it poses any other dangers.<\/p>\n It still seems to me that there would be a couple of reasons for professional bodies to deregister people prescribing the drug.\u00a0 The first is that there might be worries about the propriety of prescribing drugs that are currently scientifically controversial, which may not work, and which may cause harm in their own right.\u00a0 The second is that… um…<\/p>\n Oh, yeah.\u00a0 Being black isn’t pathological<\/em>, and using the drug would be either positively racist, or – at best – pandering to racism.\u00a0 There doesn’t seem to me to be anything self-evidently improper about a medical professional body de-registering people on the grounds that there are certain practices with which professionals ought not to be associated.\u00a0 I think that sometimes professional bodies can be a bit ban-happy, with a tendency to over-regulate for the sake of professional appearance (I’ve heard people taking seriously the idea that “professionalism” means having to self-impose restrictions about what to put on your facebook page…) – but this wouldn’t be one of those times.<\/p>\n The analogy should be obvious.\u00a0 Since being gay isn’t pathological, the idea that there could be legitimate therapy for it looks to be a bit of a non-starter – on which point, have a look at this<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n Except… well, let’s be generous, and consider whether\u00a0there’s possibly a couple of counterarguments here.\u00a0 One has to do with the idea that people might require psychotherapy not because they’re gay per se<\/em>, but because homosexuals do still face problems of acceptance and stigma that the straight population doesn’t, and this might well screw them up.\u00a0 The other is that a person might be struggling to reconcile their natural inclinations and their values\u00a0– and that this, too, could be a cause for therapy.<\/p>\n Obviously, the first\u00a0counterargument isn’t actually a defence of gay conversion therapy.\u00a0 If you’re messed up mentally because your family or society at large won’t accept your sexuality, then it’s really not you that needs to change.\u00a0 In just the same way, if you’re a member of an ethnic minority and you’ve got psychological issues as a result of your racist neighbour’s behaviour, the solution isn’t to try to be a bit less black.\u00a0 And, anyway: in the Bible reading that it recommends for this coming December*, the CMF itself says that <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [i]n the New Testament adultery and fornication** and homosexuality are all equally condemned, and we should be crystal clear in our Christian witness to this<\/p><\/blockquote>\n – which\u00a0suggests to me an\u00a0underlying belief by at least some people working with the CMF’s imprimatur that being gay is<\/em> the problem.\u00a0 Endorsing gay conversion “therapy” on this basis would amount to insisting that gay people need help to\u00a0so that they don’t feel so bad when people like\u00a0the CMF have a go at them for being gay.\u00a0 It’s not quite victim-blaming, but it’s not far off.<\/p>\n Wait, though: what some people say on the CMF website isn’t necessarily the same as the CMF’s position.\u00a0 True – but the objection to Di Hodgson’s quotation on the radio was that there was an inconsistency between what she said there and what the UKCP says.\u00a0 Why should a different standard be applied here?\u00a0 You can’t have it always up.<\/p>\n And so on to the second counterargument, via the other thing that struck me about Saunders’ post:<\/p>\n I concluded by arguing for a more even-handed approach:<\/p>\n “People already can have \u2018gay affirmative therapy\u2019 which affirms their feelings and helps them to harmonise their lifestyle choices with those feelings. So we think there should be a level playing field and that people who would like to harmonise their lifestyle choices with their values should be able to have professional help for that as well.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Once again, yeah, but no.\u00a0 Affirmative therapies don’t have to be pro<\/em> homosexuality (in the sense of encouraging people to try it out, or keep it up***); affirmation can take the form of reassuring people that it’s really no big deal if they are gay – that they shouldn’t have to get screwed up about it – and offering advice about how to deal with any problems it generates.\u00a0 (In the same sort of way, the feminist “consciousness-raising” events of a generation or so ago weren’t trying to persuade people to be women.\u00a0 ‘Cos, y’know, that’d be daft.)\u00a0 What’s on offer from the gay conversion crowd isn’t really the yin<\/em> to “affirmative therapy”‘s yang<\/em>.\u00a0 A genuinely level playing field would be one in which a person who – for some reason – decided that he ought <\/em>to be gay despite his basic heterosexuality was offered help to bring his lifestyle into line with his belief in the rightness of being a massive queen.\u00a0 Somehow, I don’t think that that’s what Saunders has in mind.\u00a0 And that belies his claim to be even handed.<\/p>\n That speaks to the second counterargument that I mooted a minute ago.\u00a0 I don’t have all that much of a problem with the idea that we could use medical technology to do all kinds of weird and wonderful non-curative stuff to people’s bodies for the sake of helping them realise their vision of the best life; and, in principle, that that might translate to psychotherapy.\u00a0 If a gay person genuinely wants to be less gay – allowing, for the sake of the argument, that this is<\/em> a genuine desire\u00a0rather than simply a product of social hostility –\u00a0and if there’s a psychotherapy that offers this – remember, I’m allowing for the sake of the argument that there could be, even\u00a0though in real life that’s not at all a given\u00a0– then fine.\u00a0 If we can make a person’s life better by helping to ameliorate the discord between their inclinations and their values, we should.\u00a0 But that won’t tell us whether it’s the inclination or the value that ought to change; and pari passu<\/em>, we should also be happy with the idea of a\u00a0psychotherapy directed at making a straight person a bit less straight if they decide that being gay is desirable.<\/p>\n I’m all for being even-handed.\u00a0 To that extent, I agree with Saunders completely.<\/p>\n * Admirable preparation, if nothing else.<\/p>\n ** Does anyone really still use language like this?<\/p>\n *** Pffffttt!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spoiler alert: Almost certainly not.\u00a0 But hear me out for a bit. The Christian Medical Fellowship blog had an article posted yesterday\u00a0about what it praised as a balanced documentary\u00a0concerning “sexual orientation change efforts” – gay conversion therapy to you and me – on Radio 4 on Sunday.\u00a0 Actually, it wasn’t a documentary – it was […]<\/p>\n