Buster Ross: Why Oregon Needs to End Reparative Therapy for Homosexuality
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Photo credit: iStock
So what happened?
Nothing.
In the meantime, the Restored Hope Network, a group focused on gay-reparative practices, brought their national conference to Happy Valley, Ore.
The Southern Poverty Law center continues to indicate that gay-reparative therapy is being practiced in Oregon, according to their map tracking such practices online.
When I facilitate group therapy with LGBTQ people, I am regularly invited into the lived nightmares of my clients. I look, listen, and feel deeply with them in their most guarded and wounded spaces – spaces where they reveal themselves only at the risk of judgment, rejection and possibly even violence.
When I do this type of listening, I orient my body towards the speaker and sit tall; I open my chest and breathe into my heart space. I allow their disclosures to be met with love and kindness, often for the first time ever. And when they share the pain of their experience, we feel it together. Some of their stories bring me to tears.
But I, unlike them, have a choice. As a facilitator, I am a symbol of safety and emotional regulation, and it would be unethical for me to disrupt the emotional work of clients by expressing my own unresolved emotional issues. It’s their tragedy, and I grieve for what they have lost and never recovered. They move through anger, sadness, grief, joy… and I remain present. The crying and release is their work, but listening deeply is mine.
How do you listen with your heart to tragedy?
Some of the most devastating stories I hear are those of “gay reparative therapy” – a professional or amateur effort to eliminate homosexual desire.
The Problems with Reparative Therapy
The lesser problem with this “therapy” is that it doesn’t work: There is no evidence whatsoever that same-sex desires can be changed by any kind of behavior modification, talk therapy or any other known process. The far greater problem is that it can do enormous damage to the self-esteem and self-image of the “patient.”
Such approaches have lead to vastly higher rates of mental illness, substance-use disorders, and suicide attempts among the thousands of people who have survived them.
My own experience as a therapist is that efforts to shape and change an individual’s sexuality are actually quite effective at reinforcing the very desires and behaviors they are intended to prevent. No treatment will fix what is not broken.
Not only does “reparative therapy” not work, it can actually create mental disorders.
Independent adults have the right to try whatever they like within their own lives, so there have been few attempts to restrict their access to this approach.
However, minors are typically forced by homophobic parents or guardians into “therapy” to the tremendous detriment of their mental health. And while other states have begun adopting legislation to ban this violation, such legislation hasn’t even been introduced in Oregon.
I have heard countless stories of LGBTQ people’s experiences in their families growing up and coming out. I know that parents and families desperately want health and happiness for their children, and I believe that the messages and actions that harmed my patients in their early development came from a place of fear and protectiveness, a place I understand.
A study was published in the Journal of Homosexuality in 2012 that unsurprisingly showed that “parents who react non-supportively when their children disclose LGB sexual orientation may contribute to children’s increased odds of depression and hazardous substance use.”
I am the coauthor of a research article that appears in the current issue of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, studying LGBTQ-identified patients in drug and alcohol treatment at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. The data reveals significantly higher rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, and other concerning issues. The patient sample had been to nearly three times as many detox facilities, and twice as many inpatient addiction-treatment programs.
Why? All I can tell you is that I have done clinical work with these patients, and many have experienced gay-reparative therapy, with the overwhelming majority having histories of family with reparative mindsets.
Need for Change
This has to change. These efforts don’t work, it’s been shown. They cause even greater harm, it’s been shown. Oregon politicians could take a stance, they did two years ago. The practice can be made illegal, it’s been done in other states.
Why not Oregon?
It’s hard to imagine that any parent could accept a fate of lobotomies, electroshock, life sentences, and chemical castrations for their children, yet that has been the history we’ve allowed. We’ve been really afraid.
But here is what I know: if we are unconditionally loving and kind, and make space for children to come into whomever they were born to be in this world, they will naturally live up to their vast potential.
And it’s never too late, for this is the same formula that helps so many overcome addiction and mental illness when they present for treatment in our programs.
I’ve seen pastors offer unconditional love and kindness to their LGBTQ children, and watched lifetimes of pain and torment reverse. I’ve seen the military begin to change. We all can come together on this as Oregonians.
I’ve been proud to consider myself an Oregonian. The work of groups like Basic Rights Oregon have helped us move to greater equality for everyone. But the work isn’t done: we need to protect all minors from harmful and unethical practices. I encourage readers to come out to support Basic Rights Oregon at the organization's 2014 Ignite Gala this Friday night.
Until then, I’ll just keep doing group therapy, knowing that the real reason I cry is that the nightmares my patients describe are still legal, and that people profit from them.
[Editors Note: A legislative concept that prohibits mental health providers from doing conversion therapy on minors has been submitted to the Oregon Legislature for the 2015 legislative session. It was submitted by Basic Rights Oregon. Similar legislation has been passed in California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia.]
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