UN Report Condemns Talk Therapy for Homosexuality

By | June 4, 2020

NEW YORK, June 5, (C-Fam) A United Nations representative has issued a scathing report condemning talk therapy for those with unwanted sexual desires and behaviors, usually related to homosexuality.

“Report on Conversion Therapy” was issued by Victor Madrigal-Borloz of Costa Rica, the UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, who has sought in the past to punish religious opponents of the gay agenda.

The purpose of the report is to encourage governments to outlaw doctors from offering, and patients from seeking, this particular method of dealing with unwanted feelings, something that is happening around the United States and in various countries around the world.

The ideological nature of the report is demonstrated in its referring to doctors who practice this therapy as “perpetrators,” implying they are committing a crime. The report references debunked charges that some therapists practice what’s known as “aversion” therapy, including using electrical shocks on patients.

The report also charges that practicing such talk therapy is a violation of human rights, though there is no agreed-upon human right mentions “sexual orientation” or “gender identity,” despite the fact that such an agreement has long been a goal of homosexual and transgender rights advocates at the UN.

Madrigal-Borloz appears to have accepted the argument that people seeking help with unwanted desires and actions are unwilling participants who are being forced into therapy by parents or others. Therapists who practice this kind of therapy are eager to point out that they do not take patients who have been forced. They believe force is not only wrong but that it also does not work. In any therapy situation, especially if there is going to be any progress, patients must want to change and seek change on their own. While many of these laws focus on minors, some ban it for adults, too.

The report is based on the notion that homosexuality and transgenderism are not subject to change, that such desires and behaviors are inborn and therefore immutable. But, even gay-friend researchers admit that homosexuality is quite fluid. Lisa Diamond of the University of Utah who identifies as a lesbian, published a whole book on the topic called “Sexual Fludity.” A question Madrigal-Borloz does not apparently raise in the report is: if sexual desire can change, why can’t a person seek that change with professional help?

Catholic therapists connected to the organization called Courage argue that “sexual orientation change” is a misnomer since there is only one orientation and that is between men and women as evidenced by nature. They argue that sexuality can become confused for various psychological reasons and that therapy is used to bring the patient back to what nature intended.

It should be noted that advocates against talk therapy have argued that such therapy is physically and psychologically abusive. Therapists have responded by insisting that it is no more than talking as happens in almost all psychological counseling. Therapists also say that no other reason for talk therapy has ever been banned. They are trained to follow the patient and if something is bothering the patient, no matter what it is, and they work to help the patient overcome what is bothering them.

Dr. Robert Spitzer, longtime professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and former head of the American Psychiatric Association, had a hand in changing the psychology profession’s diagnostic manual in favor of homosexuality. Even so, he published a 2003 paper that showed that under certain circumstances talk therapy helps people overcome unwanted homosexual desires and behaviors.

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