Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
A Question of Birth
This is an honest question.
For many years, before we even heard about the LGBT movement (with increasing letters added), we heard from the gay community that being gay was a matter of birth. The reason a person is gay is because they were “born that way.” There was an assumption there is a genetic disposition to gay orientation, so it is wrong to even suggest that a gay person could change. California legislators came to believe it was necessary to pass laws against “conversion therapy” because it would be wrong to try to change how someone is “born.”
But now we hear that if a person is born physiologically male or female, and comes to feel that they were “born in the wrong body,” it is necessary to perform surgery to change their body to correspond to the way they feel. Even for adolescents (a time in life when feelings are extreme and transitory) should have access to procedures to change gender, if they feel uncomfortable in their bodies.
So the question: Why it is morally wrong to even suggest an adolescent (or an adult) should pursue therapy to “change the way they were born” but morally imperative for an adolescent (or adult) be provided with surgery to change the way they were born?
Published in Healthcare
Yes, but who are they thinking of while performing?
Isn’t that a little like saying, “No one I know voted for Nixon” in NYC? I think you’ve been in some rather rarefied air.
On the other hand…
(continuing my own thought, here, with help from Gary McVey et al) there is also the question of whether time and effort spent suppressing ones sexuality could be better spent on some other project?
I, too, know and love a lot of gay and lesbian people. The former, in particular, are so clearly, obviously what they are that it is very difficult to imagine them being able or willing to “convert” to being heterosexual, if that’s the point of the exercise. Of course, some (especially the older ones) started life as nominal heterosexuals and had kids and everything. The difference isn’t just “who can I bring myself to have sex with or live reasonably happily with” but rather “who makes my whole world light up when they walk into the room?” For me, the answer was, is and ever more shall be a man (my husband more specifically).
By the way, I just watched an episode of “Queer Eye” with my daughter. It’s becoming a favorite.
Some questions are better left unanswered…
Not particularly rarefied. I go by evidence of my own eyes, not a YouTube of some nervous seminarian who wonders who he is. That’s why I don’t usually bother arguing with most social conservatives about this stuff; they don’t know anybody who actually lived through this, and they rarely know what they’re talking about.
And the ones who wrote that amicus brief for Obergefell.
I really need to read that one some day!
Yeah, I know a guy–a seriously weird guy–who wrote a whole book on that stuff.
Not really. It was a book about another guy’s–another weird guy’s–books.
Seriously, though, changing and healing and improving and trimming or redirecting desire is the whole point of Buddhism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism. It’s a huge component of Platonism, Confucianism, Daoism, Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, Aquinas, C. S. Lewis, the Bhagavad-Gita, Ibn Tufail, and other philosophers and theologians. Any number of Bible passages talk about it, or at least can be interpreted thus.
Even if it’s voluntary?
Talking to a therapist is harmful and illegal. Having your genitals removed by a surgeon is beneficial and legal. Got it.
If this was meant to be funny, I’m amused but have no clever reply in mind.
If it was a serious question, I wonder whether the correct answer is: None of your business, and none of mine!
However, I wonder whether this is just as good an answer: Maybe they’re thinking of their wives with whom they are friends and also experiencing intimacy.
One of my dearest friends from high school got a sex change in college and her (now his) life improved greatly for the better afterwards.
I can also point you to numerous studies touting the benefits of sex reassignment. And there are certainly enough YouTube videos of people talking about how sex reassignment helped them.
But does that mean that sex reassignment is a good idea, or that the majority of people who undergo it benefit from the procedure? Of course not.
And your identical evidence here in support of conversion therapy is just as unconvincing. In the case of both of these procedures, a small number of anecdotes and studies on their success cannot belie the much larger bodies of evidence suggesting that they usually range from worthless to harmful.
Have we defined conversion therapy in this thread?
I thought it was all spiritual stuff, prayer and such.
But apparently some people think it’s more about electroshock therapy. That’s confusing.
And quite a few heterosexual men are also able to, um, “perform” with other men when in prison or other circumstances that exclude women for long periods of time.
Does that mean that most heterosexual men are secretly half-gay? Or perhaps it just means that male sexuality might indeed be fixed at birth in one direction or another, but is not quite as exclusive as we might lead ourselves to believe?
Incidentally, the book’s title has nothing to do with conversion therapy. It’s borrowed from Martha Nussbaum’s The Therapy of Desire and the word “conversion” used endlessly in studies of Augustine. Only after it was too late did it occur to me that it might be taken to have something to do with conversion therapy.
Actually, conversion therapy might have something to do with it. That is, if “conversion therapy” just means spiritual stuff like prayer, it may have something to do with Augustine.
I think it means that the male libido is quite potent and needs channeling (voluntary) in virtuous directions. This may be accomplished culturally, religiously, philosophically, or even therapeutically. But, not if everyone’s busy validating everyone’s predilections. You’re okay, I’m okay. We needn’t set any standards that violate our (behavioral) choices.
We never seem to include the harmful physical/social aspects of homosexual behavior in these discussions. It’s just taboo. All part of the intimidation game.
That’s good to know, actually.
. A young man I know and love is contemplating this: I worry about him.
There’s something incomprehensible to me about the way in which straight cultural liberals like talk about the experiences of their gay friends; as if the presence of people in their lives who are very confident in their sexuality is supposed to remove an entire series of questions from reasonable discussion. First of all there’s a problem of selection bias. Open homosexuals who are prone to discuss these things are by definition likely to be less conflicted about their sexuality and more likely to have bought in to sexual identitarianism than others. Secondly, on the face of it the question of whether sexual preference, more than any other set of personal preferences, is a valid basis for one’s sense of self seems like one over which reasonable people should be able to discuss rationally and maintain respectful disagreement. But go ahead, tell me how insulting it is to the gays in your life to suggest that they might consider the possibility of traditional marriage and family life.
Personally, I think it’s a better idea to start rethinking how society conceives of sexual attraction as a component of love and marriage rather than encouraging people to reprogram their desires via conversion therapy, but I’m willing to allow for reasonable disagreement on this as well. Our culture is highly sexualized, in a way that affects our view of relationships. It’s not unreasonable that some people might consider more or less extreme measures, to bring their sexual desires in line with their social/familial values.
No one should be stuck with a decision that wasn’t right for him or her. Including kids. In fact, kids especially who may have been interested to experiment and then got stuck in a lifestyle that is a complete mistake for them.
Healthcare decisions for children should always be in the hands of the children’s parents or guardians.
How do you think gay people have had families in the past? Do you really think that people cannot guide their impulses and desires?
Really?
My wife went to a all-women school that was famous for “Lesbian Until Graduation.” I heard it plenty.
I think it’s all open to reasonable discussion myself, and I’m one of the cultural liberals. I find that as long as people don’t get too wound up (in either direction) the experiences of sexual minorities cast new light on human sexuality more generally.
There is a norm that is both biologically and socially obvious: heterosexual pair-bonds produce babies. All the variations are interesting precisely because there shouldn’t (?) be any. What do the variables tell us about the constant?
Excellent conversation(s) starter, right?
Acting according to our base desires instead of directing and tempering them is what I refer to as animalistic.
Take porn as an example. Many men generally try to avoid watching porn. It does not mean that they never do – it means that they know it is not helpful or constructive, and they are trying to live good lives.
A man can decide to focus on his wife – or actively chase other women. Not being a womanizer can be a choice, despite normal male urges toward promiscuity.
I don’t think of homosexuality as somehow different from every other sexual urge.
I know a great many gay men. We have a pair of married “nice girls” as neighbors.
Indeed, I know observant Jewish men who, while openly gay (and leaders within the gay community), chose celibacy.
Nothing I have learned tells me that people have no choice whatsoever over what they do with their bodies.
I appreciate the clarification. Have these laws removed the ability of parents (who might otherwise be empowered to make judgments for minors) to sign off on the process? In other words, is the state acting in loco parentis here?
Bryn Mawr? My niece went there for a year. She couldn’t handle the culture.
You miss my point.
@FredCole and @zafar stated unequivocally that Conversion Therapy does not work and causes harm.
I asked the question: If I found a single example of it working and/or helping, does that kill the statement? In other words, is their claim falsifiable?
I don’t believe in therapy generally – as I also said. I think therapy is usually a waste, and often destructive. But I think both @fredcole and @zafar are (or at least should be) men enough to admit when they have overstated their case.
I don’t know anything about conversion therapy. But I know married gay men who say they are happy. Which tells me that people are able, within some limits, to change themselves.
You are right to worry. The outcome is generally not good.
I just learned something new: LUGs are also called Hasbians:
@garymcvey… Never a lifestyle choice?
I think it’s more common among women, in fairness to Gary’s experience. Also, the women I knew who were contemplating switching from hetero to homo were victims of sexual abuse as children. No wonder they had reservations about intimacy with men!
There were LUGS in the early 70’s. I knew some.