I Am Sinner Who Will Probably Sin Again Queer Victoria

In 1899, a High german psychiatrist electrified the audience at a conference on hypnosis with a assuming claim: He had turned a gay man straight.

All it took was 45 hypnosis sessions and a few trips to a brothel, Albert von Schrenck-Notzing bragged. Through hypnosis, he claimed, he had manipulated the man's sexual impulses, diverting them from his involvement in men to a lasting desire for women.

He didn't know it, but he had just kicked off a phenomenon that would later be known as "conversion therapy"—a set of pseudoscientific techniques designed to quash LGBTQ people'due south sexuality and brand them suit to lodge'south expectations of how they should behave. Though information technology's dismissed by the medical establishment today, conversion therapy was widely practiced throughout the 20th century, leaving shame, pain and cocky-hatred in its wake.

Homosexuality, particularly same-sexual activity relationships between men, was considered deviant, sinful and fifty-fifty criminal for centuries. In the late 19th century, psychiatrists and doctors began to address homosexuality, as well. They labeled aforementioned-sexual practice desire in medical terms—and started looking for ways to reverse information technology.

German language doctor Eugen Steinach. (Credit: Imagno/Getty Images)

In that location were plenty of theories as to why people were homosexual. For Eugen Steinach, a pioneering Austrian endocrinologist, homosexuality was rooted in a man'south testicles. This theory led to testicle transplantation experiments in the 1920s during which gay men were castrated, then given "heterosexual" testicles."

Others theorized that homosexuality was a psychological disorder instead. Sigmund Freud hypothesized that humans are born innately bisexual and that homosexual people go gay because of their conditioning. Only though Freud emphasized that homosexuality wasn't a affliction, per se, some of his colleagues didn't agree. They began to use new psychiatric interventions in an attempt to "cure" gay people.

Some LGBTQ people were given electroconvulsive therapy, but others were subjected to even more extreme techniques like lobotomies. Other "treatments" included shocks administered through electrodes that were implanted directly into the brain. Robert Galbraith Heath, a psychiatrist in New Orleans who pioneered the technique, used this grade of encephalon stimulation, along with hired prostitutes and heterosexual pornography, to "change" the sexual orientation of gay men. But though Heath contended he was able to actually turn gay men straight, his work has since been challenged and criticized for its methodology.

An offshoot of these techniques was "disfavor therapy," which was founded on the premise that if LGBTQ people became disgusted past homosexuality, they would no longer experience same-sex desire. Nether medical supervision, people were given chemicals that made them vomit when they, for example, looked at photos of their lovers. Others were given electric shocks—sometimes to their genitals—while they looked at gay pornography or cantankerous-dressed.

A patient undergoing electroconvulsive therapy circa 1950s. (Credit: Carl Purcell/3 Lions/Getty Images)

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"Although proponents of disfavor therapy claimed 'cure' rates as loftier as 50 percent," notes historian Elise Chenier, "these claims were never satisfactorily documented."

LGBTQ people had long protested these barbarous and scientifically dubious forms of "treatment," simply the concept that homosexuality was a disease was accepted by the majority of the medical establishment. This included the American Psychiatric Association, which considered homosexuality to be a psychiatric disorder.

Simply in the 1960s and 1970s, equally a song gay rights move took to the streets to demand equality, the profession began to plough its back on the concept that people could be "converted" to heterosexuality. In 1973, the APA removed homosexuality from the DSM, its influential manual of psychiatric disorders, and medical professionals began to altitude themselves from techniques they had once embraced.

That wasn't the finish of attempts to turn gay people straight. As LGBTQ visibility increased, cocky-proclaimed "experts" and faith-based groups took over the practice themselves. They called their techniques "conversion" or "reparative" therapy, or advertised themselves equally "ex-gay" ministries. Their methods varied, and included everything from talk therapy to exorcisms.

At "gay conversion" camps and conferences, LGBTQ people were isolated from family and friends, hypnotized, told to pray until their homosexuality subsided, instructed to beat effigies of their parents, mocked, coached on "proper" gender roles, and told their sexuality was unnatural and sinful.

John And Anne Paulk, both "formerly gay" pose with their son, Timothy, in a campaign for Gay Conversion to Heterosexuality. (Credit: Kevin Moloney/Getty Images)

For the people who underwent conversion therapy, shame and hurting were an undeniable part of the process. "I read books and listened to audiotapes well-nigh how to accept a 'corrective and healing human relationship with Jesus Christ,'" writes James Guay, a gay man who attended weekly therapy and conversion seminars as a teen. "These materials talked virtually how the "gay lifestyle" would create affliction, depravity and misery. I was convinced that doing what I was told would change my attractions—and confused about why these methods supposedly worked for others just not for me."

In some cases, people were psychologically and even sexually abused. Others committed suicide later "handling." Meanwhile, evidence that any of the techniques were effective remained nonexistent.

Though the concept of gay conversion notwithstanding exists today, a growing tide has turned against the practise. Today, xiii states and the District of Columbia accept laws that ban gay conversion therapy practices. Victims of facilities like JONAH, or Jews Offer New Alternatives for Healing, brought lawsuits for fraud. And Exodus International, an umbrella grouping that connected various conversion therapy groups and gay ministry building organizations, closed down in 2013 afterwards nearly 40 years of operations after its president, Alan Chambers, decided it'due south impossible to change someone'south sexual orientation.

His stance is shared by the medical establishment, which now accepts that homosexuality isn't a thing of choice. For the 698,000 LGBT adults in the U.s.a. who have received conversion therapy—many against their will—the aftereffects of the practise are all too real. Studies accept shown that attempts to change someone'southward sexuality can result in everything from poor self esteem to increased suicide hazard and mental health problems.

"These practices accept no footing in science or medicine and they will at present be relegated to the dustbin of quackery," said California governor Jerry Brown as he signed a nib banning gay-to-direct therapy in the country in 2012. But for those who have been on the receiving end of the "therapy"—and those who withal face pressure level to receive it—its aftereffects tin can linger long by any bill or executive order.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/gay-conversion-therapy-origins-19th-century

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