“Please, Sir, Can You Stop the Torture?” (Or, When to Stop Begging)
Finally, what I find most troubling about discussing the whole idea of trying to outlaw what amounts to torture is that at the end of these interviews I often leave feeling like little orphan Oliver, in the musical, Oliver!, begging for one more measly bowl of soup. “Please, Sir? Please can you stop the torture?”
Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights
On December 8, 2020, I provided testimony before The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, one of the Committees of Canada's House of Commons responsible for researching Bill C-6, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy).
About the Ban in Lethbridge, Alberta (Canada)
Virtually every global health regulator has spoken out about the dangers of conversion therapy—countries all over the world have been consulted, survivors have shared their stories of abuse, voices from the graves of those who did not survive their own abuse have cried out, health and medical experts have now even written their recommendations, and The United Nations, in a final report I cite below, has urged all jurisdictions to ban conversion therapy. What more does anyone need to say to a city like Lethbridge before they take action?
Canada’s Proposed Ban on Conversion Therapy Falls Short
Conversion therapy itself is a lie that those who practice, perpetuate, and those who fall prey, forget, and so the aim with a ban should be to firmly and resolutely destabilize and eradicate orders of hatred and intolerance, not simply to pick and choose which kinds of bigotry may be less harmful than others or under what circumstances some people could reasonably “consent” to bigotry.
Darkness Lurks
Lately I’ve been watching a lot of horror movies on Netflix. Isolated, at times quarantined due to COVID-19, I have resisted all better judgment to the contrary and submerged myself in one film after another. And always very late at night. Call me crazy; or maybe there’s far more to it than that.
Religion as a Front for Tyranny
Religious-based organizations that enforce any kind of conversion treatment tyrannize people into conformity; legal bans of their treatments oppose this tyranny, not religion.
Map and Territory
Always one must look beyond words, or trans-linguistically, to find meaning
Speaking Only For Myself
More and more I find it harder and harder to hear my own thoughts, to be alone with myself, to discover what I, alone, believe, as opposed to which side or corner of the larger conversation I best belong. I’m not sure how to resolve this struggle for authenticity.
Pride and Prejudice
On June 17, 2018, CBC journalist Wendy Mesley interviewed me for her show, “The Weekly,” about gay conversion therapy in Canada. Within a day of that interview, a link to my segment appeared on several websites, including, of course, on CBC’s site for “The Weekly.” That is—until just the other day.
Vancouver, Canada, Bans Conversion Therapy
To be heard and recognized by our government officials is a deeply meaningful, and healing, experience.
“Anecdotal Accounts”
“Conversion therapy,” I’ve long believed, is a problem of ideology, not nationality.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Conversion therapy is nothing if not a war against a person’s sexuality or gender identity.
“Consensual Conversion Therapy”
For a moment, after this psychiatrist’s question, I just stared at him, horrified, speechless. He was sitting near the back of the crowded room of about 40 adults, all of whom were looking at me, waiting for my response.
To Ban or Not to Ban
To Ban or Not to Ban may be the question for lawmakers, but the underlying issue, at least in my books, remains helping to prevent immeasurable harm while fostering lives lived in honesty and integrity, or perpetuating institutionalized hatred by turning a blind eye for the sake of maintaining a lie.
Book Pitches, or Beyond Gay Politics
“Coming out” demands so much more than telling people I’m gay, and discussing my book’s underlying issues necessitates so much more than repeating the potentially banal pitch of “conversion therapy.”
From Plan A to Plan D: Stop Having Sex
No longer strapping gay people into chairs and shocking them with electricity but merely “helping” them to not have sex may sound like progress, it may no longer sound like conversion therapy, and therein lies the rub. When we talk about conversion therapy we are talking about an ideology, not any one “type” of treatment.
From Alberta’s Minister of Health
Believing that therapists won’t practice conversion therapy—that they won’t treat their gay or trans patients in an effort to “change” them—because it’s been deemed ineligible for funding seems to imply that there is a thing or product actually called “conversion therapy” that can be removed from the marketplace, like a prescription drug or a tainted food, and therefore withdrawn from public consumption. It's a lie.
In Response to An Article About Banning "Conversion Therapy"
Read their struggles. Hear their voices. Remember their legacies.
Sexual Abuse ≠ Gay
It was easy, as a confused teenager, to think that sexual abuse from my childhood had "made me gay." I was raised in the 1970's to believe that Homosexuals Recruited Children. Anita Bryant's voice prevailed.
Waiting for Laws
I'm tired, and I'm mad. I can't stand the waiting. I can't wait for politicians, or committees. Bureaucracy makes me crazy. I can't stand trying to make my point that "conversion therapy" is dangerous, that it causes harm, that it hurts people, that it hurt me.