To Ban or Not to Ban

A journalist, let’s call him Sam, called me recently to discuss my experiences in conversion therapy because of a possible ban of the practice in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada. Sam asked if I thought these kinds of bans were even necessary today, since he said he hadn’t found much information on the internet to suggest that conversion therapy still occurred, much less locally, in Canada. 

First, I answered to Sam on the phone, the fact that cursory Google searches for labels like “conversion therapy” do not result in many hits from actual organizations or practitioners claiming to endorse it does not mean it isn’t still occurring; in fact, one of the most common misconceptions I’ve encountered, I explained to Sam, is that many people tend to think conversion therapy is always an actual thing that can be quickly identified, or found, so that it can be eliminated or prevented. How do you “find” homophobia, or transphobia? How do you “find” ideology, hatred or prejudice? Especially when it's behind closed doors in a therapeutic relationship between two people in privacy—can fear ever be “found”?

Conversion therapy begins with the thought that gay and trans people are somehow ill and need to be “fixed.” Thoughts carry into beliefs that are then projected outward into systematic acts of oppression by “helping professionals,” whether religious or secular, who are in positions of power over the vulnerable. Shame is the breeding ground on which these kinds of “treatments” thrive, I told Sam, and shame is fostered by silence. Few, if any, will ever admit to practicing anything remotely called “conversion therapy”; in their minds, “conversion therapy” likely doesn't even exist. Instead, they are trying to “help.”

Sam went on to ask that if practitioners aren’t openly admitting to practicing conversion therapy, how can we expect to regulate them; and if they can’t be regulated, the question remains: why are these bans still worthwhile?

These are all good questions, I told Sam, and ones that I’d been repeating to many people for a long time. However, I reminded Sam that all of these concerns are the exact same “problems” that any jurisdiction would likely face, and about 30 U.S. cities / counties, 10 states and D.C., even the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario, have all banned the practice of conversion therapy, even though regulatory policies against the practice already exist in nearly every national and international health organization. Obviously, further preventative measures are still needed. Just as morality cannot be legislated—despite laws against sexual abuse or rape, some go right on sexually abusing and raping—no ban against something as elusive as “conversion therapy” will ever prevent every act of hatred toward gays or trans people, but it is a start.

All that said, not all proposed bans have been successful; as it turns out, one such bill in New Hampshire failed to pass just recently because opponents believed that “conversion therapy” was not a concern where they lived (funny how that works: shame from these treatments fosters silence, and because of silence the opponents claim the treatments don't exist); that actually banning these so-called “therapies” might prevent minors from wanting to openly discuss their “unwanted” same-sex attractions with counsellors; and that many “former” homosexuals (known colloquially as “ex-gays”) have claimed to have actually been helped by these “therapies,” living out their lives now as heterosexually married or at least coupled in opposite-sex relationships. Once again, as in past, such opponents confuse these types of coercive treatments with safe, honest, and emotionally fulfilling discussions around sexuality and gender, both of which are of course complicated issues and well deserving of serious attention. Banning conversion therapy in no way prevents such discussions. Torture is never “therapy,” and conversion therapies torture people, through various shame-based approaches, into trying to become who they’re not. In terms of apparent “success rates,” the director of the sexual orientation and gender diversity office at the American Psychological Association was quoted to have said in a follow article in The New York Times: “Even if someone agrees to behave differently, it doesn’t change who they are.”

Sounds simple enough, and I couldn’t agree more.

I’d also add that even if a gay person changes the “map” of their sexual identity—engaging in opposite-sex partnerships—it will never change the “territory” of their underlying desires. I call myself a gay man but I could also call myself a heterosexual man and even go about having sex with a woman if I wanted; I could change my behavior—but would any of that change my underlying sensibilities and desires? Is what I do or how I present myself to the world always the same as whoI am and know myself to be? Of course not. People live a lie all the time. All that sort of contradictory, duplicitous, behaviour would do for me personally is betray who I know myself to be and thrust me back into the state of dissonance and inner turmoil that I also struggled most of my early life to escape. To live my life as truthfully and as honestly as possible is what will bring me peace: this much I know for sure. A map may not be the territory it represents, but to align my authentic self, my territory, with my outer behaviour, my map, is my objective.

Bans against “conversion therapy” hold great value, I told Sam, finally, since they set a tone and create a precedent, thereby possibly preventing these kinds of “therapies” from recurring again; they also bring the issue out into public scrutiny, which is already a step forward. People don’t discover who they are simply from within; people discover who they are, and also who and what they’re not, by what they encounter in the world outside. Bans against conversion therapy send a clear message to all by destabilizing the belief system—which is of course just that: a belief system; it is not Truth—that says gay or trans people are somehow “broken” and must be healed. Bans like the one proposed in Vancouver and already passed in numerous other jurisdictions tell us all that there is nothing wrong with being gay, or lesbian, queer or trans. Bans like this tell us we are valued, and protected; that when we, as LGBTQ people, are depressed or unsettled, struggling with feelings of displacement or alienation from family or our religion, that this very alienation and displacement is not as a result of our true nature, but as a result of being shamed and dejected, silenced, of being subjected to people promoting hatred and intolerance in the name of God, which in my mind is never godly—maybe even as a result of trying to change ourselves, through extraordinarily twisted and counterintuitive measures, into something we are not. Trying to change our sexuality or gender in order to feel less alone and “normal” is antithetical to what we truly desire and ultimately need, which is to be accepted and valued, loved, for who we are. If bans like this can prevent even one LGBTQ person, who may still believe there’s something inherently wrong with them simply for being themselves, from falling under the spell of even one “practitioner,” who may still believe there’s something wrong with them simply for being LGBTQ—then that ban, as far as I’m concerned, will have succeeded triumphantly.

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.

From Alberta’s Minister of Health

Yesterday I received a letter from Alberta’s Minister of Health, responding to an email I sent in support of the Lethbridge Public Interest Research Group’s “petition and a letter writing campaign directed to the government of Alberta, Canada, asking for conversion therapy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual people to be made ineligible for Alberta Health Care funding.” Minister Sarah Hoffman, who is also Deputy Premier of Alberta, writes:

Thank you for your email regarding banning conversion therapy.

The Government of Alberta shares your opposition to the use of “conversion therapy.”

In regard to funding such a practice, we do not support this and we will not. Alberta Health covers insured medical services as outlined in the Schedule of Medical Benefits (SOMB). Benefits for these services are provided through the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan (AHCIP).  The SOMB does not list conversion therapy as an insured service that is billable and covered by the AHCIP.

The Government of Alberta is committed to ensuring health care services in Alberta are delivered safely and effectively by competent health care practitioners. Through the Health Professions Act (HPA), we delegate to professional colleges the authority to govern their members in a manner that serves and protects the public interest. The HPA provides the legal framework for colleges to establish, maintain, and enforce a code of ethics and standards of practice for their members.

Early in this term of government, Alberta Health staff met with several regulatory colleges, whose members perform psychosocial interventions, to determine their perspectives and positions on conversion therapy. They were assured that these colleges are not aware of any of their regulated members performing conversion therapy, and have accountability mechanisms in place to discipline members if they were to learn otherwise.

If you are aware of this practice happening, please do not hesitate to contact my office or the relevant regulatory body of the HPA.

Thank you again for writing and for your advocacy on this important topic.

Sincerely...

In essence, the Minister is saying that they believe conversion therapy is not happening in Alberta because no licensed therapists admit to practicing it, and the province does not fund it.

Okay.

This kind of language reminds me of when my former psychiatrist, who treated me for six years in an effort to "change" my sexual orientation, and I appeared before British Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons’ ethics committee. At one point near the start of the two-hour hearing, the chair of the committee asked my psychiatrist if he had ever treated my homosexuality in an effort to change me to heterosexuality. To which he said: “How could I treat a patient for something that hasn’t been included in the DSM since 1973?”

Everyone's language becomes a game of chess. Human chess.

The “problem” with Minister Hoffman’s diplomatic response, and I suppose even the well-intentioned Research Group’s original petition and letter writing campaign, is they do not go far enough, they do not address the underlying problem, which is that any therapist practicing “conversion therapy” today would never actually bill an insurer for anything even remotely called “conversion therapy.” As a survivor of one of these “treatments,” I can say without hesitation that my own former psychiatrist billed British Columbia’s Medial Services Commission for six years of depression—which I was. I was depressed when I sought his help after coming out as gay and being rejected by my family at the age of 23. By the time I met him I’d been depressed for most of my life, because I’d also been sexually abused as a child and had never fully confronted the trauma of that abuse, let alone mourned the loss of my childhood. The doctor’s “treatment” for my depression, however, was to tell me that the sexual abuse had “caused” me to turn out gay, that my homosexuality was “an error in need of correction,” and then to prescribe near fatal doses of various psychiatric medications and inject me with ketamine hydrochloride for the next several years, all the while reframing my history of trauma as I underwent his treatment plan of intense primal scream therapy in an effort to revert to my (his words) “innate heterosexuality.” Words like “conversion therapy” were never mentioned, and certainly they were never considered as part of his billing cycle. 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.

I honestly don’t know anymore when politicians write letters like this if they are being purposefully obtuse, or if they really just don’t get it. Do they honestly think that medically licensed doctors (especially, not to mention other kinds of “therapists”) would even try and bill a government-funded insurer for something called “conversion therapy,” which isn’t even included in any chart of approved medical “services”—and that as long as they don’t bill for something that isn’t included in these charts it isn’t happening?

Laws must be created banning the practice of conversion therapy, because only laws will help—not guarantee, but at least help—dissuade a therapist from telling their patient that “we can fix your sexuality” (or some version of that line). No law is foolproof—people commit acts of inhumanity, rape and battery, all the time, no matter the law. But what options do we have? Not funding conversion therapy is a no-brainer; but conversion therapy is abuse—any survivor will tell you it is torture—and must be made illegal.

Waiting for Laws

Writing a blog scares me. I can't stand the feeling of pressure, writing a new blog once a day, or once a week, even every other week. I'm a single guy and, like most writers, I work a full-time job, plus I need to shop and I like to cook; exercise; walk a lot; read books; do my laundry and iron all my clothes every week, especially my bedding; see and cook for my elderly mother; and then there's my first book that was just published and I'm trying to still pitch interviews, and reviews, and of course I'm writing a new book. Who has time to write a blog?

But then I lie in my lavender-scented Epsom salt bubble bath to try and relax, to try and not think about all the things I don't have time to write about in a blog. 

Like laws banning "conversion therapy." Canada's banned it in two provinces, Ontario and Manitoba, except that in Manitoba it's not really a ban so much as a health regulation, deterring licensed therapists from practicing "conversion therapy." Does anyone actually think a licensed therapist who wants to practice "conversion therapy" is going to admit to practicing "conversion therapy"? Or even bill the province for "conversion therapy"? Please. A "regulation" like this is less than ineffective; in my mind, it's an insult. I understand Alberta's Lethbridge Public Interest Research Group, a "student-funded, student-directed, not-for-profit organization" is now spearheading a movement to ban the practice in their own province, but even there I understand they're meeting opposition from lawmakers with remarks that "conversion therapy doesn't happen in Alberta."

Oh, really?

Since my own six years in a form of "conversion therapy" in my native British Columbia, I've approached a number of politicians to try and bring about a law or even a public statement, just something, opposing this form of torture. Granted, the first time I approached a sitting MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) in my West End neighbourhood of Vancouver, I was in the middle of suing my former psychiatrist for the treatment, so it was probably not the best time. Still, I'd hardly made it through the MLA's front office door and explained my history with this doctor when I was told, point blank, that they could not help me. Did I mention the MLA was a gay man? 

Flash forward, and about six years ago I approached the new MLA, again in my West End neighbourhood, once again explaining that I'd lived through six years of "conversion therapy" in British Columbia, that I'd filed an ethics complaint against the doctor with BC's College of Physicians and Surgeons, that I'd even sued the doctor, and had spent the last (at that time) roughly 15 years working on a book about the whole ordeal. I was approaching him, the MLA, now, I said, in the hope of sponsoring a private members bill, banning the practice of conversion therapy in British Columbia. 

At first, he seemed genuinely interested; he thanked me for bringing this "very serious community issue" to his attention; he told me that we'd meet again. Weeks later, I called and he said he had no time to help, but that if I did some "research" on my own, I could send it to him by email and he'd "look into it." Oh, did I mention he was also a gay man?

Then this year, in 2017, in anticipation of my book's release, I approached the city of Vancouver's LGBTQ2+ committee, which is tasked with making recommendations to the City of Vancouver about issues affecting Vancouver's LGBTQ community. I asked them to consider recommending to the City that they take a public position against "conversion therapy"--not even banning the practice legally, just simply taking a public position against the practice.

I waited months, but heard nothing. Then one day, I spotted a City Counsellor in my neighbourhood grocery store. Without thinking (or else I'm sure I would have shrunk back in fear), I approached him, introduced myself, told him about my email to the City's LGBTQ2+ Committee, and what I'd proposed. To which he said he knew all about my email already. We chatted next to the cucumbers, I think. He told me he knew of several "religious conversion therapies" that were happening right here in British Columbia. "They're a menace to our community," he said. "They're crazy." He seemed to know much more about these "therapies" than I did. He handed me his business card. He told me to follow up with the Committee. Oh, did I mention he is also a gay man?

I followed up with the Committee again, weeks later. I cc'd the City Counsellor.

Finally, six weeks later, they invited me to their next meeting, six weeks after that. I prepared a briefing note about "conversion therapy" in Canada, and in British Columbia, and my own history with the therapy, even detailing all the laws that have been passed banning the practice in various U.S. states and cities. There was precedent to my proposal.

At the meeting, I talked for a good 40 minutes, answered questions; everyone seemed very nice and eager to Stop. The. Big. Bad. Wolf. of Conversion Therapy. Some of the Committee members hadn't even been born when I was in my own therapy. I'm not sure how I felt about that, but I felt old.

I left, then heard nothing. Weeks passed. I emailed again, thanked them for inviting me to the meeting, to which they responded and said, "Oh, we were just about to email you. We will follow up with you next week, and invite you to join a sub committee about banning reparative therapy in British Columbia." 

Weeks wore on; now months. Still no word. I don't care anymore. No, that's not true. Yes it is. Not it's not. I don't know anymore. 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. I take it all far too personally. The issue is a very personal issue to me. Frankly, I don't know how it is I'm still alive today. The medications that the doctor prescribed to try and "kill" my sexuality (my homosexuality) nearly killed me. I overdosed. I should have died. Thankfully, I didn't die. I'm alive. I try and make a difference. I wrote a book. I spent a very long time writing this book, The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir, to try and "get it right." Maybe someone will read it. Maybe it will help one kid. Maybe one parent will read it and think twice about sending their gay or trans kid into "conversion therapy." I hope so. I really do. That's my prayer.