A renewed conversation about the pseudo-scientific technique of gay conversion therapy seems to be emerging nationwide, thanks to the upcoming premieres of two high-profile films on the subject.
On August 3, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, will debut, starring Chloë Grace Moretz as a teenage girl sent to a Christian conversion camp in 1993. The film, by director Desiree Akhavan, gained attention at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and took home the Grand Jury Prize.
Then, on November 2, Boy Erased — starring Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, and Russell Crowe — will focus on the experiences of the teenage son of a Baptist pastor facing similar circumstances. Written and directed by Joel Edgerton, it’s based on the 2016 memoir of the same name by Garrard Conley.
Of course, these aren’t the first films to tackle the topic. But I’m a Cheerleader, a 1999 satire starring Natasha Lyonne as a teen sent to a conversion camp, skewers the approach while making light of the protagonist’s plight.
All three are somewhat based on actual experiences of individuals who have undergone “conversion therapy,” sometimes known as “reparative therapy,” which the Human Rights Campaign defines as “a range of dangerous and discredited practices that falsely claim to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.”
Although such therapy has been discredited by modern medicine and most of mainstream society, it still persists. According to a January study by the Williams Institute, an LGBT research group at the UCLA School of Law, an estimated 698,000 LGBT adults in the United States have received conversion therapy and 20,000 LGBT youth ages 13 to 17 will undergo conversion therapy from a licensed healthcare professional before they turn 18.
To understand how such an inhumane practice first emerged — and how it can largely continue undeterred in the 21st century — Teen Vogue looked at the genesis and evolution of conversion therapy.
Laying the Foundation
The roots of the method reach back to the early 20th century when psychology and psychiatry were both still in their infancy, according to Douglas Haldeman, PhD, a psychologist, activist, and expert on conversion therapy.
“The work of Sigmund Freud was used to validate a cultural view that homosexuality was abnormal,” he tells Teen Vogue. “Therefore, it was thought of as a form of mental illness, or pathologized.”
Though it wasn’t called conversion therapy at the time, various methods to “cure” individuals of “homosexuality” were developed in the early half of the century, including extreme techniques such as testicular implants from “heterosexual” donors, lobotomies, and electroconvulsive therapy.
Homosexuality was officially deemed a mental disorder in 1952 when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) listed it in its first-ever Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
Dawn of a Dark Age
In the 1960s, as mental health experts apparently grew frustrated with talk therapy’s limited ability to achieve deep and lasting change in gay patients, the world of conversion therapy took a drastic turn. A new method known as aversion therapy emerged, Elise Chenier, a history professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, tells Teen Vogue.
“It was based on the belief that you could change a person’s behavior by linking a negative stimulus, such as a mild shock, to a desire, such as an attraction to a person of the same sex,” she says.
For example, gay men would be shown homoerotic photos and simultaneously electrically shocked on their hands or their genitals, Dr. Haldeman says. Then, a picture of a Playboy centerfold would be presented to the patient — without any accompanying shock — in the hopes that they would come to favor heterosexuality. This became known as “Playboy therapy,” he explains. Patients of aversion therapy were also sometimes dosed with nausea-inducing drugs, Dr. Haldeman says.
However, the psychologist who developed Playboy therapy, Gerald Davison, renounced it in the 1970s, claiming it was wrong and that homosexuality was not a mental illness, Dr. Haldeman says: “Rather, it’s society that brings stress and unhappiness to gay people because of rejection and marginalization and fear of losing your job and your family.”
In 1976, Davison — now a professor of psychology and gerontology at the University of Southern California — published what Dr. Haldeman calls “the first truthful article about conversion therapy,” which proposed that mental health experts “stop offering therapy to help homosexuals change and concentrate instead on improving the quality of their interpersonal relationships.”
Dr. Haldeman notes that Davison’s article is what inspired him to work in this arena.
Conversion Therapy Goes Underground
In the face of mounting pressure from gay rights groups as well as evidence that being gay wasn’t pathological, the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental illness by removing it from the DSM in 1973.
But, even as mental health professionals began to turn their backs on conversion therapy, conservative religious groups that viewed homosexuality as unnatural and sinful, particularly fundamentalist Christians, stepped in to ensure that such treatment continued, Dr. Haldeman explains.
“American Christians have adapted behavior-modification therapies to help their followers comply with these beliefs and values,” Chenier says.
But, because conversion therapy has become more and more frowned upon by mainstream culture, churches have resorted to creating largely clandestine facilities, known as camps, to administer therapy to members of their community, according to Dr. Haldeman.
Today, conversion camps — although they fly under the radar — are primarily located in rural areas and conservative states, particularly the Bible Belt, he says. However, they’re not exclusive to those areas. Popular treatment methods include prayer, masturbatory reconditioning, cloistering individuals from society, and fostering nonsexual male bonding.
During his 30 years in clinical practice as a psychologist, Dr. Haldeman has counseled hundreds of individuals who underwent conversion therapy. He says they experience long-term effects such as depression, including suicidal ideation; anxiety; relationship dysfunction; sexual dysfunction; and demasculinization.
“These efforts to change sexual orientation are potentially harmful to many, many people,” he says. “It’s a mental health hazard, a public health issue, and that’s why I’m really glad we’re talking about it on a national level and,not only that, but doing something about it legislatively,” Dr. Haldeman says.
He’s referring to a bill in California, where state law already prohibits licensed mental health professionals from engaging in conversion therapy with adolescents and minors, that would label all conversion therapy as a fraudulent business practice, according to The Hill.
“We believe this will effectively put the conversion therapy industry here in California out of business,” he says.
Meanwhile, activists like Dr. Haldeman have a long road ahead of them as the practice is somehow still legal in 36 states. But, hopefully, movies like The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Boy Erased will boost public awareness of the issue and encourage voters to mobilize against such antiquated and barbaric practices.
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Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out:
- The Miseducation of Cameron Post Is Putting an Important Spotlight on Conversion Therapy
- California May Soon Become the First State to Completely Ban Conversion Therapy
