Conversion Immersion

Spotlight On
by Clark Westfield
February 2013

Back in school I learned how to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius. I made lame attempts, which never stuck, to convert feet to meters and gallons to liters. Overseas I have changed dollars to pounds and Euros. But there is a new conversion that is sweeping the nation that I do not nor will I ever understand. Converting gay people to straight people. Huh? The issue at hand is “choice vs. birth.” Are people born gay or is it something that happens to them after repeated viewings of “Burlesque?” My problem with this is that we are looking ay being gay as an ailment, a disease that must be cured. I have this theory that anyone who truly believes that, does not know any gay people. Or maybe they’re just intimidated because the LGBTQ community is invariably good looking, well dressed, smart and successful in their careers. Whatever. Gay marriage has divided the nation. Who cares if people of the same sex want to marry? Why shouldn’t they suffer like the rest of us? But trying to change a person’s sexual orientation to me seems like trying to change a tiger’s stripes to a leopard’s spots.

New Jersey is the second state after California to address this issue and now a bill outlawing such therapy to those under 18 is headed to the Senate for a vote after the Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee passed it by a 7-1 vote March 18.

The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association are among the national organizations that either oppose or warn against reparative therapy. No major medical organization endorses the idea that being gay or lesbian is abnormal or a mental disorder that can be changed or suppressed.
Last year Dr. Robert Spitzer retracted his finding in 2001 that homosexuality could be reversed through therapy. He apologized to the gay community and said his claims of the “efficacy of reparative therapy” were unfounded. A month later the World Health Organization said the practice represents “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.”

The debate has now engulfed the ensuing governor’s race. Likely Democratic contender Barbara Buono, a state Senator from Middlesex County, attacked Gov.Chris Christie for what she called his inconclusive comments on the practice. Christie said he did not have a “hard-and-fast position” on the practice, but that it might be one of the exceptions to his conservative belief of letting parents parent. The next day a Christie spokesman said the governor does not believe in conversion therapy.

In the coming weeks and months this issue will play out to a conclusion. Let’s hope for the sake of moral sanity that it has a happy ending for all. As Billy Joel once sang, “Don’t go changin’.”

More to come…CW