Reparative Therapy (aka Conversion Therapy)

                Reparative therapy hinders minors from forming their identity.  Governor Jerry Brown recently passed a law that makes reparative therapy illegal in California; the law takes effect in January.  This is not without opposition; David Pickup and his fellow therapists will be filing a lawsuit against this law.  Pickup says that the therapy helps, “…these children resolve their homosexual feelings and maximize their heterosexual potential…”  However, the American Psychiatric Association has “determined, in fact, that reparative therapy poses a great risk, including increasing the likelihood or severity of depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior for those undergoing therapy.”

                Pickup says that the children that come into his office are “’…crying, depressed, lonely, gender-identity confused and sexually confused’ ask for help voluntarily, because they are "distressed."  Why are they going to a reparative therapist, whose goal is to repair them, when they could go to a regular therapist to get help with these problems?  When searching “reparative therapy” on Google, a common search result comes up: “Conversion Therapy”.  Reparative therapy and conversion therapy is the same thing but reparative therapy sounds less harsh than conversion therapy, and lesser amount of people will know what reparative therapy is.  The definition from the American Psychological Association is “A pseudo-scientific therapy that aims to change sexual orientation.”  Whether you go to reparative therapy by force or by choice, they will try their hardest to change your sexual orientation.

                What Pickup and other reparative therapists do is wrong.  They try to change a person’s sexuality to how the therapist wants it, not how the person wants it.  What is so wrong about a person being gay or lesbian or just plain different?  Is there reparative therapy for football fans?  If someone’s family was die-hard U of M fans but one of the children is an MSU fan; would some therapist try to fix that child to make them a U of M fan?  Of course not, this example is kind of silly but so is reparative therapy, why can’t someone be themselves?  And why can’t the world just accept who they are?  Reparative therapy most definitely hinders minors from forming their identity.