This so-called "conversion therapy" really amounted to aversion techniques -- including watching lesbian pornography while being forced to smell ammonia, undergo hypnosis, take psychotropic drugs, and solitary confinement. Staff also imposed so-called "behavior modification" by requiring Lyn to wear dresses, and forced punishments of cutting the lawn with a small pair of scissors and scrubbing floors with a toothbrush.
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She eventually connected with a local journalist, an attorney, Legal Services for Children, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and she fought and won in the courts a legal emancipation from her mother. A lesbian couple adopted her when was 15, and today Lyn Duff serves as a successful activist and journalist for the Pacific News Service and for KPFA radio's Flashpoints.
Many of the more extreme Christian Right groups and religious ministries push what they refer to as "Christian therapy" for the purpose of removing people from the so-called "homosexual lifestyle." It is important that parents, social workers, and other mental health professionals know that these so-called "therapies" go by many names: ex-gay religious ministries, Homosexuals Anonymous (a cynical co-optation of Twelve-Step program method of recovery), PFOX (Parents, Families, and Friends of Ex-Gays and Lesbians (an obvious rip-off of the LGBT allies support network PFLAG -- Parents, Families, and Friends of Gays and Lesbians), and so-called "conversion therapy" (a.k.a. "reparative" or "reorientation" therapy).
All falsely promise conversion to heterosexuality if the person has the requisite motivation to change.
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Jacob Rudolph, Lyn Duff, Samuel Brinton, and many other young people have cut to the very heart of the issue by showing that the problem does not reside within those of us whose sexuality and gender identity and expression differs from the majority, but rather, within society, including a (hopefully) shrinking minority of religious denominations that adhere to an erroneous view of human diversity.
LGBT Youth & the Tyranny of Christian 'Conversion Therapy' | The Bilerico Project
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