Who was the guy that shocks gays
It is dangerous to be different, and certain kinds of difference are especially risky. Race, disability, and sexuality are among the many ways people are socially marked that can make them vulnerable. The museum recently collected materials to document gay-conversion therapy (also called "reparative therapy")—and these objects allow curators like myself to search how real people life these risks. With the help of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., Garrard Conley gave us the workbook he used in 2004 at a now defunct religious gay-conversion camp in Tennessee, called "Love in Action." We also received materials from John Smid, who was camp director. Conley's memoir of his time there, Boy Erased, chronicles how the camp's conversion therapy followed the idea that being gay was an addiction that could be treated with methods similar to those for abating drug, alcohol, gambling, and other addictions. While there, Conley spiraled into depression and suicidal thoughts. Conley eventually escaped. Smid eventually left Love in Deed and married a man.
In the United States, responses to gay, homosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and gender non-conforming
Gay Conversion Therapy’s Disturbing 19th-Century Origins
For the people who underwent conversion therapy, shame and pain were an undeniable part of the process. “I read books and listened to audiotapes about how to include a ‘corrective and healing relationship with Jesus Christ,’” writes James Guay, a lgbtq+ man who attended weekly therapy and conversion seminars as a teen. “These materials talked about how the “gay lifestyle” would create disease, depravity and misery. I was convinced that doing what I was told would alter my attractions—and confused about why these methods supposedly worked for others but not for me.”
In some cases, people were psychologically and even sexually abused. Others committed suicide after “treatment.” Meanwhile, evidence that any of the techniques were effective remained nonexistent.
Though the concept of gay conversion still exists today, a growing tide has turned against the practice. Today, 13 states and the District of Columbia have laws that ban gay conversion therapy practices. Victims of facilities like JONAH, or Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing, brought lawsuits for fraud. And Exodus International, an umbrella group that connec
Chinese court orders clinic to pay compensation over so-called gay conversion shock therapy
A Beijing court has ordered a psychiatric clinic to pay compensation to a homosexual man for administering electric shocks in an attempt to make him heterosexual, in an unprecedented ruling on so-called conversion therapy.
The plaintiff, a male lover man named Yang Teng, said he felt traumatised when he received the shocks after being told to have sexual thoughts involving men.
Mr Yang, who also uses the nickname Xiao Zhen, said the Xinyu Piaoxiang clinic was ordered to pay him 3,500 yuan ($690) and post a public apology on its website.
He said the court also commanded it was not necessary to administer the shocks since homosexuality did not require treatment.
"I'm going to take this verdict and show it to my parents so they can see a Chinese court said homosexuality isn't a mental illness," he said.
The verdict, the first of its kind in China, was not posted on the court's website as of late Friday, but photos of a document detailing the decision were shared on social media.
Those who come out to friends and family in China often face pressure to undergo sexuality &q
Rights group urges China to ban abusive gay 'conversion therapy'
HONG KONG — The Chinese government should stop hospitals and other medical facilities from subjecting LGBTQ people to conversion therapy that in some cases has involved electroshock, involuntary confinement and forced medication, a human rights group said Wednesday.
The report released by New York-based Human Rights Monitor, based on interviews with 17 people subjected to the widely criticized techniques since 2009, comes as awareness has grown in China regarding the rights of lesbian, same-sex attracted, bisexual and trans person people.
Homosexuality was removed from China’s official list of mental illnesses more than 15 years ago, but stories of families enrolling relatives in treatments inquiring to change their sexual orientation continue common.
Yang Teng, a Chinese gay rights activist, said a staff member at a private clinic in the southwestern city of Chongqing administered an electric shock to his finger as he was told to think about a time he had had sex with a man.
“The exposure had left a deep psychological impact on me,” Yang, who was not involved in the Human Rights See report, said in an interview Tuesd
Mormon 'Gay Cure' Learn Used Electric Shocks Against Homosexual Feelings
March 30, 2011— -- John Cameron said he was a naive and devout Mormon who felt "out of sync" with the world, when he volunteered to be part of a study of "electric aversion therapy" in 1976 at Utah's Brigham Young University.
Twice a week for six months, he jolted himself with painful shocks to the penis to rid himself of his attraction to men.
"I kept trying to fight it, praying and fasting and abstaining and being the leading person I could," said Cameron, now a 59-year-old playwright and head of the acting program at the University of Iowa.
"I was never actively homosexual, never had any encounters with men -- never had moments when I failed and actually had sex with other men," he said.
But his undercurrent of feelings position him in guide conflict with the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) and its principles.
"As teens we were taught that homosexuality was second only to murder in the eyes of God," he said.
"I was very, very religious and the Mormon church was the center of my life," said Cameron, who had done mi