We live in a world where society is wired to only see the black and white aspects of life. When color representing change is introduced to the world, we as a community begin to find ways to alter and adjust back to the binary way of life. As the years went on, many people attempted to keep society black and white with little to no color, but as new scientific innovations and changes erupted in society so did the socially constructed gender binary that created a ripple effect of changes in the gender world. One of the first ripple effects to the gender system is homosexuality that bridged a gap between straight and gay men and women. Homosexuality challenged the norms of societies typical binary gender expression as well as their gender roles regarding one’s cultural expectations. What families began to do to their loved ones that expressed themselves to be homosexuals were to attempt to change their way of thinking and behavior by sending them to therapy and religious camps or retreats to convert them back to the “normal” gender identity. The issue with changing a person who thinks, behaves, and acts homosexually is they never can be forced into changing who they truly are as the thoughts will continue to grow and, in the end, will cause them more pain than change.
You are born into an assigned gender: either boy or girl. Your gender identity and expression are then followed by what you are categorized into as well as the gender roles of how a male or female should behave. How one sees homosexuality is often tied with the culture and norms you are born into. For example, conservative religious groups that pride themselves in the binary system would undoubtedly believe that homosexuality is a sin and heavily enforce them to attend treatment camps that attempt to cure this sin. They would begin to start conversion therapy which is eliminating any sexual attraction towards someone of the same sex. In a general term, it would be changing one that is homosexual back to heterosexual. Before the mid-1900s, homosexuality was considered to be a disorder till 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed it from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) because they believed that homosexuality is not to be considered a disorder or illness which infuriated many groups of people. This is the root that sparked many organizations today to convince homosexuals to change themselves and their lifestyle through conversion therapy also referred to as reparative therapy. What they do not show about this type of therapy are the detrimental effects it has on the person going through it like severe depression, more health problems, and even torturing. One of the biggest reparative therapy organizations is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) ran by President Joseph Nicolosi who believes that homosexuality is founded from bad parenting and de-masculinity. Nicolosi’s health professionals claimed to have helped fix the orientation of a third or more of their homosexual clients (Rosario 2002). What Nicolosi failed to provide though, was a percentage of how many individuals were successes as well as more of a description regarding the outcome of his study itself. If it was young adults, their parents could have forced them to attend rather than it being their own choice, or it could be that people are bullying those who are gay forcing them to change in order to survive in the world. Many well-known psychologists like Nicolosi state how conversion therapy is efficient and works but majority of these studies lack logistical evidence to back their claims making their entire study invalid. There is just not enough information to prove that reparative therapy actually works to cure homosexuality. Changing one’s sexual orientation is morally wrong and can never work. The fact that people consider homosexuality a disease and health professionals condone to conversion practices is incredibly unprofessional and, in the end, only represses their sexuality causing more harm than good. The famous Masters and Johnson actually wrote a book called, “Homosexuality in Perspective” where they claimed to have written a scientific study highlighting how they were able to cure homosexuals. But, throughout their book they failed to mention who conducted their studies, why the people they chose were admitted for the study and why their patients are fit to represent an entire population. Masters and Johnson gave people who are blinded by the binary system hope that homosexuals can be cured but, if you look between the lines of the text which people rarely do, their entire study was not logistically or scientifically proven concluding their findings to be false overall.
Not only were there just reparative therapy attempting to cure homosexuality but many other forms of conversion methods that were much more painful and torturing. Men and women who were gay could’ve also been chemically castrated, electrically shocked, induced with drugs, and much more. People who really could not accept homosexuality went above and beyond to the point of torturing to remove their attraction of the same sex. Families would risk the lives of their loved ones because they were different than the norms of society. It is time to understand that we are causing those who are gay to want help because they feel as if they are not welcome and criticized for being who they wish to be. If we quit verbal abusing and shaming them, the necessity for conversion camps and all of the other terrible methods will never be needed. Charles W. Socarides, another well-known psychologist that devoted his career to believing homosexuality can be altered said that gayness is a freedom to far, a freedom that does not exist and cannot be given. He also claimed that removing homosexuality from the DSM had caused a war with normality as well as the media playing a role in expressing homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle rather than a disorder (Socarides 2003). Everything that Socarides mentions is shown to be the black and white aspect of the world. Many people like Socarides need to wake up and realize the world is not going to rewind and change for them, the world is going to continue to explore new sexual identities and new ways to express themselves all together. We should instead of challenge but, adapt and grow with these new lifestyles. It is only a war if we make it one.
Today, society is changing drastically adding more and more color to the world and what we as a whole need to accept is change and in order to change you have to accept that there are many people in this world with different personalities and orientation that make themselves who they are. Homosexuality is not an illness, it is not a disease, and it is not sinful. We should not be forcing someone who is gay to change their orientation nor looking at anyone differently. As a society, we forget to remember that there is not a right or wrong way to express yourself. The various conversion therapies that are rooted from a time period where there was minimal color exposed to the world and the many traditional psychologist like Freud, Masters and Johnson, and Kinsey who researched the changes of sexuality only explored homosexuality because it was a new gender expression to society but now it is not something new or strange.