(Posted here for balance, although conservative readers of this website might have another view. Rowland).

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_13017548

Futile therapy

Quit trying to make gays straight

Tribune Editorial Updated: 08/07/2009 05:54:57 PM MDT

There has long been a theory, supported by some conservative religions and religious groups, that people who are sexually attracted to members of their own gender are mentally abnormal and can be "fixed," in the same way that mental illnesses can be treated with drugs or therapy. But homosexuality is not an illness.

That reality was underscored Wednesday when the American Psychological Association reported the results of a comprehensive study pointing up the failure of efforts to turn gay people straight. The group representing 150,000 professional mental health therapists recommended, based on 83 studies over nearly 50 years, that its members give up counseling patients that they can, if they try hard enough, change their sexual orientation.

The treatments, called reparative therapy, simply don't work. That's because the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians does not constitute mental illness. They are as normal as left-handed people or people with detached earlobes.

Humans are not clones; differences of all kinds are part of the human condition and most are accepted as normal, though dissimilar from the majority of the population. Homosexuality, however, isn't as well- tolerated by the heterosexual community as lefties are among the right- handed. That intolerance is often supported by references to scripture or religious doctrine, just as mistreatment of Jews and blacks was, for centuries, said to be God's will.

But that bias shouldn't force gays to try to change who they are. The APA report is just the latest scientific evidence that trying to change sexual orientation is futile, and worse, can cause lifelong unhappiness or depression, and sometimes leads to suicide.

But the APA declaration that it does not support reparative therapy is only part of the group's recommendation. It advises its members to urge their gay patients who are trying to reconcile their homosexuality with a religion that abhors it to adopt celibacy or switch religions.

But, though that advice sounds practical and may prevent years of frustrating and useless therapy, isn't it akin to telling a woman who is being sexually harassed to simply change jobs or work stations?

Gays and lesbians aren't the ones who need to change. Those who see homosexuality as immoral, who want to segregate gays and lesbians and refuse them legal rights and privileges that heterosexuals enjoy, should take a long look in the mirror to see where some reparative therapy might actually do some good.