Sexual Orientation Change Efforts - Debate

Debate

Changing sexuality has become highly politicized, and the ensuing debates "have obscured the scientific data by calling into question the motives and even the character of individuals on both sides of the issue." The ethics, efficacy, benefits, and potential for harm of SOCE are under extensive debate, both in the professional literature and the popular media. Concerns have been expressed about forcing people to undergo SOCE against their will, blocking people who are seeking to change their sexual orientation from attempting to do so, and concern over the way SOCE is being promoted affects LGB rights.

The American Psychoanalytic Association says psychoanalytic SOCE often causes psychological pain by reinforcing internalized homophobia.

Chuck Bright wrote that refusing to endorse a procedure that "has been deemed unethical and potentially harmful by most medical and nearly every professional psychotherapy regulating body cannot be justifiably identified as prohibiting client self-determination." Some commentators, recommending a hard stand against the practice, have found therapy inconsistent with a psychologist's ethical duties because "it is more ethical to let a client continue to struggle honestly with her or his identity than to collude, even peripherally, with a practice that is discriminatory, oppressive, and ultimately ineffective in its own stated ends." They argue that clients who request it do so out of social pressure and internalized homophobia, pointing to evidence that rates of depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse and suicidal feelings are roughly doubled in those who undergo therapy.