What if someone wants gay conversion therapy

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. The administration argued that because conversion therapy causes substantial psychological harm to minors, it is neither medically nor ethically appropriate.

We fully agree with the President and believe that this is a step in the right direction. But we also worry that this may be a short-term legislative solution to what is really a conceptual problem. Based on current scientific research, it is not unlikely that medical researchers — in the not-too-distant future — will know enough about the genetic, epigeneticneurochemical and other brain-level factors that are involved in shaping sexual orientation that these variables could in fact be successfully modified.

And here is the important point. With Oxford University colleagues Julian Savulescu and Anders Sandberg, one of us — Brian Earp — has proposed dividing potential neuro-interventions into sexual orientation into two categories. On the one side, there are current and emerging technologies that could diminish but not necessarily re-orient same-sex love and desire.

These would work by interfering with brain-level systems involved in lust, attraction and attachment that have evolved among mammals including humans. Some target testosterone directly, such as anti-androgen drugs that are sometimes administered to sex offenders as a condition of parole, while others work more indirectly.

The what if someone wants gay conversion therapy in these cases is to chemically blunt any same-sex desires or even the urge to masturbate. However, the effects of these drugs are global. The upshot is this. All animal behavior — including human behavior — is at least in principle reducible to brain states.

We know that hormones and genetics play a large role in determining sexual desires. Hormonal studies have found that for many traits that differ between the sexes, gay men share similar characteristics with heterosexual women — including the index finger to ring finger length ratio and certain aspects of bone structure.

These are characteristics that appear to be influenced by in utero exposure to androgens and other aspects of the amniotic environment. Put simply, the more we learn about the biological processes that underlie sexual orientation, the more likely it is that someone will figure out how to influence those processes directly.

This movement uses a variety of evidence, such as the twin studies mentioned aboveas well as the inefficacy of Christian conversion camps, to argue that being gay is biological and — hence — unchangeable. This is an idea that has been movingly expressed in the chorus of a recent pop song by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.

This has become a lynchpin in the fight for gay rights.

Conversion therapy: an evidence assessment and qualitative study

Yet if biotechnologies of the future do allow people to change their sexual orientations, then the gay rights movement would lose one of its central arguments. So we think that better arguments are needed — and ones that are not dependent on the current state of technology.

There are two avenues of response worth considering. First, we can develop — and enforce — strict legal measures to prevent the future use of high-tech conversion therapies on children and other minors. In a notorious interview recorded earlier this year, Ben Carson, a Republican physician and possible presidential candidatewas asked if he thought that being gay is a choice.

Progressive commentators were outraged. But there are at least two problems with this kind of reaction. The activist and author Dan Savage has pointed out the flaws in this line of thinking:. To change their religions. To choose a different faith. You can change your faith.

And yet religious belief is covered by civil rights laws and anti-discrimination statutes…. The only time you hear that a trait has to be immutable in order to qualify for civil rights protections is when [conservatives] talk about [being] gay. And so long as the state is involved in regulating marriage, it should not be allowed to deny its citizens equal treatment before the law, whatever their orientation.