They called their techniques “conversion” or “reparative” therapy, or advertised themselves as “ex-gay” ministries. As LGBTQ visibility increased, self-proclaimed “experts” and faith-based groups took over the practice themselves. That wasn’t the end of attempts to turn gay people straight.
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In 1973, the APA removed homosexuality from the DSM, its influential manual of psychiatric disorders, and medical professionals began to distance themselves from techniques they had once embraced. This included the American Psychiatric Association, which considered homosexuality to be a psychiatric disorder.īut in the 1960s and 1970s, as a vocal gay rights movement took to the streets to demand equality, the profession began to turn its back on the concept that people could be “converted” to heterosexuality. LGBTQ people had long protested these cruel and scientifically dubious forms of “treatment,” but the concept that homosexuality was a disease was accepted by the majority of the medical establishment. “Although proponents of aversion therapy claimed ‘cure’ rates as high as 50 percent,” notes historian Elise Chenier, “these claims were never satisfactorily documented.” When the Military Expelled LGBTQ Soldiers With 'Blue Discharges' But though Heath contended he was able to actually turn gay men straight, his work has since been challenged and criticized for its methodology. Robert Galbraith Heath, a psychiatrist in New Orleans who pioneered the technique, used this form of brain stimulation, along with hired prostitutes and heterosexual pornography, to “change” the sexual orientation of gay men. Other “treatments” included shocks administered through electrodes that were implanted directly into the brain. Some LGBTQ people were given electroconvulsive therapy, but others were subjected to even more extreme techniques like lobotomies. They began to use new psychiatric interventions in an attempt to “cure” gay people. But though Freud emphasized that homosexuality wasn’t a disease, per se, some of his colleagues didn’t agree. Sigmund Freud hypothesized that humans are born innately bisexual and that homosexual people become gay because of their conditioning. Others theorized that homosexuality was a psychological disorder instead. This theory led to testicle transplantation experiments in the 1920s during which gay men were castrated, then given “heterosexual” testicles.” For Eugen Steinach, a pioneering Austrian endocrinologist, homosexuality was rooted in a man’s testicles.
There were plenty of theories as to why people were homosexual.