A ‘conversion therapy’ ban would put sexual minorities in harm’s way

Dec 4, 2021 by Jill

from Christian Concern:

Dr (Med) Andre Van Mol explains how the UK government’s proposed ‘conversion therapy’ ban against counselling choice puts already-at-risk sexual minorities in harm’s way.

The UK Government’s proposed ban on so-called “conversion” therapy (a pejorative, and ill-defined term used as a jamming tactic) is premised on incomplete research and political activism masquerading as science. A ban on counselling choice would condemn already at-risk sexual minority individuals to further harm.

Partisan report

Demonstrating the disturbing absence of viewpoint diversity common within professional organizations, the GEO-commissioned Coventry Report’s presentation of the literature on the subject was profoundly partisan. [i] Citation bias was evident in using the usual anti-SOCE [sexual orientation change efforts] studies, most of which over the past 20 years share the same two fatal weaknesses.

First, these studies show selection bias through employing flawed designs that exclude most all who have been helped by counselling choice (and who would likely recall more positive experiences with it) by recruiting only GLBT-identified adults at locations and websites sexual minority persons who no longer identify as LGBT would not frequent.

Second, the research cited to suggest harms from therapy consistently failed to compare pre and post therapy mental health status, thus rendering the assigning of blame to therapy impossible. [ii]

This second error violates the principle of temporal precedence wherein the alleged cause (in this case, counselling) must precede the alleged effect (in this case, harm from counselling) to prove a cause-effect relationship. Otherwise, correlation is not causation. Thus, these anti-counselling studies cannot make a claim against therapy.

Read here

Read also: Tell the Govt: “conversion therapy consultation ignores impact on families”, Coalition for Marriage