[sas86 (OP)]

The BBC in 2012 reported this story. Any idea why it happened and could it be done deliberately.

Yet consultant neuro-psychiatrist Dr Sudad Jawad has worked with young people who have had strokes and has come across a similar case in his practice of a man whose sexuality changed from homosexual to heterosexual.

"Just like a stroke can change you as a person, your behaviour, your personality, the way you think, why not sexual orientation, it is part of the personality of the individual," says Jawad.

[alancalverd]

Entirely reasonable. Sex is genetic, sexuality is mental.  But I doubt whether anyone knows which button to push in the brain to change it.

[sas86 (OP)]

This from a paper in 1986, the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry ;49:867-873. It gave an example of female 31 years old, Change from hetero-homosexual. The cause was a bitemporal lesion as the result of Post herpes encephalitis.

[Bored chemist]

could it be done deliberately.

What would be the point of that?

[sas86 (OP)]

The point is a consenting adult wanting to go through such a procedure for whatever the reason or reasons they want to.

[sas86 (OP)]

Would anyone want to research into it more?

[Petrochemicals]

Well it could have interesting work in criminological circles, serial killers are 2000% more likely to be homosexual, even greater if you look at gay men.

[Bored chemist]

even greater if you look at gay men.

Then don't.
Whatever your reasons for looking at gay men, they don't justify increasing the risks of anyone being a serial killer.

[sas86 (OP)]

An ethics statement as follows could be written to support or at least defend the research ethically. Here it is:

"
"As discovered over decades of research: human sexualities encompass many forms: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, as well as body forms such as transgender, intersex, etc. They are part of the human experience.

For one or several reasons, an individual may experience dissatisfaction or distress about the current sexuality they have. Healthcare professionals are at liberty to offer such individuals routes for change while also bearing in mind their responsibilities to do no harm and also to counsel the individual the possibility that they are fine as they are.

The precedent for this is in the matter of cosmetic surgery. Professionals counsel individuals to accept themselves as they are but also offer treatments for change. In society, individuals change all sorts of identities, religion being one example. They are allowed to change and at the same time we combat discrimination."

[alancalverd]

an individual may experience dissatisfaction or distress about the current sexuality they have.

Time for an old joke. Two gay men sitting at a pavement cafe in Paris. Gorgeous girl wiggles past them. One bloke says "I wish I was a lesbian."

Seriously, though: Cosmetic surgery is about altering your physical appearance to satisfy your mental needs or to align with an external norm. Religious conversion is about conforming to a social norm or joining a society whose practices mirror your ideals . I haven't heard of anyone who is judged mentally competent voluntarily changing his mental attitudes and desires.

[sas86 (OP)]

Maybe. The point is because an individual chooses something, it doesn't mean they lose rights. Changing religion is one of them.  The cosmetic surgery analogy is adult individuals may do all sorts of things to themselves that others may find wrong, pointless or unacceptable but they are given that option.

I was wondering what scientific research could lead to.

[alancalverd]

Rights are conferred by the society you live in. That's the only logical reason for religious conversion.

It is an offence to carry out cosmetic surgery (or any other assault) on a person who is not competent to consent. It's acceptable in a civilised society (an increasingly rare phenomenon) to adapt your behavior or appearance to match your sexuality, but doing it the other way round would be regarded as irrational. Hence the old joke.  It's a bit of a Catch22, but would a person who wants to change his/her sexuality be judged competent?

[sas86 (OP)]

In Britain anyway, individuals have rights by virtue of being competent individuals, adults are permitted to take part in dangerous sports etc. We have legislation, regulations that govern competence. Same should be for this case.

[sas86 (OP)]

Consenting individuals over 18 years of age. He's an economist but Andrew Lilico wrote this in 2013 on Rev Peter Ould's site.

Peter has noted that the Counsellors and Psychotherapists (Regulation) Bill contains two specific prohibitions on gay to straight conversion therapies. First, the Bill mandates that a new code of ethics for registered counsellors, therapists and psychotherapists include a prohibition on gay to straight conversion therapy.  Second, whereas other violations of the code might include temporary or permanent removal from the register or other lesser disciplinary actions, a breach of that section of the code relating to prohibition of gay to straight conversion therapy shall result in permanent removal from the register.

Such a bill raises a number of issues.  I wish to highlight just two.

First, the bill in its current form prohibits any and every gay to straight conversion therapy including any such therapy that might be developed in the future. Peter takes an interest in the question of whether the best scientific research suggests that current therapies are or are not effective in changing sexual orientation and whether they have any undesirable side-effects  I shall leave that to him.  Another related issue is what would count as conversion here. Would training someone in the control and directing of sexual impulses so as to facilitate heterosexual rather than homosexual sexual activity, but without purporting to take homosexual sexual impulses away, constitute a conversion therapy  or not? Again, although that is a very interesting and important question, I shall leave discussion of it for another time.

Instead, I shall assume, for the purposes of our discussion here, that we know what a gay to straight conversion therapy would entail and that no such therapy works at present.  Does that mean all such therapies should be banned?

If a form of therapy has been demonstrated scientifically not to work, could we not ban the non-working variants of the therapy on the straightforward grounds that those particular therapies don't work without ruling out the possibility that some future therapy might work?  For example, through much of history there have been all kinds of treatments for the common cold. For much of history, almost all of them have been quack medicines. So suppose someone passed a bill saying Cold cure therapies are banned.  Wouldn't that seem rather odd? The fact that no such therapy had worked up to now wouldn't mean no such therapy could be imagined, does it?

But could any gay to straight conversion therapy  ever work, even in principle?  I hear someone ask.  I don't see why not. We know that people can be brainwashed in all kinds of ways.  For example, my grandfather was one of many New Zealanders captured by the Germans during the Second World War, but liberated by the Soviets.  He was not immediately released but, instead, taken to Soviet territory to be re-educated whereafter (like many other returning soldiers in similar circumstances) he was a communist for many years.  Zen Buddhist monks train themselves to eschew all kinds of appetites.  I would expect it to be possible to brainwash someone into believing he was a poached egg, if you really tried hard enough.

Just because we don't believe that a poached egg therapy would be a good idea, doesn't mean we should believe it couldn't work. Similarly, whether or not we thought it desirable for those of a homosexual sexual orientation to be converted to a heterosexual sexual orientation (whatever that might mean and I repeat that that is not straightforward as a concept) is largely irrelevant to the question of whether we think such a conversion could be possible or whether any therapy to achieve such a conversion might work.  Like a poached egg therapy just because we believed a gay to straight conversion therapy worked, it wouldn't follow that we thought it a good idea.

That would seem to be the nub of the issue: not whether  gay to straight conversion  is possible, but whether it is sufficiently undesirable that we ban it.

But once we see that, such a ban can be seen as rather odd and authoritarian, bringing us to my second point.  Presumably we would ban even a working poached egg believing therapy  because we thought it undesirable for folk to believe themselves poached eggs.  But why would we ban a working gay to straight conversion therapy?  Presumably not because we thought it undesirable for folk to be straight? Why, then?  Is it because we thought it undesirable for folk to change their sexuality?

Let's assume that sexuality were genetic and morally neutral, like eye colour.  Would we ban an operation that worked that allowed people to change their eye colour from blue to brown?  I assume not, if it's just as good for eyes to be blue as brown then it's surely ethically harmless if folk change their eye colour. Maybe out there there would be some deluded individual that thought blue eyes wicked, and so changed them to brown for that reason. Would the fact we thought such an individual deluded really be a good enough reason to ban the operation? Similarly, just because some individuals that would seek out a working gay-to-straight conversion therapy would do so because they thoughts being gay wicked, would that really be a good enough reason to ban what one assumes is thought otherwise an ethically harmless conversion like an eye colour change?

Suppose there were a working straight to gay conversion therapy. As this bill stands, it would be banned to have a working gay-to-straight conversion therapy, but not to have a working straight-to-gay conversion therapy. Suppose some man had a very close gay male friend, and decided he wanted to express his affection for his friend sexually but lacked the relevant appetites to make the most of that experience.  Should such a man be banned from taking up a working straight to gay conversion therapy?  I presume not.  Why, then, should a man that had a close female friend, whom he decided he wanted to marry and have children with, not be able to take advantage of a gay to straight conversion therapy if a working version of such a therapy were available?

Whether we like it or not and whether we think they ought to or not, some people would like to change their sexual orientation. Perhaps it is the case at present that we have no technology to permit anyone to change their sexual orientation.  In which case, we could ban any purported such therapies on the grounds that they didn't work.  But why should we outlaw any and every gay to straight conversion therapy that might be developed in the future, even if it worked?