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Introduction

From the organizational perspective, conversion therapy seeks to fight sexual and gender matters among its congregations. Social and psychological justice movements seek the destruction of these licensed practices for the wellbeing of its membership. What are these controversial practices?

Do multiple meanings of terms and tendencies change over time and place? The activistic slippage of terms and descriptions across ideological and doctrinal games and multiple, overlapping definitions mask civic advocates’ righteous moral fervor but radically impair professional and clinical toleration and sensitivity to the real-time organizational needs of varying sexual and gender minority believers in distress.

Religious liberties, the cure, or the confrontation discourse cause the fistfights in locked spiritual-practice shops. Church and state debates over therapeutic superiority and sanctification can leave sexual and gender minority believers, clients, and patients tied down on the tracks of the defunded, dominated, or imposed system regulations and treatments.

Psychological, cultural, and spiritual needs of individuals who believe in the absolute superiority of traditional religious values or a therapist’s healing interventions can dangerously derail the empathy and necessarily narrow social support on the train of oblivion.

Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of trying to change an individual’s sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual using psychological, spiritual, religious, or other interventions. Supposedly, the aim is to resolve distress or avert culpability in the perspective of traditional religious beliefs.

This essay examines the risks and harms of historical or religious opposition to the lived experiences of sexual and gender minorities and promotion of change at any costs to LGBTQ+ individuals and communities.

The targeted civil and religious discrimination of socially problematic or stigmatized individuals or groups by religious organizations enjoys newfound social and legal support in some countries, especially within the context of the expressive belief hierarchy.

The Russian state, for example, has recently criminalized its promotion of non-heteronormative identities by administrative procedures; the British state and certain expert groups upholding Christian beliefs have effectively neutralized the professional, coercive, and supportive activities of religiously oppositional experts since 2018.

Background

Current research and resources continually suggest a high mental health cost and necessity for adequate policies to bear the societal weight, especially given the vulnerability many of those who seek out this ‘treatment’ find themselves in. The most vulnerable groups to this ‘treatment’ may indeed already have internalized shame or be at ‘breaking point’.

This makes them even more susceptible to persuasion to attend, potentially escalating already high suicide rates among these groups. This chapter aims to explore the efficacy and safety of conversion therapy, the risks associated with undergoing conversion therapy, and the challenges of categorizing gender affirmation support as conversion therapy.

Throughout the chapter, we refer to those who provide professional or faith-based support to someone seeking support for gender identity as mental health or pastoral professionals.

Conversion therapy is an approach aimed to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, often based on the assumption that being of another sexual orientation or gender identity than heterosexual or cisgender is a mental disorder or illness. It is a largely discredited practice and has been condemned by mental health and psychiatric organizations throughout the world.

Conversion therapy has been found by relevant, professional, and scientific organizations to be ineffective as a practice. What is more, it has been proven to be both traumatic and to lead to severe mental health problems for those who have undergone this or a similar process.

The survivors and those currently experiencing trauma from this process must foster resilience and navigate lived experience, stigma, and marginalization, which is similar to what occurs in a minority stress trajectory!

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