Conversion Therapy Persuasive Paper

Kaylee Godfrey
Mrs. Simonelli
English 111
31 March 2015
Persuasive Research Paper

Conversion therapy is a practice that 's been going for centuries, but it came into the eye of the public at the turn of the twentieth century. Its practice is brutal to subtle, but has the same goals to change your sexual orientation and gender identity to the “normal” heterosexual and cisgender being. Conversion therapy is most known for its homophobia and transphobia prejudices. Patients are never really “cured”; instead, they become suicidal. Conversion therapy has become another form of torture and is still legal in 48 states in the U.S.
About 40 years ago the APA (American Psychological Association) stated that homosexuality is not a mental disorder;
She stated in her suicide note, which was posted on her Tumblr account right before her death, how much she hated her parents for forcing her into “reparative” therapy: making her another victim to conversion therapy and its prejudice. Conversion therapy causes gay and transgender people to be more susceptible to depression, anxiety, and have a higher chance of committing suicide. What 's even worse is the fact that most minors don 't have voice in the matter. They’re busy being strapped in a chair and painfully electrocuted, because it their so called “loving” parents put them there. Teenagers cut, slash, hurt, and harm themselves, because the people they needed in their life the most couldn’t accept them. That feeling alone can destroy a person, and it did for many of adolescents. How many Leelah Alcorn’s need to die for us to realize that conversion therapy is wrong and unethical? I would like to think God would prefer living, breathing teenagers over dead ones: only for their life to be stolen by conservatives who couldn 't accept the liberal change of the 21st century.
The claim that you can’t be born gay has been debunked by scientific evidence a gazillion times. Also the “gay gene can’t be passed on because they don’t have children” is stupid too. That’s like saying people with Down syndrome can’t have children because they’re infertile. Your right neither can have children of their own, but babies
"Homosexuality Cannot Be 'Cured '." Homosexuality. Ed. Cynthia A. Bily. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Straight Like Me." Intelligence Report(Winter 2007): 48-55. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 17 Mar. 2015.

"Never Scared Straight; Doctors, therapists and legislators have come to bury gay conversion therapy."Newsweek 9 May 2014. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 17 Mar. 2015.

Dobson, James. "Homosexuality Is a Psychological Disorder." Bringing Up Boys. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 2001. Rpt. in Homosexuality. Ed. Auriana Ojeda. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 17 Mar. 2015.

"Facts About Changing Sexual Orientation." Facts About Changing Sexual Orientation. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2015.

"Narth." Narth. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2015.

"I’m From Perry, IA – Video Story." Im From Driftwood. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr.