The NHS funding Ex-GAY THERAPY?!

The Independent published an expose into the highly bizarre and truly silly world of the ex-gay movement by sending in someone undercover. The article is long but repeatedly left me wondering why ex-gay mental health professionals were still accredited as mental health professionals? It strikes me as rather like having a homeopathic doctor - the use of the former prevents you from being the latter. Especially since some of the patients describe the treatment as “torture.”

But then, re-reading prompted by snakeyjack and re-reading the article I saw... these people are funded by the NHS

It’s one of those announcements you have to go back and re-read

The NHS is paying for ex-gay therapy. I am paying for some misguided quack homophobe who insults the letters after his name to force my fellows who are wallowing in the vile poison of self-hate back into the deeply repressed closet. Despite EVERY reputable psychiatric and psychological body saying that ex-gay therapy does not work and causes HARM.

And I thought the report that 17% of mental health practioners had tried to “cure” homosexuality using, among other treatments, ELECTRO-SHOCK THERAPY was pretty bloody awful.


This is wrong. This is evil. To prey on our vulnerabilities and fears that stain us from the hatred society has thrown at us is beyond wrong. These so-called doctors are excerising their prejudice to brutally harm their patients physically - if the electroshock and ‘torture’ allegations are anything to go on and mentally and emotionally. They are teaching self-hate, self-repression. They are forcing self-loathing on people. They are forcing empty, pain filled lives on people. This isn’t medicine. This goes contrary to all the science - all the science that SAYS this is harmful, that this is damaging.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists is very clear on this point:

It would appear that sexual orientation is biological in nature, determined by genetic factors (Mustanski et al, 2005) and/or the early uterine environment (Blanchard et al. 2006). Sexual orientation is therefore not a choice, though sexual behaviour clearly is.”

“A small minority of therapists will even go so far as to attempt to change their client’s sexual orientation (Bartlett et al, 2001). This can be deeply damaging. Although there is now a number of therapists and organisation in the USA and in the UK that claim that therapy can help homosexuals to become heterosexual, there is no evidence that such change is possible. “

“The best evidence for efficacy of any treatment comes from randomised clinical trials and no such trial has been carried out in this field. There are however at least two studies that have followed up LGB people who have undergone therapy with the aim of becoming heterosexual. Neither attempted to assess the patients before receiving therapy and both relied on the subjective accounts of people, who were asked to volunteer by the therapy organisations themselves (Spitzer, 2003) or who were recruited via the Internet (Shidlow and Schroeder, 2002).



The first study claimed that change was possible for a small minority (13%) of LGB people, most of who could be regarded as bisexual at the outset of therapy (Spitzer, 2003). The second showed little effect as well as considerable harm (Shidlow and Schroeder, 2002). Meanwhile, we know from historical evidence that treatments to change sexual orientation that were common in the 1960s and 1970s were very damaging to those patients who underwent them and affected no change in their sexual orientation (King, M. and Bartlett, A., 1999).”


In conclusion the evidence would suggest that there is no scientific or rational reason for treating LGB people any differently to their heterosexual counterparts.


These people are not doctors, they have broken the fundamental oath of medicine. They should be struck off - let alone funded with OUR money.


There is a Petition here

And if you’re in the UK please contact your MP either through this site or direct here or through their email list here.







And Peter Tatchell is surprised that 36% of people in the UK think homosexuality is “always” or “mostly” wrong? Really?! I’m surprised it’s so LOW not that it’s so high - given the amount of homophobia that is still grossly prevalent