Caffeinated Politics

I am sixty-three years old, and I have lived long enough to watch the world change in ways my younger self could never have imagined. I grew up in a time when being a gay teenager was treated by some as a defect; my grandmother surely would have termed it a moral failure. It was not until late 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association voted to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder or a psychological illness. In a rural part of Waushara County where I was born, (Hancock), adults whispered about the matter as if it were contagious. I recall conversations among some of my father’s in-laws saying they did not know how polio was spread, either, as if equating polio with sexual orientation was a logical connection. As a teenager, I internalized that some families hid it. And society at large, at least where I grew up, tried to enforce a quiet but brutal rule that gay people should stay in the closet. That was the atmosphere that shaped my early years as a boy and a teenager. After high school graduation, I took the Rosa Parks path. History has always been my teacher.

So, when I learn that something as discredited and damaging as conversion therapy still exists, and still unbelievably is defended by some as if it were a legitimate intervention, I feel a deep, familiar ache. I know that ache. I grew up in a time when that ache for me and so many others like me was all too real. Folks like me thought we had outgrown that ache.

Three weeks after two right-wing groups demanded the repeal of a professional licensing board’s ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ clients of social workers and other therapists, Gov. Tony Evers sent a sharply worded reply.

In a Tuesday letter to the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and Wisconsin Family Action, Evers declared, “my administration has no intention of repealing Wisconsin’s conversion therapy ban.”

Evers asserted that the April 14 demand letter from the two groups was based on “a significant misreading” of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that threw parts of a Colorado ban on conversion therapy into question. 

Evers wrote that it was “disappointing” that the organizations support “a long-disavowed and outdated practice” that extensive research has shown to be ineffective and responsible for harms including depression, suicide, substance misuse, posttraumatic stress and anxiety.

“On the other hand, this should come as no surprise,” Evers wrote. “After all, bullying LGBTQ kids and Wisconsinites seems to be an important goal for Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and Wisconsin Family Action.”

First, I thank Governor Evers for moral leadership and empathic policymaking. Many young people should not need to write letters to the governor about their personal sexual orientation or why they need an ally in their corner when it comes to horrific ideas akin to bleeding a patient or keeping one’s humors in equilibrium. This governor is proving to be an essential elected official in Wisconsin.

Modern psychology has long established that sexual orientation is not a disorder, not a malfunction, not a glitch in the human blueprint. Every credible medical and mental‑health organization has rejected the idea that sexual orientation can be changed. Ethicists would ask why anyone would wish to change another person’s orientation.

We know, as Evers stated, that what conversion therapy produces, consistently, predictably, is harm. The research shows that following such absurd actions, what follows is depression, anxiety, trauma, self‑hatred, and, in too many cases, suicidal thoughts. They are the inevitable consequences of telling a person that the core of who they are is unacceptable.

Conversion therapy runs counter to ethical living. Last time I checked, the primary principle of medical ethics is to do no harm. Conversion therapy violates it outright. Because this ‘therapy’ is subjected to minors who are pressured by parents, pastors, or communities, and what results is coercion and dreadful consequences.

What makes this even more painful, especially for someone my age, is the contrast between the world I grew up in and the world I now inhabit. I have lived long enough to see marriage equality become the law of the land. I know wonderful friends now married who, at one time, feared they would die alone. I have watched young people come out with a remarkable confidence and ease that would have been unthinkable in my youth. I have seen families embrace their LGBTQ children without hesitation. I have seen workplaces adopt protections that would have seemed radical when I was in high school in the late 1970s, and being bullied for who I was. I have seen society, slowly and I readily admit imperfectly, learn to recognize our humanity.

I know that to be gay is not a flaw. It is not a deviation from the human design. It is simply one of the many ways a human being can be wired. Conversion therapy is dangerous and coercive because it tries to “correct” what was never wrong.

I came out to my parents at the age of 21. Years later, when I brought James home for the first holiday meal together, and Mom had called for everyone to get assembled around the table, it was Dad who took my partner’s arm and led him to the table. To the chair alongside his.

Gay people are in every family. Acting with respect is not that difficult to achieve.