Author: Randy Slovacek

Michele Bachmann – who seems to be turning out to be Palin 2.0 – refuses to answer questions about her husband’s anti-gay counseling services in Minneapolis. Twice she pivots and changes the direction of the interview despite direct questions about reports coming out that her husband’s center practices “reparative therapy” or conversion therapy that promises to ‘cure’ folks of homosexuality.

From Wikipedia: The American Psychological Association defines conversion therapy as therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation.

The American Psychiatric Association states that conversion therapy is a type of psychiatric treatment “based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation.”

Psychologist Douglas Haldeman writes that conversion therapy comprises efforts by mental health professionals and pastoral care providers to convert lesbians and gay men to heterosexuality by techniques including aversive treatments, such as “the application of electric shock to the hands and/or genitals,” and “nausea-inducing drugs…administered simultaneously with the presentation of homoerotic stimuli,” masturbatory reconditioning, visualization, social skills training, psychoanalytic therapy, and spiritual interventions, such as “prayer and group support and pressure.”

Mainstream American medical and scientific organizations have expressed concern over conversion therapy and consider it potentially harmful. The advancement of conversion therapy may cause social harm by disseminating inaccurate views about sexual orientation. The ethics guidelines of major mental health organizations in the United States recommend that ethical practitioners refrain from practicing conversion therapy (American Psychiatric Association) or from referring patients to those who do (American Counseling Association).