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- Systematically dehumanizing patients by telling them that they are dirty, broken, and shameful. Verbal abuse is a central part of the therapy.
- Isolating patients from their friends and family and removing any methods of contact like phones and computers. Only approved people are allowed to be contacted at all. Phone calls are often monitered by therapists, violating any hope of privacy. Letters are read before being sent and, if the counselor does not approve of the content, they are discarded.
- Coercing frequent confessions from the patients about how they are sinful or worthless. Often privileges like the ability to contact family or leave the facility are withheld until the counselor feels the patient expresses enough self-loathing. Sometimes the patients are required to give these confessions to their family at the beginning of a phone call in order to speak to them at all.
- Heaping guilt on parents by blaming a gay child on faulty parenting.
- Telling the patient that God hates and rejects them and that, if they still have homosexual feelings, it is because they don't want to change badly enough.
- Forbidding patients to engage in activities and hobbies that they enjoy if they are deemed not "masculine" or "feminine" enough. Males are often restricted from music, art, literature, and theatre. Females are restricted from sports or other physically intensive activities. These rules are enforced regardless of the detriment to the patient's future in his/her discipline.
- Lying about the nature of homosexuality in order to terrify patients into silence on their sexuality. Ex-gay ministries have been known to conjur up such monumental lies as "all gays have AIDS and are going to die" and "the government will kill you if they find out you are gay." These lies are told in order to exert control over the patient through fear.
- Inflicting physical abuse in order to condition gays to fear contact from the same sex. This abuse includes placing ice or hot coils on the subject's hands while showing images of any same-sex contact or delivering electric shocks when homoerotic images are shown. Sometimes the subject is told to deliver the shock to themselves whenever they see an image that is "sinful". If the subject refuses, the button is pushed for them. Some former patients report feeling ghost pains for the rest of their lives whenever they are touched.
- "Touch" therapy, which is based on the mistaken assumption that boys experience homosexual feelings because of a lack of fatherly affection. An older man requires the boy to sit between his legs and he then hugs and fondles the boy repeatedly in order to accustom him to contact from a father-like male figure.
- Requiring boys to display themselves naked to their counselors and touch their genitals repeatedly to get "in touch" with their masculinity.
- Telling patients that all homosexuals live short, lonely, and miserable lives and that the only path to fulfillment is through abusive and expensive therapy.
Does this sound like the love of God to you? Does this sound like the path salvation to you?
REPARATIVE THERAPY IS ABUSE. CHILD ABUSE IS CRIMINAL. REPARATIVE THERAPY FOR CHILDREN SHOULD BE CRIMINAL.
SPREAD THE WORD.
But it just goes to show that people shouldn't pressure teens to "come out" until they are in a situation where they can be sure of being safe. I am so glad that I was independent when I came out. Spending a couple of months with my family almost killed me. I can't imagine if I had been forced to live with them for years.