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Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins

TORONTO, March 30, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a move critics claim will only increase the suicide rate among youth, the Ontario health minister is calling on the health and therapeutic professions to ban change therapy for homosexual attraction.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins told the Ontario legislature, according to the Toronto Star, that “he will approach the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and similar bodies regulating psychologists ‘to explore amending the regulations to ban this practice, as it should be banned. … This isn't treatment.”

At the same time, Hoskins indicated his “approach” was unnecessary:  “Our Ontario Human Rights Code is very specific on issues such as this. … No current medical guidelines anywhere that I've found, certainly not in this province, support or endorse this kind of alleged treatment that would aim to change or convert someone away from being LGBT.”

The government is being hounded on the subject by the New Democratic Party, which introduced a private member’s bill to ban practicing so-called aversion therapy for same-sex attraction for teenagers, and to de-fund the practice for all ages from the province’s health care plan.

Both the government and opposition may be deliberately confusing aversion therapy, a half-century old practice involving electric shocks to reduce unwanted desires, including homosexual and pedophilic ones, and modern change therapy, which uses talking to reveal the causes of those unwanted feelings. Neither appears willing to acknowledge that a teenager might want his or her homosexual feelings to be eliminated.

Critics say the ban, which apes controversial laws passed in California and New Jersey, is a bizarre example of political correctness gone awry, that will only raise the already-high rate of suicide among homosexuals and transgendered people.

“This is political correctness gone mad,” said Walt Heyer, who is a 74-year-old former transgendered person who counsels similarly troubled people via his website, sexchangeregret.com. “The people promoting this don’t know diddly squat about it. They are just pandering to the LGBT.”

“What the gay and transgendered communities have in common is the highest rate of suicide of any part of the population,” he added. “To deny counselling to this group is going to keep suicides travelling at a high rate of speed. This is why people fly airplanes into the sides of mountains and stand in front of trucks.”

Dr. Lynn Wardle, the Bruce C. Hafen law professor at Brigham Young University, echoed Heyer’s concern. “It is truly ironic that this will deny treatment that is professional and qualified to people who want it. This will only send them to unqualified people who aren’t covered by the law or by professional standards, who maybe will treat them with apricot pits.”

Wardle said the move to illegalize change therapy was part of a current trend that “whenever a conflict arises there is a preference in the law to prefer homosexual rights to all other rights. There is the sense that we’re going to show how tolerant we are by being intolerant of anyone who disagrees with us and believes homosexuality is still wrong.”

But legally, Wardle told LifeSiteNews, the banning of change therapy “flies in the face of both children’s rights and parents’ rights.” On the one hand, parents, who otherwise have the duty to do what they think medically necessary for their children, are prevented from doing it in this case. On the other hand, children, who are winning more freedom to make some medical decisions for themselves, are in this case denied that freedom. Even if they want treatment for unwanted homosexual feelings, they cannot get it. “It’s bizarre,” said Wardle.

Both the NDP and Health Minister Hoskins claim that practising change therapy has been condemned by the therapeutic professions. Various bodies such as the American Psychiatric Association insist there is no evidence supporting change therapy and warn that it may be associated with conservative Christian organizations. 

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However, many psychotherapists maintain the traditional—and entirely secular view—that homosexuality is the product of inadequate attachment, in childhood, to the same-sex parent. The Alliance for Therapeutic Choices and Scientific Integrity unites these professionals, providing referrals for those seeking treatment, supportive research on successful treatment, and argumentative essays.

The Alliance insists there is no scientific evidence that homosexuality is genetic, innate, or untreatable. On the other hand, it argues, the scientific community has been pressured by the homosexual lobby into ignoring the empirical evidence not only for the effectiveness of change therapy but the health risks of homosexual relations. 

For example, states the Alliance’s website, “In the United States in 2009, men having sex with men accounted for 61% of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses despite the fact that gay men are estimated to represent only 2-4% of the general population (Prejean et al, 2011; Savin-Williams & Ream, 2007). While such statistics may be influenced somewhat by stigma and discrimination, they appear ultimately to be grounded in biological reality.”

Driving politicians and professions seems to be misguided popular opinion, which increasingly believes homosexuality is innate, immutable and, indeed, benign. As a 2013 Gallup poll indicated, a record high of 47 percent of Americans surveyed believed homosexuals are born that way and a record low of only 33 percent believed that homosexuality is the product of nurture, while 59 percent (another record high) find it morally acceptable.