Gay ‘Conversion Therapy’ Faces Tests in Courts.

Gay “conversion therapy,” which claims to help men overcome unwanted same-sex attractions but has been widely attacked as unscientific and harmful, is facing its first tests in the courtroom.

Telling someone he can’t have gay conversion therapy is not really different from telling anyone they can’t have assertiveness training. You can do whatever you want with your soul, if you’re not hurting anyone else. Either we can tell each other what kind of sex to have, or we can’t. If not — and I would say emphatically not — then we also can’t tell people to be gay or not to be gay. Their business is nobody else’s business.

Now, that’s at the patient end of the deal.

It’s a different can of worms when someone sets themselves up to get paid for curing gayness (gaiety?). Nobody has a shred of evidence that gayness — or any other manifestation of the gender spectrum — is a disease or needs a cure or that there are any generally applicable ways to transform straights into gays or vice versa. So there are big issues of misrepresentation, false claims, lying to extract money from people, and general con artistry. That’s a crime. Nothing much to test there, either. Require restitution and throw the bums in jail.