Love is a Sin

Sep 3, 20215 min read

Updated: Feb 11, 2022

Tamanna Sharraf

TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of graphic conversion therapy.

In 1935, a mother asked Freud to "treat" her son. In a letter that later became famous, Freud replied: "I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. It is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it."

Conversion therapy - sometimes called "reparative therapy" or "gay cure therapy" - tries to forcefully repress someone's sexual orientation or gender identity. It means suppressing someone from being queer or living as a different gender to their sex recorded at birth. It can include talking therapies and prayer or more extreme forms such as exorcisms, physical violence, food deprivation, lobotomies and even chemical castrations. This process of medically "curing" or changing the sexual orientation of LGBTQIA+ people is, what I think, one of the most horrendous crimes against humanity.

This problem is further magnified in the community. Ethnic minority individuals are twice as likely to be forced into receiving conversion therapy. About 10% of Christian respondents and 20% of Muslims said they have undergone or been offered conversion therapy. One in five received it from healthcare professionals, and this figure is higher among transgender respondents.

Conversion therapy may seem like an old-fashioned remnant to those of us living in open-minded environments. However, it still occurs in the United States — in camps, religious institutions, and one-on-one counselling sessions. Currently, conversion therapy of minors is banned in 14 states, and advocates are working to pass legislation across the country. Despite being accepted as an inhumane, homophobic form of treatment by all leading medical and mental health experts, an estimated 20,000 LGBTQ+ youth will undergo conversion therapy in the U.S. before they turn 18. And these are just the figures for one country.

Many countries have introduced a full or partial ban, including Canada, Malta, Germany, Mexico, and Australia. In Germany, minors are not allowed to receive conversion therapy. At the same time, it is outlawed for adults in cases of coercion or deceit. Only the District of Columbia's ban applies to adults as well.

Tamil Nadu is the first state in India to institute a ban on such an unethical practice. A lesbian couple whose families opposed their relationship had left their homes. They requested the court seeking shelter from police harassment. In turn, the court granted protection to the couple and issued a ream of guidelines. The court directions forced protection to community members by creating shelter homes with basic amenities. Also, they suggested that the government come up with different awareness programs to sensitize police and prison authorities, health professionals, educational institutions, and most importantly, the general public.

Presently, the LGBT+ community in India is being given protection under the Mental Healthcare Act, which specifies that all discrimination against a patient based on gender and/or sexual orientation is illegal. Justice Anand Venkatesh underwent different psycho-educative sessions to understand the daily prejudices faced by people belonging to the community before sentencing this decision. The Act, however, requires medical professionals to seek "informed consent" before treating LGBTQIA+ patients. But the mere concept of informed consent embedded in the Act is narrow-minded because it doesn't protect the patients who are either less educated or simply brainwashed into believing that their sexuality is a "disease" and consent to undergo these torturous practices to conform to social beliefs.

Additionally, this act also labels members of the LGBT+ community as mental health patients purely based on their gender and/or sexual identity. Despite its shortcomings, this act marks a step ahead for India to become more accepting and guarantee equality to all its citizens.

Aversion therapy was first introduced in India by the British: it involved using electro-convulsive treatment to remove the fear or anxiety of the opposite sex that they were thought to feel. Patients were forced to view pornographic same-sex photographs. While viewing them, they would receive an electric shock, creating a negative association of pain with their own feelings of arousal. The pictures would then be replaced with a heterosexual image. The electric shock would subside, assigning a sense of relief to opposite-sex attraction, as they believed. Indian practitioners also included sensory materials, such as women's perfume, to elicit stronger positive relations with opposite-sex stimuli.

Anjana Harish, a bisexual woman in India, said she had been forced to undergo conversion therapy by her family — a programme that began with her being assaulted and sedated, then placed in isolation, followed by a course of heavy medication. Instances of individuals being forced to undergo conversion therapy, like Anjana's, has doubled during the pandemic-induced lockdown.

In Spain, journalist Ángel Villascusa posed as a gay man and attended a counselling service provided by the diocese, which was under suspension by the government. Villaescusa alleged the bishop was running illegal conversion therapy sessions. An alleged therapist, who is not registered as a psychologist, was reported to have said: "You must govern yourself and stop watching porn". They do not consider it "reversive therapies" but rather "reception and accompaniment." They are also asked not to tell anyone and are warned that there will be problems if they do. They won't be permitted to return to a session. Such misinformation is detrimental to queer individuals and surrounding straight individuals who absorb this information and develop homophobic views consequently.

Approximately 200 of Ecuador's drug and rehab facilities secretly house conversion therapy clinics. Famous Ecuadorean photographer Paola Paredes conducted a series on these clinics that depicted how women were treated here. They were pushed into rituals that were meant to force traditional femininity into them, like the use of makeup and womanly behaviour. But the most disturbing stories involve physical torture and corrective rape. All the women recounted cables used to beat them. One believes she may have been raped after consuming unidentified pills that led her to memory loss. One therapist played loud religious music through the night to conceal the sound of other women being tortured.

Conversion therapy makes its victims feel like perpetrators, traitors of god. It dehumanizes individuals, reducing them to sexual or gender identity, thus quelling a sense of individualism. Most importantly, enforcing one's beliefs on someone else through mental and physical torture is an inhumane act. Only a few countries have taken steps to protect their citizens from this violation. But it is crucial to remember that each moment politicians spend debating the legitimacy of this treatment, somewhere, someone is being tied up and told their love is a sin.

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Love is a Sin

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