In this episode, we discuss the controversial topic of gay conversion therapy and whether or not it should be legal in the United States. We also talk about the Supreme Court's upcoming case regarding conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.
00:00:00.000Hello, Simone! Today we are going to be asking the age-old question is, if somebody is gay, can you turn them straight by electrocuting them?
00:00:30.760So, hold on. So, actually, I feel like, for anyone who hasn't seen, there's this show in the U.S., The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
00:00:37.100It's on Netflix, right? And it's about a girl who grows up in this cult with a guy who lied to her about everything.
00:00:42.620And when she enters the world, she has to constantly find things and then be like, oh, yeah, I need to check if this was a lie or not.
00:00:50.060And this happened to me recently around conversion therapy.
00:00:53.380Just, you know, I think if you grow up in the broadly, like, progressive sphere, the line is, conversion therapy, gay straight conversion therapy doesn't work.
00:01:05.740And, you know, recently, I found myself reflecting on this and I was like, oh, yeah, but if it did work, they'd still say it doesn't work.
00:01:12.820Like, they have an ideological reason to need to believe this due to the way that they were framing, like, gayness as an identity.
00:01:21.800And what really hit me is when I asked an AI questions about this, it got really angry at me.
00:01:27.240I don't know if you noticed, but there's certain issues where I'm like, hey, can you just steel man this other perspective?
00:01:34.060Replexity could not bring itself to steel man the other perspective.
00:01:36.940And this is a really important thing for us to be talking about now specifically, because as of our recording now, this coming Monday, the Supreme Court is going to take up state bans on conversion therapy for LGBTQ plus children based on a Colorado case.
00:01:53.240So this is actively something that is being discussed.
00:01:58.200Do you have a religious right to electrocute your children?
00:02:03.880What we're going to go over is all of the different types of conversion therapy.
00:02:06.600The thing that really got me in the AI answer is, I don't know if you guys have ever asked an AI a question, and it gives you parts of the answers that are just obvious and transparent lies.
00:02:15.280Like, it gave me a list of things that it said, do nothing to change an individual's, you know, sexual expression.
00:02:22.080And one of those things was castration.
00:02:24.420And I was like, brother, I'm not, like, brother in Christ.
00:02:27.280I'm not saying that we should be castrating gay people.
00:02:30.000But it obviously changes their sexual expression.
00:02:34.360And another thing that I just know, because I've done a lot of research on, like, LGBT stuff, is it will say, you know, you cannot change an individual's sexual orientation.
00:02:44.260And yet anyone who's familiar with, like, trans people just knows that wrong.
00:02:48.880About 43% of trans people report changes in their sexual orientation when they go through hormone therapy.
00:03:42.520But I will note here that you can be like, but what about all the studies that say it didn't work?
00:03:46.880One of the things that was a real red flag for me that goes, well, there used to be a popularly cited study that said that it didn't, that it worked.
00:03:52.960But even the academic who wrote it had it retracted because it might cause harm.
00:03:59.300And then I was like, oh, so there were evidence out there.
00:04:02.820And people could have lost their jobs for publishing that, which shows why you're getting such bias in what's being published.
00:04:08.820There is one study that's out there right now out of, like, the 36 studies on this that could plausibly work.
00:04:15.340This one was a 2000 study retrospective self-reports of changes in homosexual orientation, a consumer survey of conversion therapy clients.
00:04:25.180What I will note as we go over all the data and all the stuff here, if you're like, what's the actual answer to this?
00:04:31.300There does not appear to be a persistent and reliable way, i.e. the urban monoculture was kind of right on this, to induce a new arousal pattern in an individual.
00:04:42.200If I am not aroused by women, nothing that happens at gay conversion camp is going to make me aroused by women.
00:04:51.040If I am not aroused by men, nothing that happens at a gay conversion camp will make me aroused by men.
00:04:59.280You could, like, try to do a gender reassignment with hormones.
00:05:02.980But I think if you're a conservative Christian and you have a problem with same-sex attraction, that is not the pathway that you are interested in taking.
00:05:12.840And it doesn't even work all the time.
00:05:14.600It works, like, 13% of the time and 50% of the time.
00:05:18.380Basically, given that 50%, you know, have new arousal patterns afterwards, gender reassignment and, like, hormone therapy is, like, re-rolling your character in terms of what arouses you.
00:05:30.300Which is actually the one we've had, I think, different maybe podcasts about this where we talk about how if you're dealing with severe depression,
00:05:37.060completely changing your identity by also changing your gender and your hormonal profile could successfully kickstart you out of it.
00:05:44.020And it's not the fact that you had gender dysmorphia, per se, that changed it.
00:05:49.140It's the fact that your entire hormonal profile and identity in clothing changed, snapped you out of it.
00:05:54.200Changing the way that you see yourself and relate to other people is one of the easiest ways to change sort of persistent psychological issues.
00:06:00.220So, like, we're trying to be as sort of fair-minded on this topic as we can be as we go into the data.
00:06:07.800However, what is also true, and the left is just lying about this, is while you can't induce a new arousal pattern, there are plenty of ways to suppress an individual's libido and arousal patterns.
00:06:20.960And we did another video of something like, my husband's not gay, or, like, I would be okay if you, I don't remember what it was, something like that, where we basically say that, like, I'm okay with same-sex attracted individuals deciding that they want to be in cross-sex relationships.
00:06:36.300I don't think that, like, that's something that we as a society need to freak out about or police them on, and I can understand why an individual might want that.
00:06:44.640For me, one of the most powerful things I ever read in regards to that was from an Amish kid on Rumspringa, which is, you know, when they leave their family and go live, like, in the secular world for a year, when they go through, like, a bit after puberty, basically, before they decide to come back in the community and decide to be an Amish.
00:07:03.660And he was saying in it, he, having lived in the secular world now, now recognized, I am a same-sex attracted or gay individual, but I am still going to go back to live in the Amish world, with the point he was making was, even though, like, I understand I can fulfill certain things more easily by continuing to live in the secular world,
00:07:28.180there was just a greater sense of purpose, of mental well-being, of sort of a life that he really wanted in the future if he went back to the Amish world.
00:07:37.780And he saw the having to have sex and have a wife who he wasn't attracted to, part of that is being marginally more challenging, but not worth giving up everything else that came with an Amish life.
00:07:50.860And in the video game that we're doing now, talking about, like, weird, woke themes, because, you know, you don't say that the LLM game, it's coming along great, really excited, takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, post-fertility collapse world.
00:08:02.720And one of the early sort of conflicts is, I tried to do an inversion of the typical thing here, which is a young kid wants to go live with the Mormons, and he is same-sex attracted, and he knows that he will have to live a different type of lifestyle.
00:08:22.120And his mom doesn't want him to go live with the Mormons, being like, but you're same-sex attracted, like, you should stay, live with us, live this lifestyle.
00:08:30.460But I thought it was a fun inversion of this particular debate that you see so frequently, and interacting with it, you know, for me, I, like, with all the characters I'm creating, creating interesting interactions and debates that cause the player to look at issues from a different angle.
00:08:47.780But, okay, so, I'm going to go into this. Anything you wanted to say, Simone?
00:08:53.280Just to give a little bit of context to why I think you find it often practical that people who are still same-sex attracted get into heterosexual relationships, is that it can be, if you care more about having a family, if you care more about being able to maintain a certain community, it's just a no-brainer.
00:09:12.440And I think the fact that we live in an age where people put sex lives above family and community is pretty crazy.
00:09:25.340Your extracurricular sex life is more important than that.
00:09:30.540Well, I mean, think about what is meant by this.
00:09:33.760I mean, if you talk about something like the Amish or, like, a conservative Mormon community or a conservative, like, Catholic community, these community identities mean a lot to the people who are part of them.
00:09:44.840And I think that we, in our society, trivialize them as just, you know, seeing them as the oppressive thing that they can be framed as instead of the rever...
00:09:56.000I mean, you know, for example, if I'm a conservative Catholic and I grew up as a conservative Catholic, even though I'm same-sex attracted, you know, I might believe that, like, you know, the Catholic God exists.
00:10:05.680And everything said in, like, Catholic theology is real.
00:10:11.280And yet we treat it like it's a mistake to make that choice.
00:10:15.820Or the Amish person is like, well, I mean, you know, I'm choosing between this and not necessarily heaven, but the wholesome life I could otherwise live with this community and community support.
00:10:29.120A little more context beyond that, too.
00:10:30.960Alyssa Grenfell talks about this, actually.
00:10:32.760Many people who grow up in these more conservative religious communities, where people, for example, know that they're gay, but still marry someone of the opposite sex, they sort of grow up thinking that sex is not going to be pleasurable for them at all.
00:10:46.700Like, Alyssa Grenfell talks in detail about how her OBGYN at BYU, when she was about to get married, was like, well, you know, sex is painful for many women.
00:10:56.480And she actually gave her this, like, dilator to use, like, before she had sex for the first time to try to make, like, I think maybe to break her hymen, like, to make it less painful.
00:11:34.920Our episode, how girl defined ruined an entire generation of women.
00:11:37.800But I actually think that this is really bad.
00:11:39.420No, no, but, but my point is, many additional communities, including many subsets of the LDS church, apparently, basically never expect sex to be amazing.
00:11:49.760And many just never have a satisfying sex life and never thought that was important.
00:11:53.920And yet they still end up having tons of kids.
00:11:55.640So, how can it be a surprise to someone of, like, oh, well, I'm not attracted to this person, but we're going to have sex anyway.
00:12:02.060Like, just, you know, whether it's being sexually oriented toward a specific sex or just expecting sex to be pleasurable.
00:12:10.820Like, if you're not even expecting sex to be pleasurable, then it doesn't really matter.
00:12:13.940Yeah, I actually think that's more culturally healthy.
00:12:17.000And that's why we did the video on Girl Defined.
00:12:19.040Is that Girl Defined maintained the idea of chastity until marriage.
00:12:41.080What I'm saying is, as a guy, for example, if you're sleeping with a lot of people, like, the pleasure that you get from that sex is going to be, I would suppose, easier to access.
00:13:22.540And I'm saying one thing that, I love Alyssa Grenfell.
00:13:24.980She is an ex-Mormon YouTuber and TikToker.
00:13:28.400She wrote a book about leaving the Mormon church where I really disagree with a lot of her episodes.
00:13:33.540Like, I just watched a really long episode she did on Mormon funerals where she's like, oh, isn't it horrible that they restrict this and they restrict that?
00:13:40.860Like, you're not supposed to have a Mormon funeral that lasts more than, like, the church service shouldn't be more than an hour.
00:14:07.740No, we should build death rituals because it's really important to have death.
00:14:12.220My point, though, is that Alyssa Grenfell points to the fact that, oh, can you believe that they are teaching young women that sex isn't going to be enjoyable?
00:14:21.000And can you believe that they restrict funerals in this way?
00:14:23.760And can you believe they do this and that without realizing this is a Chesterton's fence issue?
00:14:28.300Like, there is a reason why those things actually have benefits for the culture at large, even though they appear to cause, in many cases, a lack of hedonic pleasure in the immediate term.
00:14:39.380Yeah, what you're pointing out here, and I think that this is really valuable, is a lot of people hated how sex-negative their religious traditions were, quote-unquote, negative, like had a negative view of sex and sexuality and sexual indulgence.
00:14:51.900And they thought that by ripping out that sex-negativity and replacing it with sex-positivity, but staying Christian, staying whatever, that they were creating, like, a better form of, like, Protestantism.
00:15:05.200And you saw a lot of churches do this and thinking they were being so hip.
00:15:07.820But in reality, there's a reason for the sex-negativity that actually leads to more hedonic, you could almost argue, pleasure for the average person within that community because they're making better choices.
00:15:17.400And, for example, choosing their partner based on arousal, choosing their partner based on – but great aside here.
00:15:24.720I just want to – like, I just think that the best religions do set expectations low.
00:15:28.460And, frankly, if you find a partner with whom you have a lot of good sexual chemistry, it's going to happen.
00:15:47.880Well, I'd also point out for people, one, keep in mind that sexuality on average works very different in men and women.
00:15:53.740So the idea of saying to a woman telling a guy, you can, you know, change what arouses you or, you know, what you're going to be interested in is quite a different thing.
00:16:07.400The people who run a lot of these, like, sexual reassignment clinics are women may not understand how much more set in stone male arousal patterns are than female arousal patterns, which I think are much more flexible around stuff like – well, we know from the data that they're more flexible around stuff like this.
00:16:25.520And I'm saying this just to start, like, if you're watching this and you're a straight man, like, what could somebody do to get you to sleep with a guy?
00:23:19.580Like, that's the first thing they'll ask you.
00:23:21.620So why therapists used to do this before they realized how bad it was, and why it's reemerged was in some of the hokier parts of therapy.
00:23:30.800And some people, like, freak out on us on it because they've read books by individuals like, say, Erica Commissar, who's like, oh, all this stuff, relation children to their parents.
00:23:41.400And if you actually look at, like, she's a great person, but her beliefs around, like, the psychological schools that she finds compelling are, like, straight up Freudian.
00:23:54.740It's like, she's like, I'm influenced by Freudian psychology.
00:23:57.740Like, this is not, this is a, I'm not going to say it's, like, evil or wrong or anything like that, but it is a theological position, I guess I'd say.
00:24:05.400It's not bound by, like, a realistic mechanism.
00:24:10.420Yeah, but you would argue, even if we're calling it a cult or a culture, that it doesn't produce great outcomes.
00:24:16.300So, it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't, it's not, it's not based on what I would call, like, there's different ways that you can relate to the mind of something like this.
00:24:28.960And I would put hers in, like, like, if somebody's doing, like, Kabbalistic therapy or something like that, I'd be like, okay, but that's, like, a religious therapy.
00:24:37.940Most people would be like, yeah, I understand that.
00:24:39.720This belief that all of this stuff that happens when you're super young is super important to your adult life, it's just not that important.
00:25:37.800As we can see, when kids grow up in single-father households, they don't do that much differently than parents who grow up in two-parents' households.
00:25:43.000Which is usually because if they're with a father, that's the more responsible person.
00:25:46.440And so from that, we know a lot of the research on people who grow up in single-parent households or, or other sorts of disruptive households.
00:25:54.800Basically, in the United States, if a father is getting the kids, he is so exceptionally better than the mother, then it'd throw things off.
00:26:02.140But what it shows is that if you get a good parent, it's like the same way that the studies that show that, like, when, when gay people raise kids, the kids turn out better often than when straight people raise them.
00:26:11.040And that's mostly an effect of just how hard it is to get kids as a gay couple.
00:26:14.840That doesn't necessarily indicate, but, but, but this is what I mean is you have to go through, like, tons and tons of screening to get kids as a gay couple, at least when a lot of the studies were done.
00:26:22.400I don't know if it's still the case, but I think it is.
00:26:24.440I mean, my understanding is adoption is astronomically difficult right now.
00:26:31.560This involves associating same-sex attractions with unpleasant stimuli, such as shocks, nausea, or physical discomfort to create negative associations.
00:26:39.200It's like remembering, but I'm a cheerleader when they shock her.
00:26:44.640Now, of course, you know, the AI at first was like, well, obviously this can't fix sexuality, but then I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:26:49.500Is aversion therapy used in any other place in psychology these days?
00:26:52.440Like, because, like, obviously it won't say that it works for sexuality, but doesn't work for anything else.
00:26:56.060And it's like, well, it's used in addiction treatment.
00:27:45.080Are we going to talk about what does work?
00:27:47.000Not for changing orientation, but for at least reducing.
00:27:49.940Yeah, well, so they then mentioned medical methods.
00:27:53.660So hormone and steroidal therapies have been attempted.
00:27:56.960These are, it's said, these are sometimes used under the belief that hormonal imbalances contribute to sexual orientation or gender identity.
00:28:11.500This is, like, extremely well attested just based on the way that women's arousal patterns and even interests in different types of male dynamics change throughout their cycle.
00:28:24.040The problem is, is there don't appear to be, like, good studies on this.
00:28:27.700So, like, if I was somebody who, like, personally absolutely wanted to attempt to change my arousal patterns, I would probably do some hormonal experimentation, but it's just not well studied.
00:28:38.920Like, we know from trans individuals plausibly it can change how arousal patterns activate, but I'd imagine you really need to do something that extreme to get a change in patterns.
00:28:49.620And that, like, if I'm a gay man and I just take more testosterone or something, I'm just going to be even more turned on by men.
00:28:56.080That would be my thought as the main outcome of that.
00:28:59.700With women, there might be more stuff that you can do in regards to this, but basically the answer here is not enough data to know.
00:29:07.420In some extreme cases, this involves using drugs to suppress sexual desire.
00:29:11.580And I thought it was so funny when I was thinking, I was like, oh, it's so wild that when I was young, the fear is that, you know, conservatives would come and take away, like, the young, like, tomboy-y lesbian girl and chemically castrate them.
00:29:26.640And now those same drugs are being given to that same population by far lefties under the guise of puberty blockers and trans stuff.
00:32:07.180Yeah, but what's important is that you take it, and then you do the thing.
00:32:11.960So you'd have to, like, take it and masturbate to gay porn, and then not be interested in masturbating to gay porn as much within a few weeks of doing that.
00:32:18.900You can take it at low doses if you're like, I still want to enjoy this.
00:32:22.500I just don't want to enjoy it so much that it's distracting or causes unhealthy behavior, which is, I wanted a little unhealthy behavior with alcohol.
00:32:31.280I was like, I don't actually want to be a teetotaler, but, like, I also don't want to die.
00:32:45.640And so I – which it wasn't for a while.
00:32:48.720I actually had major problems at one point, which is when I decided I needed to look at this seriously and do something about this.
00:32:55.540But, I mean, how is that decision particularly different?
00:32:58.180Like, I was prone to addiction to alcohol or prone to, like, really wanting alcohol because of my genetics, right?
00:33:08.200A person might be prone to same-sex attraction because of something that they can't control.
00:33:12.660I didn't control that I had a preference for alcohol, and yet I am able to say, and therefore, despite that, despite me not choosing this desire, I am choosing to suppress this desire or work to engage with this desire in a fashion that doesn't interfere with other things I want from life.
00:34:19.320So, like, the best gay conversion camps would be, like, quarterly gay orgies.
00:34:25.920Well, I mean, I sometimes wonder if those didn't happen historically.
00:34:31.000Yeah, you just got it out of your system.
00:34:33.020I mean, listen, I mean, if I were an actually responsible player in the space, and I actually wanted to help these poor Christian young men and maybe women just, like, get over it and, like, go back to the real world and feel normal, this would be the right thing to do.
00:34:49.360It wouldn't, the families wouldn't want to know about it, but if you want to, like, really reduce their desire, this would be the right thing to do.
00:34:56.960Well, I mean, that might actually be something that's happening.
00:34:59.600So, you know, I can't talk about my own experience, again, not slept with a guy, at something like the Bohemian Grove, but it has been reported that I've gone in various things.
00:35:09.920So I can say, like, at least I've gone, I can't say any more about the extent of my connection to that, but I can talk about somebody who did go on the record about their experiences there, which was Richard Nixon, and he called it the gayest fucking place on earth.
00:35:22.920He actually used a worse word than that, but you can imagine what he said.
00:35:28.340And so it's an all-male retreat for, like, elite conservative men, and could it have been if Richard Nixon's understanding of it was accurate?
00:35:37.620Could it have been a place where a lot of gay people went and slept together?
00:35:41.540Obviously, that wouldn't be everyone there.
00:35:42.680There's a lot of other reasons to go to a retreat without women.
00:35:46.120But when I look at throughout history, the all-male secret societies that elite conservatives went to, and knowing quotes like Richard Nixon talking about one of the things that people who already had this arousal pattern at these specific events may have overindulged in, that they may have served some utility for that.
00:39:49.600Now, I'm going to say something crazy.
00:39:50.640I'd point out here, if you want to live a hedonistic life,
00:39:53.900there are few things you can be born that are better than a gay man.
00:39:57.240Like, I was actually bemoaning this with Simone.
00:39:59.160I was like, if I was a gay guy, it would be like being able to, one, have an easy time with an orgy where everyone at the orgy is a woman, first of all.
00:40:09.740Because you're aroused by everyone at the orgy.
00:40:11.680The thing that grosses me out the most about the concept of an orgy is half the people that are going to be guys.
00:40:19.000That's disgusting to me because I receive a strong disgust response.
00:40:22.680But if I was a guy, I'd be like an orgy full of women.
00:40:24.980And dating, way easier, you know, because you're reaching out to people who aren't assholes.
00:40:31.620I'm not saying all women are assholes, but I'm saying that being the gatekeepers within sexual marketplaces causes women to relate to men in a way that can be derisive.
00:43:01.140But the point I'm making here is that I think it's cool to revisit these topics that we, for so long, were not allowed to talk about or investigate or think critically about with a more open-minded approach that is less reactive in the way that the progressives and the urban monoculture react to these particular issues.
00:43:24.680Well, so then I think our takeaway from this is if the Supreme Court overturns state bans on gay conversion therapy, yes, a bunch of like businesses are going to maybe start providing, providing it again, but it's not going to do anything.
00:43:38.860So if you're just getting, it's like being like, oh yes, we now allow homeopathic therapy again.
00:43:45.980I mean, some people are going to make money and some people are going to have their money taken from them.
00:43:50.420And it entrenches the issue because if you look at the types of practices that they're doing, for me, it would cause me to focus more on what's arousing me and help me not see myself as, you know, what could make you think you're not straight more than simulating like a housewife's life with a stranger?
00:44:08.700And a person being like, does this feel normal to you?
00:44:11.300Yeah, I think like if, let's say that we were in like some culture where it's just like super not okay to be gay, we'd just be like, well, like your life is not about pleasure or sex and whether you were gay or straight, we wouldn't want it to be.
00:44:25.160We don't want you to be in a straight relationship and straight and obsessed with sex because that is really not productive.
00:44:31.360It's almost a blessing that you're gay.
00:44:38.640Like, I guess is, is what we would advise someone to say if they actually were really not okay with their kid being gay.
00:44:44.500Well, I mean, I would, I would focus more on the kid.
00:44:47.400I think that like my question here is should a kid be forced to have an opinion like that?
00:44:53.580No, a kid shouldn't be forced to have an opinion like that.
00:44:55.860But if they were brought up in a culture that they like and want to stay in, they should be allowed to pursue therapies and stuff that make it easier to stay in a culture that they want.
00:45:07.420I don't know, like if our sons, if any of our sons say, listen, we're gay, my first thing is just like, make sure you make a lot of money because having kids is going to cost you a ton more.
00:45:17.980If our daughters turn out to be lesbians, I'd be like, congratulations, you can double up on kids immediately.
00:45:42.480And I think that in reality, the vast majority, when I talk about like drugs and stuff like that that lowered libido, the majority of the time I actually think these drugs should be implemented is not necessarily same-sex attraction for young people, but just arousal patterns that the young person finds problematic or deleterious with their daily life.
00:46:04.440They develop fetishes or they develop, you know, it was one I saw somebody talking about on a show recently, was they developed like an addiction to like sissy hypnoporn.
00:46:13.000And like, I wouldn't, like if I was aroused by that, I would probably take a chemical to suppress that.
00:46:30.060I, yeah, and I bet that there are a lot of gay men who are in, who have like a beard, who are in a relationship and they are the only ones in the world who actually know their arousal pathways, who really wish that they just felt them less.
00:46:43.020And in this case, naltrexone would be amazing.
00:46:48.460So I think it's, it's about being accepting of all lifestyles, both the gay people who want to live as gay people, but also gay people who want to live within cultures that, that say that you should marry a woman and have kids.
00:46:58.540Because again, whoever said that sex was more important than religion, culture, and family.
00:47:20.840That's a weird thing to define identity around.
00:47:22.980Yeah, it's, but just like, if we're talking pleasure hours though, like versus other things that could yield more pleasure hours, if that's all you're optimizing for, it just is such a dumb thing to make your life decisions around.
00:47:36.740It doesn't make, there's no logic to, I love you autistic woman, autistic, but mostly asexual woman, who's just like, sex doesn't make logical sense.
00:47:45.520That doesn't give me the argument in favor of its utility.