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DarkJedi wrote:
This is an opinion piece published in the Deseret News today:https://www.deseret.com/2019/10/17/20919022/guest-opinion-the-church-does-not-support-conversion-therapy-but-that-doesnt-fit-in-some-headlines ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.deseret.com/2019/10/17/20919022/guest-opinion-the-church-does-not-support-conversion-therapy-but-that-doesnt-fit-in-some-headlines It is another point of view, but does, in my own opinion, try to dance around the subject. I think it does however explain the point Family Services is trying to make.
Thanks for the link.
:think: I wonder if one worry church lawyers have is whether bishops could run afoul of this law by counseling a youth and the subject of sexual orientation comes up.
DarkJedi wrote:
This is an opinion piece published in the Deseret News today:https://www.deseret.com/2019/10/17/20919022/guest-opinion-the-church-does-not-support-conversion-therapy-but-that-doesnt-fit-in-some-headlines ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.deseret.com/2019/10/17/20919022/guest-opinion-the-church-does-not-support-conversion-therapy-but-that-doesnt-fit-in-some-headlines It is another point of view, but does, in my own opinion, try to dance around the subject. I think it does however explain the point Family Services is trying to make.
Yes! This link is supper helpful! It provides what appears to be the Family Services comments that had not been publicly released earlier!
:clap: :clap: :clap: Quote:The church has publicly spoken out on conversion therapy, denouncing “any therapy including conversion and reparative therapies that subjects people to abusive practices in Utah and around the world.”
The genius of this sentence is that it essentially says that the church denounces therapy that abuses people – without actually taking any stand on what therapy does or does not abuse people. It can be like saying, “The church denounces any government including democracies, monarchies, oligarchies, or dictatorships that subject people to abuse and oppression in Utah and around the world.”
Quote:And for several years now, the church has stated on its “Mormon and Gay” website that it is “unethical to focus professional treatment on an assumption that a change in sexual orientation will or must occur.” According to reporting, the church was even involved in shaping some elements of earlier legislation seeking to ban conversion therapy in Utah — HB399 — which failed to advance out of committee earlier this year.
I understand that it didn’t make it out of committee because conservative voices had the gender identity portion removed and those same voices defined conversion therapy as narrowly as the above quote does “professional treatment on an assumption that a change in sexual orientation will or must occur.” In essence, under the proposed bill that didn’t make it out of committee a therapist could still focus professional treatment on maximizing heterosexual orientations and behaviors as long as they do not make any promises that they can make the homosexual feelings go away. A therapist could still counsel you into getting heterosexual married as long as they were clear that the marriage might not cure you and that homosexual feeling may persist throughout your life. That is why the earlier bill was scuttled – because it had been mangled so badly as to be ineffective. The original sponsor of the bill withdrew it because he couldn’t recognize it anymore. This is the critical difference between defining conversion therapy as a “professional treatment on an assumption that a change in sexual orientation
will or mustoccur” but not as a “professional treatment on an assumption that a change in sexual orientation mayoccur.” This is why I feel that the church is playing sneaky word games here. Quote:Those, including youth, that seek therapies that constitute sexual orientation change efforts will not receive them from FS counselors. Instead, FS counselors assist youth clients in understanding sexual orientation issues in the context of their families and social networks, their expressed religious identity, and their self-determined personal goals, including those pertaining to their faith.
Apparently Family Services therapists does not engage in conversion therapy – that is good as far as I can tell. Then what is the big deal with this proposed rule change then? What does it look like to “assist youth clients in understanding sexual orientation issues in the context of their families and social networks, their expressed religious identity, and their self-determined personal goals, including those pertaining to their faith”? As the Family Services document continues, it becomes clear that FS therapists do engage in therapy aimed at ceasing
homosexual behaviorsconsistent with the client’s stated values, religious community norms, and prioritizing religious identity over sexual identity. The proposed rule change would drastically change how FS conducts therapy for SSA and gender identity!Although, as I stated before, this gets sneaky if they define conversion therapy extremely narrowly. Family Services wants to be able to counsel a gay person to live a heterosexual lifestyle as long as they are clear that the gay feelings might never go away. They want to confine the definition of conversion therapy to the electric shock therapy and other therapies that exist only to change sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual.
As long as there is no official standard on what conversion therapy means, individual therapists and groups are free to define it in different ways. They can claim that they oppose conversion therapy while simultaneously performing what others would define as conversion therapy.
To be fair to the church and Family Services, I think they have some good points in regard to gender identity with youth. There do appear to be risks in both transitioning too early and in waiting too long to transition. Hard position to be in! I wish the church had left the homosexual conversion therapy aspect alone and solely focused their concerns on the gender identity and transgender portion.
nibbler wrote:
I wonder if one worry church lawyers have is whether bishops could run afoul of this law by counseling a youth and the subject of sexual orientation comes up.
This rule change only affects “certain health care professionals”. However, it does make me wonder what would happen if a particular bishop worked as a therapist for his day job. Could he counsel church youth in what amounted to conversion therapy under the new rule as long as he was acting as an unpaid bishop and not as a therapist at the time? Supposing that this would be permissible, would it change the outcome if the youth in question was also a client or patient of this bishop/therapist? Sure sounds like a conflict of interest. I assume that the church lawyers would want to avoid such thorny scenarios.Excellent summary, Roy. Roy wrote:
nibbler wrote:
I wonder if one worry church lawyers have is whether bishops could run afoul of this law by counseling a youth and the subject of sexual orientation comes up.
This rule change only affects “certain health care professionals”. However, it does make me wonder what would happen if a particular bishop worked as a therapist for his day job. Could he counsel church youth in what amounted to conversion therapy under the new rule as long as he was acting as an unpaid bishop and not as a therapist at the time? Supposing that this would be permissible, would it change the outcome if the youth in question was also a client or patient of this bishop/therapist? Sure sounds like a conflict of interest. I assume that the church lawyers would want to avoid such thorny scenarios.
That’s a good point. If the law only bans conversion therapy for licensed therapists, presumably people wanting conversion therapy after this law is in the books could still get that therapy but they’d have to seek it from someone that was unlicensed by the state.
The church would be better off it it stopped wadding into crocodile infested waters. This issue is a no win for them yet, they keep stirring the pot. In reading about this issue, particularly the bill itself, it appears to me that the central issue might be the section of the bill that defines what is NOT conversion therapy. There are a couple of descriptions that are ambiguous/flexible enough that some things which are not conversion therapy might be considered conversion therapy by some people, including advocates looking for ways to sue the Church. If this is the case, I can understand the Church’s concern.
I am wondering if maybe the church should get out of the counseling business like they previously got out of the adoption business. To me it appears that to be a counselor at LDS Family Services can constitute a conflict of interest. You are supposed to advocate for the best interest of the client but because the LDS church signs your paycheck a counselor may be trammeled or hamstrung when the interest of the client and the LDS church do not coincide. The SL Tribune headline says that this proposed rule change would “silence” counselors. What would happen if a young gay member was referred to LDS Family Services. What if that young person stated that they are losing confidence in the orthodox wisdom of the church leadership to lead their life and that they hope to have a devoted same sex marriage someday. I do not know that this counselor would feel impowered to offer support and validation for this young gay member. Maybe silencing counselors is already happening but just in a way that benefits the LDS church through the employment contract. Maybe I am wrong.
At any rate, my current employer offers an employee assistance program. This includes a limited number of over the phone counseling sessions for anyone in the household for any reason. I wonder if the LDS church could do something similar and outsource their counseling services. Then maybe the bishop could get an invoice and report that the member attended the appointment and fully participated. Period. The end.
Ending counseling services might sound nice, but there are lots of people who want a counselor who can understand their religious / spiritual views and how they impact mental health. Many Catholics like seeing Catholic therapists; many Muslims like seeing Muslim therapists; many atheists don’t want to go to religious therapists. Counseling can be tricky, and decreasing potential or likely conflicts is important to a lot of people.
Old Timer wrote:
Ending counseling services might sound nice, but there are lots of people who want a counselor who can understand their religious / spiritual views and how they impact mental health. Many Catholics like seeing Catholic therapists; many Muslims like seeing Muslim therapists; many atheists don’t want to go to religious therapists.Counseling can be tricky, and decreasing potential or likely conflicts is important to a lot of people.
Fair enough Curt. For me, where I am right now, a traditionally believing Mormon would be the last thing I would want in a counselor. That probably says just as much about me and my relationship to the church as it does about anybody else. I just would feel very gaurded and that would not be productive to counseling. I would probably be overly paranoid that the counselor would be judging me or reporting back to my bishop.If this rule change moves forward, it will be interesting to see how LDS Family Services handles it. My understanding is that discussing in a therapy setting homosexual thoughts, feelings, and actions as though they were worse or less desirable than the heterosexual equivalent would constitute conversion therapy under this new rule and be banned. To comply with this new rule it seems that LDS Family Services would have to change how they work with LDS gay youth.
Roy wrote:
I am wondering if maybe the church should get out of the counseling business like they previously got out of the adoption business. To me it appears that to be a counselor at LDS Family Services can constitute a conflict of interest. You are supposed to advocate for the best interest of the client but because the LDS church signs your paycheck a counselor may be trammeled or hamstrung when the interest of the client and the LDS church do not coincide.
In addition to being trammeled or hamstrung I’d think that one concern would be that an orthodox LDS counselor may not be able to
conceptualizea scenario where the best interests of one of their member clients could be something that goes against counsel that church leadership has given. Quick summary of my understanding of this issue – The church feels that they do not engage in conversion therapy. On its face the BYU shock to the genitals experiments of the 1970’s are a clear case of aversion therapy focused on conversion. This almost doesn’t qualify as “therapy” at all – but this is what comes to mind when some people think of conversion therapy. LDS Family Services does not do this form of conversion therapy and strongly condemns it.
There is another form of conversion therapy that does not use physical punishment. This is the type of conversion therapy featured in the movie “Boy Erased”. It is more like modern therapy in that it involves talking, journaling, role playing etc. What makes this conversion therapy (from what I understand the LDS church position to be) is that if it is successful the client will no longer be homosexual. If it was unsuccessful, then it may be assumed by some that the client did not want it badly enough. This type of conversion therapy is also not offered by LDS social services.
The word conversion in “conversion therapy” presupposes a change from homosexual to heterosexual. That is how it appears to be defined by LDS Social services and they do have some word etymology points on their side.
Based upon what I have read, I assume that LDS services DOES provide therapy that treats homosexuality as something that is undesirable and helps the client with coping strategies to restrain homosexual behaviors and perhaps amplify or accentuate heterosexual behaviors. This LDS social services does not define as conversion therapy because there would be no claims or efforts of the therapy ever making homosexuality go away. It is marketed more as a treatment rather than as a cure.
But the proposed rule change would define conversion therapy more broadly and include this last category in the definition of banned therapy. This would force LDS social services to be, if not gay affirming, at least sexuality nuetral in all their therapy efforts.
Roy wrote:
To be fair to the church and Family Services, I think they have some good points in regard to gender identity with youth. There do appear to be risks in both transitioning too early and in waiting too long to transition. Hard position to be in!
The gender identity question is still a minefield. It sounds like LDS Social Services would advocate “Watchful waiting” for youth diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Quote:While the letter’s drafters don’t endorse any specific studies — and take pains to acknowledge the complex nature of the literature — they nonetheless point out that some young people’s experiences with gender dysphoria do not always persist “when a ‘watch waiting’ (therapy) approach is taken.”
This phrase jumped out at me when reading another article.
Quote:But Laura Edwards-Leeper, a clinical psychologist at Pacific University, said that for someone of Luna’s age, gender-affirming care would not include any kind of medical intervention until they hit puberty. Even then, she said, it’s not an automatic procedure.
After a mental-health evaluation and discussion with parents, it might encompass a range of activities to help “the child to live as their authentic gender, and with their preferred gender expression, at any given point in time, without a presumption about their future gender identity,” she said.
For a 7-year-old, that might mean speaking to experts and potentially helping them through a social transition, which might include changing their clothes, hairstyle or pronouns. At around ages 10 to 13, parents, health professionals and the child might decide to take puberty blockers, which delay the development of secondary sex characteristics, like facial hair or breasts.
Those can be stopped at any time, and puberty continues as it would normally. “It is only irreversible if the adults in the child’s life make it irreversible,” Edwards-Leeper told The Post. “If the adults can stay open to whatever trajectory the child has, then it’s completely reversible.”
Younger, however, said that a tactic of “watchful waiting” would be more prudent for Luna instead. Because he still had custody, his objections meant that the clinic said it could not take Luna on as a client, LifeSiteNews and other outlets reported.
Kuvalanka, however, said
the “watchful waiting” approach can be harmful when a parent is withholding acceptance, and that tactic has been deemed “outdated” by the American Academy of Pediatrics. So … yes. Gender identity can be somewhat fluid in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. A young person, born a male and that now identifies as a female should not be held to presenting as a female now and forever. They should be supported and believed in their stated gender identity at the time whether it changes at some later date or not. No permanent decision need to be made but the individual is affirmed in the place that they are right now.
“Watchful waiting” can be different than this because it can look alot like waiting for them to “grow out of it” and that “maybe it is a phase”. Throughout the duration of this “watchful waiting” the child is most likely rejected in their stated gender and pronouns. Some individuals may eventually come out the other side and find themselves more comfortable in the gender of their biological sex – others may only become more and more distressed at the constant rejection of who they say that they are and how they identify themselves. I believe that being believed and accepted for how you see yourself on the inside can be a huge gift that a “wait and watch” approach can deny to these individuals.
However, LDS Family Services is technically correct that “some young people’s experiences with gender dysphoria do not always persist”
Apparently acknowledging that there is at least a lack of understanding about the church’s position on conversion therapy, the church has reaffirmed its opposition through a media spokesperson. https://www.deseret.com/utah/2019/10/23/20929351/lds-mormon-church-conversion-therapy-opposition-jesus-christ-latter-day-saints ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.deseret.com/utah/2019/10/23/20929351/lds-mormon-church-conversion-therapy-opposition-jesus-christ-latter-day-saints (The article then goes on to defend the church’s opposition to the legislation.)
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