Posts

@Adan Druego  
So basically what you’re saying is, scientists discovered that homosexuals are sexually attracted to their own sex.
 
I mean it’s not like it’s right in the name or anything…

Many would still stubbornly resist treatment.
 
Humanity is getting closer to understanding homosexuality. For some time now scientists have wondered about the human “pheromone center”. Recently, I’ve read that they may have found the part of the human brain which influences or possibly controls human sexuality.
 
Researcher run test, brain activity and such, on test subject who were shown appealing imagine of different male and female models. In heterosexual males that certain part of the brain became more activity when viewing an attractive female but a decrease in activity when shown an attractive male. The same was done with heterosexual female and inceased activity was noted while observing an image of an attractive male but a decrease in activity when shown an attractive female. Thus, the pleasure we humans feel when viewing the opposite sex is biologically justified.
 
But then researchers test homosexuals and the results were the same only in their cases reversed. Increase in activity while viewing attractive members of their own gender and a decrease in activity while viewing an attractive member of the opposite gender.
 
With this knowledge, if proven true with more tests, due to the need for further study, could explain human sexuality as a brain function. Homosexuals are just individual with the wires connected the wrong way.
 
 

 
No, being heterosexual is normal and anything else is abnormal. It may not be an illness, it’s better to think of it as a disorder. Something is not in the right order.

What cure? It’s not a disease lol.

@Derpy Whooves
 
I apologise if this offends you.

@HorsesandMuchMOAR  
You are aware that for a lot of us, this is not an academic or hypothetical exercise, right?
 
We are living right now with governments that have leaders who consider LGBTQ members of society to be outside the law, and or who have what they consider to be effective medical treatments to ‘cure’ homosexuals, and who feel that being LGBTQ should be legal cause to be fired from your job, or denied equal access to the civil market place, or to be denied housing or equal access to the government services that our taxes pay for - all on the basis of our sexuality.
 
So, this thing you are speculating about, this is reality for a lot of us.
 
You know that, right?
 
This isn’t a joke, and it is not funny.

@Derpy Whooves
 

 
Personally, I do not think so, but it could be possible if some government managed to find a way to do so.
 

 
Some conservatives wanted it this way, and they would regard bi’s as if they were homosexuals.
 

 
Both, depending on the government that uses said “changes to sexual orientation”: some governments would treat it as a recreational drug to alter the consumer’s mind (like a cosmetic for one’s hair or eyes), while others use it to force people to be heterosexual for religious or cultural reasons. That is the scenario of my question.
 

 
A world with the worst possibilities based on recent political trends and Internet trolls – from said “cure” and its results on international politics, to haywire governments with murderous laws and extreme agendas. For example, Country X seeks to kill all suspected bigots, while Country Y executes supposed “deviants” for the sake of its religion. And Country Z has to choose whether to pick a side, or stay neutral and be condemned by those sides.
 

 
That reminds me of the Soviet government’s treatment of dissidents as “mentally ill”. Perhaps the same governments that try to “cure” LGBTQs in such a manner might go as far as apply similar, forceful treatments towards dissidents, and brainwash them into following their respective ideologies (e.g. fascism, religious fundamentalism, communism, etc.)

This is a dangerous thread, tread carefully ponies.

@HorsesandMuchMOAR  

 
If you consider sexual orientation the result of an “illness” that can be “cured”, does that mean you consider being heterosexual equally a “sickness” that can be “cured”?
 
And what of bi- or poly-sexuals and non-binaries or people who are sapiosexuals? What kind of “cure” do you envision for them? Are you intending that all of them should be forced into an “either-or” lifestyle, against their own will and contrary to what god has gifted them with at birth?
 
Are you talking about an Iain Banks style science fiction world where people choose their hormonal responses to others based on their current social situation and based entirely on their own free will, or a dystopian state where everyone is “corrected” according to the dictates of some horrificly invasive state that destroys personal freedom to the level of deciding for its citizens who they will and will not be allowed to fall in love with?
 
And if you can make people love what you want them to love, how far is that from making people vote the way you want them to vote?
 
Even assuming this is some sort of intellectual exercise intended to come up with an interesting plot for a story, what kind of world are you envisioning here, where even the most fundamental aspects of life are considered a “sicknesses” to be “cured”?
 
At that point, what freedoms would be left for individuals?
 
If the state you envision would dictate even love and feel justified in chemically “fixing” its members against their will, how would it respond to children who are left handed? Or people who pray to minority gods? Or who vote for minority parties? Or who are themselves minorities?
 
@The Smiling Pony  
Don’t mind me, just laying some more triplines, because pic related.
 

>this thread
 

No need for hypotheticals: there is already a highly effective tool for treating a patient’s unwanted (note the important qualifier) urges for relations with the same sex. The proper term for it is “reparative therapy.” This type of therapy has been suppressed for a multitude of reasons, including but not limited to:
 
1. The most popular examples of reparative therapy are ineffective, if not outright abusive.
 
I will not defend what goes on in the basement of Pastor Jim’s Baptist Church where effeminate boys are hit over the head with a Bible or whatever.
 
Like other forms of therapy, it is something that should be done by a trained professional and sought by someone who actually wants to change. The latter is especially part of the reason it’s often portrayed as - and indeed unfortunately sometimes is - abusive. There is no reason to expect positive results for therapy with an unwilling participant.
 
Without even appealing to “muh lib’ral mejya,” I will say that headlines about fundamentalist “pray the gay away” camps are enticing. You hear about the kind of stuff that goes on in those places and it’s something no one wants to defend. You wanna hear a boring headline? “Local Man Loses Unwanted Sexual Urges After Several Therapy Sessions.” Yawn. It’s rarely newsworthy when things go right.
 
That’s a big part of the reason we only hear about the abusive cases usually not even headed by anyone with any qualifications. So, in a way, I’m not too surprised that most people want to move to have this kind of therapy banned when they only see the bad examples. But just because it’s done so egregiously wrong sometimes does not mean it’s incapable of being done right.
 
Now is the part where I feel compelled to qualify that if I were Supreme Dictator or whatever, I wouldn’t round up everyone with an attraction to the same sex and put them in therapy. It’s not prescriptive, but I do think it should be available to people who want it.
 
2. The way you speak influences the way you think.
 
The reverse is also true but it’s easier to control someone’s language than their thoughts directly.
 
This is why conservatives and liberals (I hate that distinction since it implies a false dichotomy but it must suffice) have a different vocabulary. One side is pro-life, the other is pro-choice: nobody seems to want to claim themselves anti-anything. One side considers an act murder, the other calls that same act a woman’s right to make decisions about her own healthcare.
 
The linguistic engineers saw fit to dub this practice “conversion therapy” to limit its support. Notice the difference in the implications behind the terminology: “reparative therapy” acknowledges there is a solution. “Conversion therapy” implies a false notion that “sexual orientation” as such is something that actually exists. And if there are different sexual orientations, all equal, then making the attempt to go from one to the other is illogical and pointless at best.
 
The truth is that there is no such thing as a sexual orientation. You are not your sexual desires. You are not even your own sexual history. It should not be a part of anyone’s identity and that’s part of the reason I refuse to use the popular acronym. I don’t see people as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, or queers. I see people as individuals and I refuse to see them any other way.
 
3. The Influence of Certain Parties
 
If the second point was a little too abstract, ask yourself: why would anyone want to change the way people think about sexuality? Who benefits from that?
 
The answer is that psychiatry itself is a compromised field. I’m not saying it’s a pseudoscience, ineffective, worthless, or anything like that. I’m just saying that for decades, psychiatry - the sexual parts of it especially - has been under the control of intellectually dishonest individuals looking ways to rationalize their own sexual misconduct. Just look at the lives of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey.
 
And, let’s be real: we all rationalize our own sexual misconduct. But these people take it a step further: it’s not enough to do what most people do and convince themselves “what I’m doing isn’t wrong.” They have to convince everyone else to give up their sexual morals. And it’s a pretty tempting offer: “I won’t say anything about your sexual misconduct if you don’t say anything about my sexual misconduct.” That philosophy launched the so-called sexual revolution and our culture has been rapidly deteriorating ever since.
 
Not a lot of people know the history about how homosexuality was removed from the DSM. It wasn’t a case of people looking at it and saying “Gee, whoever wrote this was a bigot, there’s nothing wrong with being gay, let’s take this off.” No, it was done at political reasons. The cliff notes version is that those with a certain sexual predilection regularly and violently protested psychiatry conferences until they voted to remove it. It wasn’t done because they learned anything new. They decided truth can be determined by a show of hands. In retrospect, that means that was probably the most American thing the APA has ever done.
 
But it’s not just unscrupulous psychologists who promote it. Did you notice how many companies changed their logos to rainbow versions for Pride Month this year? Why do you think that is? To show how “woke” and PC they are? Please. They have an ideal consumer. People who can’t naturally have kids and thus have more disposable income are at the top of their list of people to exploit. There are other traits that community has that makes them ideal consumers but it’s too politically incorrect and you’re probably not ready for that red pill.

So far, most (if not all) attempts to “cure” homosexuality are failures, and such an idea mostly exists in religious discourse and science fiction.
 
But if such attempts to alter sexual orientation actually existed and worked (e.g. a pill, etc.), what do you think might happen in the world? My guesses would be: