From Exodus to Shock the Gay Away: An LGBT History Lesson

[William769]

With the recent announcement from Exodus International that it is closing its doors, and its leaders offering apologies for their actions, LGBT people are now left wondering, “Can this really be the end of 'ex-gay' reparative therapy?” “Is it really over?” While the dust settles on all of this, we have to remind ourselves that it wasn’t too long ago that reparative therapies had less to do with praying the gay away and more to do with physically removing it.

Before the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973, aversion therapy was used routinely in hopes that it would prevent or eliminate homosexual behavior. Devices like the one below were used by therapists treating gay patients, and some of them were even available for use in the convenience of your home.



In the more brutal therapy sessions, the shock was delivered directly to the male patient’s genitals every time the patient experienced any form of positive response to the slides being shown to him. The following excerpt from a Farrall Instrument catalog advertising electroshock therapy products details how the therapy worked:

Aversive conditioning has proven an effective aid in the treatment of child molesters, transvestites, exhibitionists, alcoholics, shop lifters, and other people with similar problems. Stimulus slides are shown to the patient intermixed with neutral slides. Shock is delivered with stimulus scenes but not with neutral scenes. In reinforcing heterosexual preference in latent male homosexuals, male slides give a shock while the stimulus relief slides of females do not give shock. The patient is given a “slide change” hand button which enables him to escape or avoid a shock by rejecting a shock cue scene.

In the 1940s, gay people were also involuntarily committed to psychiatric facilities by their families, with the hospital’s promise that the patient will eventually leave the facility cured of their “sexual illness.” Not only were they not allowed to leave, but they were often subjected to cruel and inhumane treatments, including castrations, torture drugs, shock therapy, and lobotomies.

http://www.advocate.com/society/2013/07/08/exodus-shock-gay-away-lgbt-history-lesson