Conversion therapy is immoral

The argument

This argument holds that conversion therapy is fundamentally immoral, and that its immorality is itself a reason to reject it as a legitimate practice that 'works'. Conversion therapy attempts to change a person's sexual orientation on the premise that being gay, lesbian or bisexual is a defect — and the practices used to pursue that aim have ranged from shaming and aversion techniques to, historically, deeply harmful interventions. Major medical, psychological and human-rights bodies, including the World Health Organization and national psychological associations, have condemned conversion therapy as unethical and harmful, and numerous jurisdictions have moved to ban it on those grounds. The moral case rests on the documented harm and the violation of human dignity. Survivors and clinical studies report that conversion therapy is associated with serious psychological damage — depression, anxiety, self-hatred and significantly elevated rates of suicidality — inflicted in the name of 'curing' something that is not an illness. It frequently targets vulnerable people, including minors subjected to it without meaningful consent, and it operates by teaching them that who they are is sick and wrong. To subject a person to a damaging process aimed at erasing a core part of their identity is, on this view, a grave wrong regardless of intent. From this standpoint, conversion therapy cannot be regarded as a valid or successful treatment because it is built on a false and harmful premise and inflicts real damage while failing to change orientation. A practice that is unethical, condemned by medical authorities and proven to harm has no legitimate claim to 'work'. Because conversion therapy is immoral and harmful, this argument holds, it does not work to alter sexual orientation and should be rejected.

Premises

Counter-arguments

A structural objection is that the argument runs together two distinct questions: whether conversion therapy is immoral and whether it works. These are separable. A practice can be gravely unethical yet still produce an effect, and a practice can be perfectly ethical yet completely ineffective; moral condemnation does not by itself establish an empirical result. So even if every claim about the harm and wrongfulness of conversion therapy is granted, that does not, on its own, show that the practice fails to alter sexual orientation. The real ground for the conclusion 'it does not work' is the empirical evidence the body gestures at — that participants' orientation does not durably change and that reported 'successes' reflect suppression, concealment or relapse — not the moral case. Critics of the argument's structure note that leaning the factual claim on the ethical one is an is/ought slip: the efficacy question has to be settled by evidence about outcomes, which is where the position's strength actually lies.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] The premise treats moral wrongfulness as if it entailed inefficacy, but morality and efficacy are independent: something can be immoral and still have an effect, so 'it is a grave wrong' does not establish 'it fails to change orientation.' [Rejecting C] The conclusion that conversion therapy does not work must rest on empirical evidence of non-change and relapse, not on its immorality; deriving the factual claim from the ethical one is an is/ought slip.