Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Spanish Pills and Psychiatry Won't Cure Homosexuality

It's time to give a special shout out to the Spanish government for cracking down on ex-gay organizations. Yes, while here in the States ex-gay groups prepare to hold shindigs in California and Illinois championing their position that homosexuality can be clinically treated, in Spain ex-gay organizations are being investigated for criminal behavior.

Gotta hand it to Spain. Having only decriminalized homosexuality in 1979, the country is now one of the few that recognizes same-sex marriage in the world. And it's one where government officials blast ex-gay organizations as dangerous frauds.

"An investigation has been opened into this clinic," said a government regional health representative, according to AFP. "We do not consider homosexuality as an illness, far from it."

The organization in question, Policlinica Tibidabo, is being checked out after reports surfaced that it provides patients with pills and psychiatry to "change" their sexual orientation. Already, mainstream scientific, psychological and psychiatric bodies have denounced efforts by ex-gay groups to use conversion therapy on people who are LGBT. Now the Spanish government is joining them.

That tickled the fancy of a leading gay rights group in Spain, the CGL in Catalonia, which praised the efforts by the Spanish government to crackdown on organizations and health professionals trying to cure homosexuality.

"It is totally unacceptable, in the 21st century, that health professionals are trying to treat homosexuality," CGL secretary general Antonio Guirado said in a statement. "You cannot treat something that is not an illness."

Amen to that. And it bears remembering that a few decades ago, life in Spain as an LGBT person was radically different than it was today. In the 1950s, gays were hunted down under the country's Vagrancy Act, only to then be tortured and/or killed by Spanish officials under the Franco dictatorship. As one former Spanish general put it during the height of Franco's leadership, "Any effeminate or introvert who insults the movement will be killed like a dog."

Life didn't get much better as the middle part of the 20th century rolled along, either. Homosexuality was still considered a mental illness well into the latter part of the century, which meant that LGBT people were often rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where they were forced to undergo electro-shock therapy and watch heterosexual pornography to learn what "proper" sexual behavior was supposed to look like.

But what a difference a few decades makes. Going from a government that supported torture and electro-shock therapy for queer people, to a government that investigates ex-gay organizations and officially says that homosexuality is the furthest thing possible from an illness. Now that's change I can believe in.

by Michael A. Jones

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