Image: Channel 4
Lesley Pilkington, the British psychotherapist stripped of her credentials after offering to cure a patient of his homosexuality, has appeared on TV to express her dismay at LGBT equality.
Mrs Pilkington told Channel 4’s 4thought.tv that she believed “Christianity should be central to our nation today.” She continued:
We have lost the notion of sin. We are now fighting a rearguard action, for example, against legislation that is very likely to come in to give equality to same-sex marriage as to marriage between one man and one woman. The church has been silent, and that is the problem in our society. The church has to stand and have a voice, speak it powerfully, contend for the Word of God, and don’t worry about the consequences, don’t worry if you’re not popular. There will be a lot of people who will agree with you, and I would really like to see the men and women of God stand up powerfully for the truth in this nation today.
The British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists revoked her membership of the professional body last year following the high-profile controversy in which she advised an undercover journalist that she could rid him of his gay orientation. The BACP inquiry found that Pilkington had been “reckless,” “dogmatic,” “disrespectful” and “unprofessional,” judging her guilty of letting her “personal preconceived views about gay lifestyle and sexual orientation … affect her professional relationship in a way that was prejudicial.”
She has since become a cause célèbre among conservative evangelical activists in the UK, who have championed her as a martyr for standing up “powerfully for the truth.”
In fact, offering a version of reparative therapy was the least of her offences. Far from simply acknowledging her client’s confession that he was dissatisfied with his sexuality and behaviour, she affirmed that homosexuality was a mental illness, an addiction and anti-religious. Despite journalist Patrick Strudwick’s denials, Lesley Pilkington told him the root of his homosexuality was low self-esteem, childhood sexual abuse and family connections to Freemasonry.
Her defenders, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury, have been conspicuously silent about such details.
anyone think she doth protest too much?
Three important ethical lapses in exgay services are quite common. Informed consent hardly ever, if at all, allows a person considering the service or therapy to know in advance exactly how many former patients or consumers actually enrolled in that activity, for how long, and what precise or common sense outcomes were obtained across a range of positive to negative results, short-term and/or long-term.
Ethics to guide experimental treatments strictly require that we:
(1) monitor ongoing side effects – it is the clinician or treatment provider’s job to actively look for negative side effects, not mainly the patient or consumer’s responsibility;
(2) categorically refrain from blaming the person when/if our experimental treatments fail; and
(3) provide support, interventions, and follow ups to moderate or restore any detriments our treatment has helped cause.
I know of no existing exgay program or therapist who adequately observes these three core ethical guidelines for experimental treatments.
Outright or covert and somewhat subtle Blaming is alarmingly (and unethically) common when/if a patient or client or consumer fails an existing experimental exgay change protocol by:
(A) not experiencing and naming same sex attractions as innately dirty, damaging, and/or dangerous; plus
(B) not experiencing the self-neglect and/or repression of same sex related areas of inner sensory and emotional life and personhood as automatically positive, deeply ‘cleansing’ and humanly more substantively fulfilling of adult intimacy needs than a fully engaged, sexually committed pair bond could possibly ever be (again, per existing exgay protocols).
Patient/consumer abandonment is so widespread that any ethical professional or lay person must be very wary of this thoughtless habit. If we are going to be guided by anecdotes, then we must ask why the exgay services never, ever address the individual reports that clearly suggest how exgay involvements happen to increase risk of suicide, in the short-term, and even in a very long-term frame, years after people have left such activities. We have new and old ways to adequately start studying potential PTSD-like effects of exgay services. Only a very blind group of self-appointed helpers and therapists could ignore how their work might contribute to negative stress outcomes.
The wise caution about exgay programs, including reparative therapy? Still is: Buyer Beware. Alas. Lord have mercy. drdanfee
I can’t think of any credible therapist that would advocate that a client not have the same civil rights and protections that their citizenship gives as a birthright.
Religious beliefs are a cultural construct, sexual orientation and gender identity is not. If a minority of people lives in an atmosphere of discrimination and bigotry, a therapist wouldn’t exploit THAT to the detriment of their client’s self reliance and capacity for professional and social competence.
In a way, even SEX therapists wouldn’t engage in such political and religious discrimination. After all, what’s defined as SEXUAL dysfunction, usually doesn’t become a matter of concern for therapy unless that client’s ENTIRE personal and professional life are compromised.
It’s not a concern that the client be politically and socially excluded from their profession or personal networks of choice. Indeed, a therapist would consider these important functions of client happiness and fulfillment.
Marriage counseling, services for depression or substance abuse or family therapy are also usually SEPARATE issues, that for heterosexuals are not posited as CAUSED by heterosexuality. Even though heterosexuals suffer the same sorts of dysfunctions and paraphilias in equal measure as their gay counterparts.
I agree, buyer beware.
But the ex gay industry is exceptionally dishonest in their advertising, efficacy, motives and reasons for existing at all.
For all the reasons stated by drdnfee, I’ve wondered how the FEC hasn’t require major oversight for this business.