Forced "conversion" of gays uncovered
Chief Thracian
Jon ben Asher, 365Gay.com
Friday, March 15, 2002 / 12:00 AM
SUMMARY: British researchers have uncovered a previously unknown dark
chapter in medicine: The forced torture of gays in the 1950s and '60s
to "cure them."
LONDON -- British researchers have uncovered a previously unknown dark
chapter in medicine: The forced torture of gays in the 1950s and '60s
to "cure them."
The researchers found that Britain's publicly funded National Health
Service used electric shock treatment, hallucinogenic drugs and other
brainwashing techniques in its "treatment" of gays.
Dr Glenn Smith, a social scientist based at the Royal Free and
University College Medical School in London, interviewed 26 gays who
underwent these techniques -- either through coercion or in response
to the social pressures of the day -- and 20 psychiatrists and
psychologists who carried them out.
He said: "Nobody has been cured, which is only to be expected. The
main recruiting areas have been Manchester, Birmingham, London and
Northern Ireland."
Smith said, "At the time, homosexual practices were illegal and gays
risked ostracization, imprisonment, or blackmail.
He said that for many gays at the time there were few choices. "On the
one side you had the entrapment -- either you got the treatment or you
ended up going to prison. On the other, there was family and social
pressure."
Smith said that in some cases electric shock treatment was used, in
association with a picture of a semi-nude male on an overhead
projector. It followed the Pavlov theory, with a picture of a
semi-naked woman as the reward.
Another form of aversion therapy was the use of a nausea-inducing
drug, again taken while watching a picture of a half-naked male.
Smith said he interviewed one lesbian who was not treated but declared
schizophrenic by her doctor and held in a mental hospital.
Smith said Alan Turing, the noted mathematician and ace code-buster
during World War II, was among the prominent gays who cracked under
the strain. After the war, he was stalked by the security services --
fearful that he might fall prey to blackmail -- and coerced into
undergoing estrogen treatment before poisoning himself with a
cyanide-laced apple.
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