What is that technique called where they try to turn gay people straight?

Aversion therapy.

Doesn’t work and its not really therapeutic, but a perversion of it.

Link

Also, conversion therapy.

I am not sure of the exact term, but you might be able to find it if you go to some of the links on this Wikipedia page that talks about the “ex-gay” movement as some of the churches have referred to the attempt to turn gay people straight.

One of my gay friends was the son of a Presbyterian minister, who had no idea that his son was gay and he (the father) was a practicioner of this type of “therapy”. The shit hit the proverbial fan when my friend finally came out. His parents dis-owned him for several years and most of his family refused to come to my friend’s commitment ceremony. It was awful, because except for being gay, my friend was one of the sweetest, kindest, most upstanding, compassionate, law abiding citizen that you could ever know. But his parents were certain that he was going straight to hell and they had no intention of standing by their son. After a few years, they eventually started talking to him again, but would not allow my friend’s partner into their home and never talked about him (as though he didn’t exist) and their relationship remains strained until this day. The irony of this is that my friend and his partner met at a Presbetarian University, and they both said that there were a lot of closeted gays attending the school. That’s how they came to know each other.

Thank you, @klutzaroo. I was just assuming it was called Conversion Therapy, but I’m glad that you brought Aversion Therapy to my attention as well.

A con game. It’s where charlatans and unscrupulous psychology professionals take lots of hard-earned cash to ostensibly do something that can’t be done.

“Torture.” It is also historically effective for making straight people gay, atheist people christian, and free people obedient.

getting them to stop playing with the other team

Self-delusion and a con game.

The term “Reparative Therapy” is also used because they are operating on the (false) assumption that gays have an incomplete bond with the same -sex parent and incomplete role modeling. The so-called therapy is designed to (supposedly) repair this deficit, thus the term Reparitive.

It’s kind of a weird offshoot of the old weak or absent father/controlling Mother theory from the Freudian way of thinking from the turn of the century. This has long since been discredited by standard Psychology based on subsequent studies.

But Reparative therapy still operates from this outmoded perspective. Somehow they manage to overlook all the gay folks who grew up with a terrific and healthy relationship with both parents and still came out gay.

The other part of the “repair” focuses on stereotypical behavior stuff. Guys are told to get involved with sports and other “macho” activities and avoid things like the arts, dance, fashion and design, etc.

They are told to study and mimic the mannerisms of straight men in how they talk, walk, sit, etc. As if that’s going to change anything on the inside. All this nonsense based on stereotypes.

I vividly remember one kid whose Father was determined to eliminate all traces of possible gayness in his son. This wasn’t part of any therapy as the kid was only 8 yrs. old, for crying out loud.

He was an Army Sergeant (a drill instructor yet) and I could always tell when he’d been really badgering the kid over the weekend.

“Johnny” had a way of talking vividly with a lot of hand gestures and “running like a girl” (according to the Father).

So after a weekend of being drilled in “manly” behavior, the poor kid would be standing awkwardly around the playground, hesitant to run around like he usually did and jamming both hands deep into his pockets to avoid any untoward mannerisms and looking totally miserable.

Fortunately it didn’t last more than a day or so till he was happily going around just being his happy little self, hand gestures and all.

I can only suppose this Father had never met any Ittalians like my BIL who talks with his hands all the time. And he’s a totally macho type.

This particular Father was just doing this more or less instinctively (based upon stereotypical assumptions).

But it’s appalling to realize that there are supposedly intelligent and better educated “Reparative therapists” advocating the exact same stupidity to “cure” gay patients.

Completely Ridiculous Appalling Patronising, or C.R.A.P to use it’s abbreviation.

It is called Sexual Healing, and it involves many, many cold showers.

It’s called an exercise in futility…

@ratboy So far the cure rate is rather disappointing. About 8% of those who receive repeated cold showers completely abandon gay relationships for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, that number correlates perfectly with the percentage who die due to hypothermia, pneumonia or other negative effects of the cold showers. But the good news is that all those who died in therapy exhibited a recidivism rate of exactly Zero, so this is very encouraging to the Cure the Gay movement. They are hoiping to get the showers cold and frequent wnough that they can boost that cure rate from its current 8% to 100%.

Aversion therapy?