Changing Minds About Not Can but Ought

Abstract

In my presidential speech to the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy (now the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies) at the 1974 Annual Convention, I took the position that requests for sexual reorientation should be declined in favor of addressing the ethical and political factors that underlie the allegedly voluntary requests of gay individuals to change in a heterosexual direction. Discrimination, prejudice, and sometimes hate crimes made it highly unlikely that requests for sexual reorientation were voluntary. The personal and professional context for my change of perspective is also described as are several pedagogical and persuasive strategies I have used over the past 50 years for changing people's minds about the propriety of sexual orientation change efforts.