There is a long and horrific history of conversion therapy being used against LGBTQ+ people, and we’ve known for a very long time that it’s dangerous, damaging quackery. This article by Mallory Moore is a good introduction and comes with a ton of content warnings; it describes some very awful things done by supposedly respectable doctors and psychiatrists.

As Moore points out, the history is intertwined with so-called “race realism”, aka white supremacy; homosexuality and gender non-conformity were practiced by “savages” and “primitive races”, or were evidence of degeneracy among white people.

Even if you accept the core assumption that being LGBTQ+ is unnatural, which of course it isn’t, we have decades of evidence proving beyond any doubt that conversion therapy, whether in the form of violent aversion therapy, electro-shock therapy or “pray the gay away” therapy, just doesn’t work. It’s simply abuse.