"More Homosexuals Aided to Become Heterosexuals."

That headline appeared on the front page of the February 28, 1971, edition of the New York Times. The article details how homosexuals who want to become straight have to be motivated to change their sexual orientations—motivated enough to endure up to 350 individual sessions, group therapy sessions, and shock treatments.

"The doctors say that their techniques would apply equally to male and female homosexuals," the report notes, "[but] lesbians rarely seek treatment and, when they do, they are usually not interested in changing their sexual orientation."

After assuring the readers of the New York Times that it would take "5,000 psychiatrists... to help all the homosexuals who might want" to become straight, one of the doctors quoted in the story suggests that the government fund "sexual mental health clinics" all over the country, and support groups modeled on AA for former homosexuals.

We need to know—and we need to remind the mainstream media, including the New York Times—that people have been peddling this "ex-gay" bullshit for a very, very long time. Eventually mental health professionals realized that they were wrong about homosexuality—we weren't sick; society was. Being gay wasn't a mental illness, although what gay people were forced to endure could induce mental illness.

Today, religious groups peddle the same garbage—no one has to be gay; gay people can become straight people, if we're motivated to change. Only now, instead of electric shock and therapy, it's Jesus Christ and miracles. It was bullshit then; it's bullshit now.