“Why haven’t you taken out an application to seminary?” Simon Fung’s spiritual director asked him late in his senior year of college.
The devout Catholic looked at the priest and said that there was only one thing holding him back — he was attracted to men.
Quietly, Fung said, the priest scribbled a website down, told Fung to talk to a counselor and to come back in a year.
Credit: George Rudy / Shutterstock.
So Fung set out. He was determined to change his sexual orientation so he wouldn’t miss out on his vocation.
In the early 2000s, he moved to New York City and started working for a pro-life advocacy organization, and in Catholic media, to save money for therapy.
With funds secured, Fung began seeing renowned conversion therapist Dr. Phillip Mango in 2008. Mango promised that within three to five years he would be attracted to women, Fung told The Pillar.
Mango, who had a stroke earlier this year, was unable to respond to The Pillar’s request for comment.
But according to Fung, “this therapist used his homegrown protocol of essentially helping me deconstruct my attractions and identify trauma, identify areas of faulty parenting, identify areas where I was bullied and had peer rejection.”
“And I had all of those things. I didn’t have a good relationship with my dad. I was bullied very, very severely as a young child in grade school.”
“I was all in. I felt hopeful that if I could resolve all these traumas that I would resolve the issues that made me gay.”
Fung worked hard to comply with what he was being instructed to do. He aimed to address wounds in his life, attended healing ministries, and worked to “develop his masculine identity” by playing sports.
But five years passed, and Fung found himself still attracted to men, out a few thousand dollars and, he said, with lasting psychological and spiritual wounds.
“I was very depressed by the end. I felt like God had abandoned me. I felt that if all of this effort wasn’t working as it was seemingly promised to me, then God must hate me at some very crude level or that I was just so bad and broken,” Fung said.
“I felt abandoned by God and I still suffer from a lot of the spiritual wounds of that despair.”
What Fung experienced, he says, demonstrates why “conversion therapy” is a dangerous idea.
Simon Fung. Courtesy photo.
The idea of “conversion therapy” is both complicated and controversial — with professionals, including Catholics, debating what should classify as conversion therapy, and even whether it’s really practiced very much today.
Nailing down a precise definition of “conversion therapy” can be difficult, and that difficulty is one of the challenges in discussing the concept from a Catholic perspective.
In general, conversion therapy is understood to mean an effort to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through talk therapy.
While that definition may seem straightforward, its boundaries are sometimes debated. For example, the term is also sometimes used to describe efforts to help a person change sexual or gender-related behavior, such as through encouragements for LGBT people to live chastely.
“How common conversion therapy is is dependent on how it’s defined,” said Dr. Andrew Sodergren, a Catholic and director of the Ohio-based Ruah Woods Psychological Services.
Early efforts at conversion therapy were often involuntary, practiced coercively, for example, at a time when homosexual behavior was illegal. Methods included electric shocks and chemical-induced nausea aimed at replacing undesired attractions with aversions.
But even after those methods were discarded, critics say that conversion therapy methods in recent decades have used emotional manipulation, or postulated ambiguous theories about the causes of homosexuality, as a means of promising patients that homosexual attraction could be cured.
Neither the early methods nor mindset are in use today, according to several psychologists who spoke with The Pillar.
And according to Sodergen, all contemporary therapists are trained in methods which emphasize the free choice, and free autonomy, of their patients.
“The reality is, our professional ethics have emphasized the self-determination of the patient and the need to respect the patient’s autonomy for decades,” Sodergen said.
“We are not permitted to impose a particular therapeutic goal or outcome on the patient, whether in the area of sexuality or in any other area,” he added.
In fact, Sodergen said that he doesn’t think “conversion therapy,” as it’s typically understood, happens very much at all today.
“If we’re thinking of it in terms of some type of coercive approach, where the therapist is trying to induce a change in the patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity, I think that is exceptionally, exceptionally rare,” Sodergren said.
But other mental health professionals told The Pillar that the practice of conversion therapy still exists today, though sometimes framed in different language.
The general premise, they said, is a claim that same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria are caused by trauma, damaged relationships, or other psychological wounds in a person’s life, and that if these wounds are healed, the same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria will resolve itself.
Critics of that approach argue that it is not supported by scientific evidence. That type of conversion therapy often fails, they say, and when it does, it can leave the patient with a crisis of faith and deep psychological wounds.
The idea of “conversion therapy” has faced new scrutiny in recent weeks.
On October 7, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Chiles v. Salazar. The case, filed by Christian psychologist Kaley Chiles, a counselor in Colorado Springs, contests a 2019 Colorado state law which prohibits therapists from practicing conversion therapy with minors.
The law defines the practice as “efforts to change an individual’s sexual orientation, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
Chiles argues that the law violates her First Amendment right to freedom of speech, as it limits what she can say in counseling.
A decision is expected in the case by June. But it has already divided Catholic experts in psychology, theology, and law, with differing stances emerging even among those who say they affirm the Church’s doctrine on sexuality.
David Crawford, a professor of moral theology and family law at the John Paul II Institute, said he supports Chiles’ argument in the case.
“Colorado prevents a counselor from putting forward one viewpoint because the state favors a different viewpoint. It is viewpoint discrimination,” he told The Pillar. “Counselors can talk about the question of identity or same-sex attraction, as long as they essentially encourage or affirm those feelings.”
“If the purpose of the treatment or the conversation between the counselor and the patient is based on the idea of the patient wanting to eliminate those feelings, they are not allowed to do that.”
Crawford argues that the Church has an interest in the case because behind the legality are questions concerning human anthropology.
“It’s a concern for the Church because what’s really at stake here is the nature of the human person,” Crawford said. “The counselor is being forced to speak in a certain way, under the presupposition that one really is, by nature, attracted to the same sex or in the instance of somebody who is trans, as though it’s really true that I could possess some identity that is different from my body.”
“Those assumptions are contrary to a Christian understanding of the human person and there are wide implications for that. It’s not just about what happens in the office of a counselor, this is about the structure and meaning that we give things in our society, in our culture.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops appealed to Catholic anthropology and freedom of speech in an amici brief filed in support of Chiles. It was joined in the brief by the Catholic University of America and the Colorado Catholic Conference.
“Colorado is ordering Catholic clients and counselors that they may not—even when they want to—discuss the ideas that they believe in, or take the approach that their Church has expressly recommended,” the brief states.
“Counseling is a heavily regulated profession, but it is also a profession that implicates profound and even religious questions, as here. Counseling would be impoverished without a sphere of protection for speech.”
Sodergren, too, is in support of Chiles’ position. He believes that laws like Colorado’s should be amended to allow therapists more freedom to practice and say what they would like in counseling.
“The devil’s in the details with this law,” he said. “When you get into the specific wording of these laws, it is possible to carve out a safe path focusing on what’s allowed, such as, identity exploration and development. That’s within the law and it’s permitted. But it is a very fine line which makes many psychologists hesitant.”
But Dr. Julia Sadusky, a psychologist in Littleton, Colorado who describes herself as a conservative Catholic, disagrees with Chiles’ position. She says the Colorado law does not limit her practice, but instead serves as a healthy protection for minors.
Sadusky, who specializes in the field of sexual development, also signed on to an amici brief in the Chiles v. Salazar case – but hers was in support of the Colorado law. The brief was filed on behalf of three therapists who “follow traditional and theologically conservative Christian teachings surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation.”
Despite the claims of the law’s opponents, Sadusky and colleagues argued that “Colorado’s law does not require practitioners to pursue certain outcomes or prohibit them from expressing views about conversion therapy.”
The brief says that the Colorado law “does not require mental health counselors to encourage minors to identify in any particular way, including as LGBTQ; to enter same-sex relationships; or to transition. In other words, mental health practitioners need not (and typically should not) set as a goal of therapy any fixed outcome in terms of gender or sexuality.”
Sadusky told The Pillar that in her view, little research exists supporting psychological protocols aiming to eliminate attractions or desires themselves.
“When you are a licensed provider, you have to have research to support the interventions that you’re offering. And if you don’t have that research, the burden’s on you to provide it. And of all the research that’s been done, we have not been able to see that effectiveness there, which is why I think the Colorado ban, as it stands, is wise.”
When young people are given the expectation that they can eradicate sexual attraction or gender distress through therapy, Sadusky said, they are being set up for disillusionment down the road.
“Young people, especially those who are zealous Catholics, will do anything if they feel like it’s what God’s asking them to do,” Sadusky said. “So when therapeutic interventions don’t work to make the attractions or gender questions go away, they blame themselves or they argue that ‘If God really existed, if God really loved me, He would’ve healed me of this.’”
“That causes immense schism and conflict in their relationship with God,” she said.
In their brief, Sadusky and her colleagues said that they “often meet with clients after negative experiences with conversion therapy.”
At her practice, Sadusky works with patients with both sexual orientation conflicts and with gender dysphoria.
She utilizes Sexual Identity Therapy and Gender and Religious Identity Therapy. The latter is an approach she developed with Dr. Mark Yarhouse. The goal is to address a spectrum of psychological issues, in addition to questions about gender dysphoria or same-sex attraction.
Part of that approach involves assessing for and treating co-occurring mental health concerns, such as depression and anxiety.
“I always try to assess right out the gate what mental health concerns are at play with somebody, to make sure that we’re not just focusing on identity questions at the expense of a person’s overall mental health,” Sadusky said.
“You don’t want to be making decisions about identity out of, for instance, the depressed mood state. You would want that to be treated effectively as a priority.”
Sadusky’s technique also includes an exploratory approach to address either gender identity or sexual orientation concerns.
“We try to create space for young people to explore identity, not seeing ourselves as the ones who just come in and give them the answer, but actually trusting the work that we do in therapy with them,” she said.
That work includes building critical thinking, self-reflection, family support, emotional regulation, and distress tolerance skills.
“If we give quality, effective therapy, people will come to recognize their (orientation or identity) on their own over time,” Sadusky said.
Sadusky says that her approach to therapy is both helpful and orthodox — and operates within the limits of the Colorado law.
She disagrees with critics of the law who argue that it bans neutral talk therapy. She believes her approach is neutral – in the case of a person with gender dysphoria, neither pushing them to transition nor pushing them to identify with their biological sex.
The goal of her therapy is not to change a person’s gender identity, nor is it necessarily to remove the distress they feel over the divergence between gender identity and biological sex.
Rather, the goal is to help the person cope with the distress they experience over that divergence.
“Especially with minors, this includes prioritizing coping strategies that are reversible and less invasive, whenever possible,” Sadusky said.
She likened her approach to the experience of therapy for treatment of anxiety. The therapy may not be able to eradicate the experience of anxiety, but it can help the patient cope with their anxiety in healthier ways.
“I am willing to offer competent therapy when trauma symptoms are present and always treat co-occurring concerns, but I am very clear with families that I have no way of knowing if those symptoms are the cause of a person’s distress,” she said.
In some cases, patients find that once co-occurring mental health concerns are addressed, their gender distress subsides, and their gender identity matches their biological sex. But that’s not always the outcome, and Sadusky never promises that it will be.
“If the gender distress subsides after effective evidence-based treatment, great. But I work with families on accepting the very real possibility that it will not.”
Sadusky emphasized that in her view, it’s important for Christian therapists to find ways to work with the industry groups they often criticize.
“Too often when I supervise Catholic clinicians I see fear about being connected to organizations like APA (American Psychological Association),” she said.
“The reason I remain connected, in part, is that there’s a need for us to be contributing resources that are psychologically-grounded and congruent with faith within our field. If we don’t, we ought not be surprised that the field fails sometimes to incorporate Catholic anthropology.”
Dr. Julia Sadusky. Courtesy photo.
The Catholic Church does not explicitly discuss conversion therapy. But Catholics on both sides of the debate cite passages in Church documents to support their views.
In 2005, the Congregation for Catholic Education published a document titled, “Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies.” The document drew a distinction between “deep seated homosexual tendencies” and those that experience homosexual tendencies as a “transitory problem.”
To Sodergen, “the important thing in this document is this distinction that the Church makes. It presupposes the idea that there are some experiences of same-sex attraction that could be amenable to change.”
“In this case, the Church is encouraging men who believe they are being called to the priesthood to try to work through those feelings. And in some cases, that may involve seeking some type of psychotherapeutic help.”
People should be free to seek and receive that help, Sodergren said, even if it may not be guaranteed to be effective.
While critics of conversion therapy argue that science does not show it to be effective, Chiles and her lawyers argued before the Supreme Court that there is a lack of published research showing that the practice is harmful or ineffective.
As to the risk of psychological harm in therapy aimed at changing sexual attraction or gender identity, Sodergren argued that any medical or psychological care carries inherent risks, and those perceived risks should not deter practitioners.
“A textbook I read in grad school estimated that about 10% of psychotherapy outcomes are harmful. We have to recognize that there’s a lot of therapy out there that’s not particularly good or helpful even beyond the realm of sexuality or gender,” he said.
“I’m sure there have been practitioners who maybe were not particularly thoughtful, ethical, or skilled, and people have had some bad experiences but that doesn’t mean that working in this space in a gentle and ethical way is impossible or that we need broadly worded bans to scare practitioners away from providing services that are well within sort of a traditional understanding of appropriate psychotherapy to prevent these negative outcomes.”
But Fung said he experienced significant harm from his efforts to therapeutically change his sexual orientation. He thinks there are still significant gaps in the science surrounding the issue, and he hopes that the Church will proceed with caution as it continues to explore questions about sexuality.
Fung pointed to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states that “[Homosexuality’s] psychological genesis remains largely unexplained.”
“According to the Catechism, the Church doesn’t actually know what causes this, let alone how to fix it or address it or psychologically change it. To me, that’s the bedrock here,” he said. “Any kind of profession that involves healing needs to proceed with caution, and we need to proceed with the principle of do no harm.”
“When you are dealing with people’s psyches, especially the psyches of developing young people, you have to be really, really careful. And I would say having that kind of humility that the Church has around what it does and doesn’t know about these issues is going to be really key.”
Father Nate Hall, a priest who has worked closely with the group Eden Invitation, emphasized to The Pillar that from a theological perspective, it is important to note that God can change a person’s attractions, because God is all powerful – but that doesn’t mean that he must do so, or that he will.
“God can do anything. He absolutely could. He is all powerful. But it is not a necessity that he changes those desires,” Hall told The Pillar. “He doesn’t necessarily have to for someone’s salvation.”
In his ministry, Hall said he has met people who have had negative experiences with conversion therapy. He does not recommend that people pursue therapies focused explicitly on trying to change sexual desires.
“I spoke with somebody who went through conversion therapy for a long time and it really hurt the person pretty badly,” Hall said. “There’s a lot of shame, a lot of practice that left him trying to pick up the pieces more so than before.”
Another complication in discussing the concept of conversion therapy is the way that sexual orientation and gender identity are often discussed together, when they are in reality “very different phenomena,” Sodergren said.
“It is very rare for people to come to therapy wanting to change their sexual orientation,” he said.
But seeking therapy for gender dysphoria – which is still considered a diagnosable mental disorder – may be more common.
Sodergren is concerned that the Colorado law would limit a practitioner’s ability to help a child experiencing gender dysphoria.
“It prevents anything that would support your child feeling good about the sexuality revealed by their body,” he said.
“Research from the 1980 through early 2000s showed that the vast majority of those cases of early gender dysphoria were amenable to treatment and tended to resolve, oftentimes by the time the child reached puberty. But in today’s climate, the only treatment that is supported and encouraged and largely offered are interventions that would encourage the child to adopt a trans identification and begin to experiment with social transition.”
Sadusky disagrees. She says she has worked with a number of children and teens experiencing gender dysphoria, and that her work was effective, aligned with Church teaching, and in adherence with the law in Colorado.
“In every case, the parents have wanted to help a child cope with distress and get therapy for their mental health, without transitioning. In every case I have been able to work with them and help them with that process,” Sadusky said. “I have said this plainly to the attorney general’s office, giving these exact examples.”
Not everyone who comes to Sadusky is opposed to undergoing a social or medical gender transition. And she conceded that some of her patients ultimately decide to do so, although she said the number who make that choice is small, compared to the patients who either experience their gender identity begin to match their biological sex, or find adaptive coping strategies for their distress over their gender.
Sadusky does not view certain outcomes of therapy as a failure. To do that, she said, would be to misunderstand the role of the therapist.
“As a licensed professional, I will work with people who make decisions I wouldn’t make at all,” she said.
“Sometimes that’s very difficult for me to bear witness to when they make decisions I disagree with, yet part of my role, as a licensed psychologist, is walking with people, no matter their decisions.”
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on Chiles vs. Salazar in May or early June.