Strange things are associated with Michigan’s conversion therapy ban.
For one thing, the 6th Circuit recently struck it down. This is unusual, given the US Supreme Court’s pending decision on Colorado’s similar law.
However, the oddities don’t end there, thanks to the Left’s notorious practice of redefining words to promote their agenda and win culture wars.
Conversion therapy bans follow this pattern.
Let’s break it down.
What is a ban?
A ban prohibits something that exists.
In contrast, Michigan’s bill package first created a term called Conversion Therapy. Then, it banned its new creation.
That’s not a legitimate ban, it’s a straw man fallacy.
It never should have passed. With an alert, informed citizenry, it may not have.
The Real Conversion Therapy
Most of us assume that “conversion” in “conversion therapy” means to change gender identity.
Actually, “conversion” has had a different meaning since psychology began.
According to Freud, a patient subconsciously converts repressed memories into physical symptoms.
These days, American psychiatric terms are defined by the American Psychological Association in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).
The 1994 DSM-4 defines conversion disorder as “the presence of symptoms or deficits affecting voluntary motor or sensory function that suggest a neurological or other general medical condition.”
In other words, physical symptoms. Not gender identity: that has a distinctly separate listing in the DSM-4.
The DSM-5 (published in 2013) states that medically-unexplained symptoms remain a key feature in conversion disorder. Again, not issues of gender identity. To find those in the DSM-5, one must look under “gender dysphoria.”
Gender identity and conversion disorder are not the same thing.
Yet somehow, an internet search displays dozens of claims that conversion therapy is any form of therapy that attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation, behaviors, or gender identity. So I did some digging.
Where did the strange new definition of conversion therapy come from?
The earliest, frequently-cited source is Issue brief: Sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts (so-called “conversion therapy”), co-produced by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA).
So-called “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy” refers to any form of intervention, such as individual or group, behavioral, cognitive, or milieu/environmental operations, that attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or sexual behaviors (sexual orientation change efforts [SOCE]) or an individual’s gender identity (gender identify change efforts [GICE]).1
Then, they use horrifying (but unsubstantiated) data to shock readers into agreement.
Practitioners of change efforts may employ techniques including:
• Aversive conditioning (e.g., electric shock, deprivation of food and liquids, smelling salts and chemically induced nausea)
• Biofeedback
• Hypnosis
• Masturbation reconditioning
In summary: the AMA and a fringe medical association led a wave of social change. America, ignoring psychology experts, followed an issue paper. Strange, indeed.
Michigan lawmakers followed the playbook
When they passed the conversion therapy ban in 2023, Michigan lawmakers also ignored the standard DSM definition of conversion. Instead, they embedded the AMA/GLMA agenda-driven definition into the Michigan Code of Laws.
Michigan lawmakers used the same “shock and awe” argument to pass the Michigan conversion therapy ban. The committee hearing was so vicious, I felt sick watching it. Documenting it, I felt the only appropriate name was, The Mean Girls Episode. There was an attempt to restore civility, which made our MHF Defender Award nomination list.
The Real Target
You’d never guess it from leftist propaganda, but the extreme techniques they list haven’t been used for decades. Interesting listen: Janet Parshall October 27, 2025 Hour 2 (Available for 1 year)
Without real medical abusers to go after, conversion therapy laws instead target counselors who refuse to comply with the political gender confusion agenda.
From where I sit, Michigan lawmakers raised politicization of health policy to a whole new level in 2023. In passing the conversion therapy ban, they set a terrible precedent in the misuse of law.
Law has no place defining medical terms
The US Supreme Court decision on the Colorado ban’s constitutionality is pending in Chiles v. Salazar. Oral arguments centered on Freedom of Speech. The left appears to have succeeded in redefining conversion therapy: there was no mention of its real meaning, much less any attempt to retake it.
It’s to be hoped SCOTUS doesn’t just overturn Conversion Therapy Bans, but thoroughly trounces the entire concept. If justice prevails, it will be so well publicized that the trouncing will extend to state legislators who passed these laws. In an ideal world, voter awareness would prohibit such use of law well into the future.
