02-10-2010, 09:50 PM
I'd not thought of the ex-gay sadists in quite this light ...
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Quote:All too often, ineffective or dangerous remedies, no longer saleable in the West, are exported to Africa. The notion that homosexuality can be 'cured' is just one example.
Drug dumping – when unreliable, useless or dangerous pharmaceutical products are donated to countries in the South – can make bad situations worse. For instance, during emergency relief operations, “Expired drugs (at the time of their arrival) and drugs close to expiry still comprise a large proportion of donations from non-governmental organisations, corporations, pharmaceutical industries and associations,” as pointed out in a World Health Organization (WHO) Bulletin in 2008 by Cristina P. Pinheiro.
Treatments now seldom used in the West may continue to be common in poorer countries. For instance, medicines effective against HIV but with dangerous, sometimes deadly, side-effects continued to be widely used in Africa years after they stopped being routinely administered to North American and European patients. Even when there are some benefits, it is questionable whether treatments no longer acceptable in the West should be regarded as good enough for people in other parts of the world.
Methods aimed at 'curing' homosexuality, which failed badly in the West, are now being peddled in Africa and elsewhere. And the discredited theories behind these methods are being used to try to justify harsh repression, for instance in Uganda, where parliament may pass a law inflicting life imprisonment on gays and lesbians, and jailing heterosexuals such as clergy, who do not inform on members of their congregations.
Quote:The debate over 'curing' gay and lesbian sexuality is sometimes portrayed as a source of tension between the 'liberal' West and the more socially conservative South. But much of the treatment of LGBT people in Europe and North America over the past eighty years or so has been far from liberal. It did however, become clear through bitter experience that attempts to change orientation were unlikely to succeed. Sooner or later, many of the Ugandans and others in the South who are keen to import such 'treatments' will find they do more harm than good. However, it is hard to estimate how many more people, both LGBT and heterosexual, will have had their lives wrecked.
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