To be taken heavily, treatments that declare to “cure” homosexuality wrap themselves in lab coats. even if the healthy is undesirable, and such remedies and their theorists now inhabit the medical fringe, the technology of sexuality has made a few alterations, too, Tom Waidzunas tells us during this provocative paintings.

Intervening within the politics of sexuality and technological know-how, The instantly Line argues that medical definitions of sexual orientation don't simply replicate the result of investigations into human nature, yet really emerge via a strategy of social negotiation among opposing teams. The demedicalization of homosexuality and the discrediting of reparative treatments, ex-gay ministries, and reorientation examine have, Waidzunas contends, required scientists to implement key obstacles round medical services and examine tools. Drawing on wide player remark at meetings for ex-gays, reorientation therapists, mainstream psychologists, and survivors of ex-gay treatment, in addition to interviews with specialists and activists, The directly Line strains reorientation debates within the usa from the Fifties to the current, following homosexuality treatments from the mainstream to the margins. because the ex-gay circulate has develop into more and more transnational in recent times, Waidzunas turns to Uganda, the place principles concerning the medical nature of homosexuality stimulated the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014.

While so much stories deal with the ex-gay stream as a non secular phenomenon, this e-book seems to be at how the move, in its makes an attempt to set up legitimacy, has engaged with clinical associations, shaping virulent anti-gay public policy.