......I think it is a mistake to dismiss it as whining and complaining when Christians condemn one solution without having a better one of their own. The teaching of the church needs to be Biblical. If you don't know the right answer, but know for certain that the proposed answer is definitely wrong, you have to say so. I don't know what to do about the homeless who are mentally ill. But I do know that euthanizing them is not an acceptable answer. So if I condemn some program of euthanizing the mentally ill, that condemnation is perfectly necessary, Biblical, and salutary even if I have no idea myself what to do about them. So it is with sexual immorality. I know for certain that treating a man having sex with a man the same as a man having sex with a woman is wrong, bad, and in all other ways unacceptable. It is part of my vocation to teach the 6th Commandment properly. And I can't wait until I have a solution for all the difficulties that people tempted toward that behavior face before I teach what God has revealed. I can try to nurture a community within which all know they are welcome as forgiven sinners. But the rest of the community is comprised of sinners, too, with other problems besides same-sex attraction. If I preach against, say, spousal abuse, I can't wait until I have the perfect community to compensate for whatever it is that makes someone feel the urge to abuse their spouse, which might be cultural, psychological, or medicinal at root, but which needs to stop. The behavior is condemned by the Commandments. The community that nurtures such sinners is an ongoing project.
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As for conversion therapy, I don't really know the ins and outs of how it is supposed to work. Your explanation is helpful. Taking as read that it doesn't work, of course it should not be done. But the people doing it were obviously not taking as read that it didn't work, and were not bad for wanting to do it. There are body parts meant for sex and procreation the way eyes are meant to see. When there is a tragic problem inhibiting a normal biological function, it is perfectly natural to want to fix it. It might not be fixable, agreed, but the desire to fix it is innocent. Parents want their children to have children because they love their children and want to love their grandchildren. The parents' desire might cause hurt when it isn't going to happen, but it is a genuine, natural, normal, and loving desire.
Let me address the second part first: Yes, there was something bad in wanting to change orientation and it lay in the reason WHY it was considered desirable to produce that change. There is a huge difference between wanting to repair a person's eyes so that they can see and wanting to repair a person's eyes so they can fit in and not be a source of shame to their parents' and community - a real situation in biblical times, by the way, as evidenced by the incident when Christ healed the blind man at the temple. So, also, had conversion therapy simply wished to afford a way to make opposite sex marriage and family a comfortable option for those who wished it, yes, it might have been commendable to try. But the emphasis was never on making a person sexually emotionally functional with a person of the opposite sex. The pressure to change orientation was so that the individual would fit in, the message was that THIS was the way to finally be loved by parents, the Church and God. Remember this the roots of conversion therapy developed at a time when homosexuals (not just those out and having sex but anyone who was attracted to their own sex) could not join boy scouts, could not join the military, could not hold government jobs or even a job in a company contracted to do government work, could not be portrayed in a positive light in movies or the media and were assumed to be likely child molesters in campaigns like "save our children" in Florida. The goal was not to make someone functional in marriage nor to help them bear the image of Christ. The goal was to do an end run around the Law and Gospel of the Bible and to make people like everyone else and thus to make them acceptable. Maybe you have to have been a LGBT person involved in the whole Exodus thing to truly understand the intense pressure that was put on the individual to change and the bizarre lengths people were willing to go to in order to be changed and to finally feel loved. It was really a very sick and frightening atmosphere now that I look back at it. In fact, those of us who said, "I am comfortable with celibacy and am handling my temptations OK, i don't think I really need to be attracted to women" were often scolded for "giving in to the devil and not desiring the things of God." It was really really scary and you can't separate that out and say "but the goals were good" when the goals themselves were, in fact, tied up with a very non-biblical attempt to make people feel loved by God by wanting to screw the opposite sex. In the abstract, one could imagine a therapist who just wanted to help someone overcome an inhibition toward a natural function. But we do not live in an abstract world and such an animal does not exist in real life.
I do have to give credit to the LCMS, by the way. At the time they were developing the document "A Plan for Ministry to Homosexuals and their Families" I inadvertently wound up helping to develop the final draft through a couple of letters I wrote. At the time I was really into the whole reparative therapy stuff myself and was confident it would work and I would be straight. I included a bunch of that in my letters but the task force intentionally cut it all saying that it was still unproven and they were more interested in providing spiritual support than therapy. As far as I know the LCMS is the only church body that has a history of intentionally rejecting conversion therapy. The LCMS is also, I think, the only conservative Church body to officially vote on a national level to allow LGBT people with a biblical view of marriage and sex to take a leadership role in developing ministry materials as was done this last summer when resolution 11-03a passed. We will see how that goes. So while the LCMS doesn't exactly have a history of opposing conversion therapy, we certainly have a history of refusing to endorse it.
Now, as to whether it is whining when we oppose a bad solution without offering a better - that would be true if we did not, in fact, have a better solution to offer. But when we do have a better solution and do not offer it then, yes, it is pissing and moaning to do nothing but oppose. As part of the time period when I was attending Exodus support groups and conferences, I happened to go to a group in Denver for a few years. It is true that they had a rapartive therapy base to their ideology. But they used the Moberly version and very little of Nicolosi. Moberly's proposal was that the Church could offer organic support for gay people where Nicolosi developed a clinical approach that became the reparative therapy that is practiced today. Though Moberly's basis was incorrect, much of her proposed solution was actually more in line with Christianity and, by the way, would not be outlawed by any legislation that forbid conversion therapy for the simple fact that it was not therapy. Anyway, this group took her suggestion that the Church should offer simple friendship and support to gay people and built their program around it. They met once a week and always went for coffee after the support meetings. Before every meeting a restaurant was chosen and anyone who desired could come and join the group for dinner. The meetings themselves were usually based around some kind of need gay people who are single and celibate might have. For instance, single gay people often have little physical human contact. So, at one meeting, a massage therapist came and told the group what massage therapy offers and offered reduced price massages for any group members. Once very six month members were allowed to bring their pastor if they so wished. And every month there would be some group activity scheduled such as a visit to the Denver zoo or Elitch Gardens or just a game night. I think the most fun I ever had was the night an Opera singer who was friends with one of the members sang Christmas carols. They also did not worry a whole lot if you agreed with their view on sex or not. They made it clear that they were primarily there to support people with a biblical view of sex. But if someone with the opposite view wanted to join in for the fellowship, that was fine, no big deal. Sadly, in the time I attended, I only knew of 3 pastors who had come on "bring your pastor night" and not church in Denver was really willing to pick up the ball and do something similar to this group. But it is precisely this kind of inclusion and fellowship that the Church could offer as opposed to the solutions of the world and doesn't. So yes, when the Church has so much to offer and so simply and yet does nothing beyond complain about the efforts of the world to keep kids alive, then I will certainly call it whining and pissing and moaning and dismiss it.
By the way, if any pastor really wants to do something to help it would be really easy. Just make the following offer a few Sundays in a row: "If any one in this congregation experiences attraction to their own sex or difficulties feeling like they fit their body's gender, I would like to invite you come talk to me. I won't pretend I have any answers but I also won't scold you. I just want to hear from you, learn what your experience is like and maybe ask some question to understand you better and to see how we, as a church, might be able to help you" I once asked in an online support group of 200 same sex attracted men who believed sex was reserved for marriage between a man and a woman what their response would be if their pastor made that offer. There were dozens of replies that they would be in their pastor's office as soon as possible. Pastors have members wanting to talk to them about these thing. They just have to make the offer and promise they won't shame them. And even if, ultimately, the person makes a decision that takes them in a different path than the one the pastor might want, it is better to have the communication early than wait until the person is leaving the church in anger.
