Selling the Promise of Change: The United Nations NGO Panel on Sexual Orientation Change Efforts

Abstract

In 2013, The United Nations (UN) Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Committee for Human Rights and the NGO Committee on HIV/AIDS, in collaboration with the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office (UU-UNO), organized the first UN panel on Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE). The program was called Selling the Promise of Change: International Health and Policy Consequences of Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE). The event featured a panel of experts presenting on this controversial issue, providing a rigorous examination from different frameworks. The topic was reviewed from medical, political, international, legal, academic, personal, and religious perspectives. The author, who was the organizer of the event, gives a summary of the event and speakers.

KEYWORDS:

• human rights
• United Nations
• lesbian
• gay
• LGBT
• sexual orientation change efforts
• conversion therapy

Notes

¹Williams, R. R. (Director). (2013). God loves Uganda [Documentary]. United States: Full Credit Productions. Retrieved from http://www.godlovesuganda.com/

²See Drescher, J., & Merlino, J. P. (Eds.) (2007). American psychiatry and homosexuality: An oral history. New York, NY: Routledge.