When hearing the word "counseling," most of us imagine a licensed healthcare professional. What we don't imagine is emotional manipulation, thinly veiled proselytism, and actual shock therapy carried out by parties neither licensed nor knowledgeable in the practice of healthcare.

Conversion therapy is a barbaric remnant of a shameful past, when people genuinely believed that you could "pray the gay away." We know better now, and it's time to put this behind us.