By Julie O'Connor

Half a century after experts renounced the idea that homosexuality is a disease, Jeffrey Danco is still trying to convert gays into straight people.

He’s not a preacher, or some infomercial huckster. He’s a clinical psychologist based in Bridgewater, one of only a handful of doctors who do “reparative therapy,” a fringe treatment discredited by the major professional counseling groups.

Mainstream experts say it has no basis in scientific evidence and runs the serious risk of making patients depressed and suicidal. But Danco is convinced it can help. You can change homosexuality like “any other sense of inadequacy or inferiority,” he tells his teenage patients.

Assemblyman Tim Eustace, a recently elected, openly gay Democrat from Bergen County, finds this frightening. The father of two sons who has been with his partner for 32 years, Eustace says it offends him as a parent.

“This is someone who claims to be a professional, who is making good money off a family, who could end up damaging a kid forever,” he said. “It’s a message akin to quackery.”

He plans to introduce a bill this week to outlaw so-called "gay conversion therapy" for licensed practitioners who perform it on minors, even with parental permission. New Jersey would be only the second state to do so, after California.

Because children often have little choice about therapy, Eustace argues the government should protect them — much in the way it restricts other potentially harmful activities, such as underage drinking, indoor tanning and buying cigarettes.

But Danco calls that a politically motivated government intrusion and says parents have the right to choose whatever therapy they want for their kids. And whether a bill like this would actually be signed into law, and upheld up by the courts, is a huge question mark.

NOT A DISEASE

Much of this debate can be traced back to a prominent psychiatrist in Princeton, Robert L. Spitzer. He’s the one who helped convince the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality from its manual of disorders in the early 1970s.

Spitzer recognized that homosexuality was different from other conditions defined as disorders because, unlike depression or alcohol dependence, it often didn’t cause distress or impairment. And earlier this year, he apologized for publishing the one shred of scientific evidence that appeared to support “reparative therapy,” saying the study was invalid because it was based only on personal anecdotes.

All the major counseling organizations have rejected reparative therapy. The World Health Organization pronounced it “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.”

Yet fringe practitioners refuse to give it up. It’s been heavily promoted by the Christian right, in what critics call a way of framing the condemnation of homosexuality as compassionate. Most people doing this therapy aren’t licensed; they’re lay counselors or life coaches. This law would apply only to licensed mental health professionals treating kids, but Eustace says it would send a strong message.

“Many people still have no idea that the leading treatment associations do not consider homosexuality a disease,” he said.

NANNY STATE?

Danco, an evangelical Christian, is aware of that assessment but firmly disagrees. He received his degree from a Christian psychology program in California and, like others doing this therapy, believes homosexuality is a choice.

“Reparative therapy” isn’t a big part of his practice, but over two decades, he said he’s used it on dozens of patients, many teenagers. The major counseling organizations don’t call it unethical, he points out. So why, if someone really wants to change and asks him to help, should he be forbidden from doing so?

Danco describes homosexuality as “a distortion in an individual’s sexual identity,” which can develop from past trauma, or when someone dissatisfied with his own physique doesn’t just admire characteristics of other men, but sexualizes them. He often encourages male patients to form platonic friendships by joining sports teams, and talks to the girls about their search for “a mother substitute.”

Does it work? The evidence is anecdotal. Danco would not produce a patient who would speak about it for this article, for confidentiality reasons. But former gays such as Greg Quinlan, 54, a lobbyist for a New Jersey group associated with the Family Research Council, says the therapy helped diminish his same-sex attraction.

“It helped me to realize that this was not biological, that it was emotional, and I did not have to accept these feelings if I didn’t want to,” Quinlan said. “I did not have to act on them.”

Former gays may retain some homosexual attraction, Danco says, but are able to form lasting opposite-sex relationships or be celibate. But the question isn’t whether his therapy is effective, he argues.

“That’s something for patients, consumers of psychological services and third-party payers to work out,” Danco says. “It’s: Where does the government have the right to come in and say this is harmful, when there’s no clinical or scientific evidence to show that it’s harmful?”

ANYTHING GOES

It’s true that there isn’t scientific proof, of either the therapy’s benefit or harm. There’s only anecdotal evidence of serious risks: feelings of worthlessness, self-hatred and suicide attempts.

Chaim Levin, a 23-year-old former Orthodox Jew, was referred by his rabbi to a Jersey City-based former gay ministry, called JONAH, when he was 17. He already felt despair, he said, but reparative therapy made him feel suicidal.

“In the beginning, you feel hopeful, because these people are promising that they know the answers,” Levin said. “Coming where I am from, an insular community, it was easy to believe. But over time, nothing really changed, aside from digging into really painful memories. The self-hate was only getting worse. It was all these ideas like, you’re gay because you’re not man enough, or your masculinity isn’t intact.”

He was forced to relive traumatic events, he said, like being called an anti-gay slur on the playground. But instead of helping him overcome his self-hatred, the therapy only left him more traumatized. He’s now working on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s campaign against conversion therapy.

A few dangerous side effects are often enough to take a medication off the market. But we don’t have that kind of federal oversight for psychotherapy. No talk therapy has ever been banned, and many parents would be shocked to learn how unregulated the profession is. There’s no gold standard, either for effectiveness or harm, similar to the type used in drug studies that follow patients over time. That’s harder to do with psychotherapy, so doctors tend to rely on anecdotal reports, or just experiment.

The licensing board or professional organizations generally punish only the most egregious cases of unethical behavior, such as sexual abuse of patients. They’re not trained to think about the issues of harm in gay conversion therapy. And if it is performed by a therapist at the request of a child’s parents, is the ethical violation as clear? Since there’s always some risk in psychotherapy, conversion therapists argue, why prohibit this particular treatment?

Other therapies that fall into disrepute have led to lawsuits, but no such bans — like "recovered memory" therapy, in which doctors tell patients they must have been sexually molested, even if they have no memory of it.

JUST TALK?

Outlawing gay conversion therapy may not stop doctors from doing it quietly, but it would likely have a chilling effect. Eustace plans to consult with the professional boards before deciding what the penalty should be.

A state statute would provide an additional piece of evidence in support of patients who seek disciplinary or civil action, but it wouldn’t change the burden of proof in a malpractice case, said Kevin Costello, a civil rights lawyer.

And the law may face constitutional challenges on issues of parental or religious rights, or free speech. The state would have to show its compelling interest to protect children, or argue that talk therapy can be regulated as commercial speech — or, perhaps, as a medical procedure. On the flip side, a plaintiff attacking the statute’s constitutionality would have to prove this therapy is beneficial, said Harold Cassidy, an experienced trial attorney.

Thomas Healy, a constitutional law professor at Seton Hall Law School, believes the proposed law would be most vulnerable on free speech grounds because it “really strikes at the heart of what psychiatrists do, which is to talk people through issues.”

Danco says that’s all he does with patients, many of whom sought him out especially for this therapy.

“We’re not doing indoctrination here, or some kind of mind control,” he said. “I don’t like to see my professional autonomy encroached upon.”

But Eustace says the government has the right to protect minors from a discredited treatment.

“It definitely is a form of child abuse,” he said, “because it leaves lasting damage.”

Julie O'Connor is a member of The Star-Ledger editorial board.