Ex-gay Movement

The ex-gay movement consists of people and organizations that seek to encourage people to refrain from entering or pursuing same-sex relationships, to eliminate homosexual desires, to develop heterosexual desires, or to enter into a heterosexual relationship. When the term ex-gay was introduced to professional literature in 1980, E. Mansell Pattison defined it as describing a person who had "experienced a basic change in sexual orientation". The ex-gay movement relies on the involvement of individuals who formerly considered themselves to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual but no longer assert that identity; these individuals may either claim that they have eliminated their attraction to the same sex altogether or simply that they abstain from acting on such attraction.

A large body of research and mainstream scientific consensus indicates that being gay, lesbian, or bisexual is compatible with normal mental health and social adjustment. Because of this, major mental health professional organizations discourage and caution individuals against attempting to change their sexual orientation to heterosexual, and warn that attempting to do so can be harmful. During U.S. congressional hearings on the constitutionality of DOMA, on February 23, 2011, the Attorney General of the United States wrote to the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives indicating it is a growing scientific consensus that sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic.

On May 17, 2012 the Pan American Health Organization stated that services that purport to "cure" people with non-heterosexual sexual orientations lack medical justification and represent a serious threat to the health and well-being of affected people, and noted that the professional consensus is that homosexuality is a natural variation of human sexuality and cannot be regarded as a pathological condition.