It’s hard to say how widespread it was overall because lobotomy itself was popular in different pockets of the United States. For example Dr. Walter Freeman, the inventor of the transorbital lobotomy, who drove around the country in what was called his “lobotomobile”, was not allowed to perform lobotomies at his home hospital - St. Elizabeth’s in Washington DC. Even at the height of popularity for lobotomies, the procedure was not practiced everywhere and many institutions pushed back on the idea. Some objected to the laissez-faire attitude that Dr. Freeman had, and some objected to the procedure outright. Not every director of mental asylums was comfortable with just sticking what was essentially an ice pick into a brain and moving it back-and-forth almost arbitrarily. Surprisingly a lot of institutional directors were apalled not necessarily by the procedure but by the public information about it. Dr. Freeman didn’t confine his writing to books and scientific articles. He spoke directly to the American people through popular magazines, which was considered a HUGE professional no-no at the time. (It’s fairly standard practice now). But at the time it was considered reckless and many institutional directors were not comfortable with someone they consider reckless doing brain surgery on their patients.

But let me address your question directly. Transorbital lobotomy was very popular in certain areas of the country and in mental asylums that were overcrowded and could not handle the number of patients that they had. They needed their patients to go home. Dr. Freeman made big claims about what a lobotomy could do and he didn’t just limit it to psychotic disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders. He branched out. I can’t find any mention of homosexuality in my most thorough books on psychosurgery, however, it seems extremely likely that it would have been used. Homosexuals would have been considered excellent candidates for lobotomy by the standards of the time. Barring comorbid psychological disorders, homosexual patients didn’t have any of the mental “derangement” seen in their fellow mentally ill patients. To Dr. Freeman and institutional directors that would make ideal candidates for psychosurgery. Dr. Freeman didn’t go around teaching doctors to perform lobotomies on all but the most sickest of patients. No, picture the Oprah meme: “You get a lobotomy and you get a lobotomy. . .” Dr. Freeman really was that kind of a cheerleader for the treatment. And in overcrowded, underfunded asylums, where doctors can do little more but watch helplessly as their patients suffered, that kind of promise is going to look like a beacon of hope.

That being said we don’t have a lot of data on the use of lobotomies on people who were homosexual because in addition to the taboo that surrounded the “illness”, there would have been no real opposition to its use in that patient population. Homosexuality was officially considered a mental illness in America until 1973, (by contrast, the last lobotomy Dr. Freeman performed was in 1967. So using mental illness treatments on someone who is homosexual made sense and was nothing out of the ordinary. It’s likely that some institutional directors found that a lobotomy was not useful on someone who is homosexual and they decided for their institution not to proceed with lobotomies for that cause but it’s hard to know because homosexuality was such an incredibly taboo subject at the time. Taboo + it’s an illness = no opposition or objection. No one would champion the cause of homosexuals Lobotomies stopped being used for mental illness because lobotomies stopped being used.

it seems extremely likely that homosexuality would have been “treated” with psychosurgery, but because of the taboo it is very hard to know.

There’s also not a lot of primary data. Starting during the Kennedy administration but really picking up speed in the Reagan administration these public state hospitals were closed one after another and left abandoned. Countless records were lost. And because of the taboo around mental illness, families kept their relatives’ inpatient stays and treatments very hush hush. It was analogous to the kind of covering up of teen pregnancies at the time. The stories of lobotomized individuals.

Things were a little different in Europe. My expertise is in the US, but things were a little less puritanical, so we have the use of lobotomies as conversion therapy well documented.

So I guess the short answer to your questions is that while it’s extremely likely that lobotomies were used as conversion therapy, we don’t have much evidence and if it was used that way, there was almost no objection. If I may speak as a queer woman, it’s pretty horrifying.

They are one is one caveat to my answer and that’s the fact that I don’t know how it was handled in the US military. Recently, documents on the use of lobotomy among American military have been released and there was a Wall Street Journal article about it but I will confess that I don’t have enough information to answer your question for the military. A quick glance through the data I have seen gives me the impression that it was used among homosexuals in the military, as well as deserters and patients with “shell shock” (now known as PTSD). But I really can’t give you a well sourced answer to that aspect.

I happen to own a first edition of Walter Freeman’s book on psychosurgery. I am going to skim it and see if I’ve missed something critical but I’ll have to do it later, I’m dog sitting my brother’s derpy lovable pitbull, he can be unintentionally destructive when he wants to express his affection for you and that book is $350 and difficult to replace.