Psychologists Repudiate Gay-to-Straight Therapy

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
101

[quote]forlife wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
Actually, I’m trying to see if I can get you to post “every major medical and mental health … 47 years” a record number of times.

Because god forbid you address the actual point. Your entire argument depends on making others believe that the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychiatric Association, Surgeon General, etc. are ALL so politically biased, without exception, that their conclusions on homosexuality are worthless.
[/quote]

My argument hardly depends on that at all. As usual, you haven’t read it so you can’t find the nuance in it. But like George W., you don’t do nuance. I’m simply trying to get you to admit that these organizations are highly political, and that science is influenced by the politics. Politics definitely influenced the 1973 revision to the APA’s guidelines, as I’m sure you’ll be generous enough to admit. Were these organizations to stay out of politics and public policy altogether (and the Surgeon General is nothing but a political appointee, so please stop using him/her in your “…47 years” sentence), and were they to be organizations that just sat there dispassionately reviewing the literature, their positions would carry more weight, IMO. With homosexuals politicizing the issue so much over the past 40 years with their lobbying, protesting, internet flaming, rioting, etc, it’s much harder to separate the good science from the bad on certain issues. I mean, look at the Big Gay Hissy Fit of 2008. When the gays didn’t get their way on a proposition, there was quite a bit of mayhem. Do you think that such mayhem and threats of mayhem influences people to agree with you? Isn’t that the point of it? Don’t you think it affects members of influential scientific and medical organizations to agree with you to save themselves the trouble of having to deal with you? (As an aside, remember all of the protests against Dr. Laura when she expressed her views - views that carried no weight whatsoever with the APA so as to be insignificant? Remember all of the gays threatening her?)

Of course.

Believe me, I really want to trust what the science says. I just have a hard time doing so when I see that one side of the argument has such an easy time getting their way through their actions. You don’t get to influence the scientific community and then sit back and argue that the scientific community hasn’t been influenced. That expects the rest of us to engage in doublethink.

102

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
forlife wrote:
Right, exactly. Once you’re done with marriage, you’ll still have the same issues that you’ll need to project onto the next cause du jure.[/quote]

“Once you blacks have the right to vote, you’ll never stop there. Before we know it, you’ll be pushing some other black cause like…wanting to marry someone of another race. OMFG!!!”

I’m sorry that you feel so harrassed. Meanwhile, my partner and I are treated like 2nd class citizens.

I meant what I said, actually. Be all the bigot you want to be, I truly don’t care what you think as long as I have civil equality.

103

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
Believe me, I really want to trust what the science says.[/quote]

As long as it supports your preconceptions about homosexuality, right?

Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Political lobbyists exist on both sides of the aisle. For every gay rights activist, there is a religious zealot screaming about “Protecting the sanctity of marriage!!!”.

It’s the job of the mental health and medical organizations to conduct responsible, peer reviewed, objective research, and draw valid conclusions based on that research. That is exactly what they have done for the past 47 years; you just don’t like the conclusions that they have unanimously reached.

If their conclusions happened to support your beliefs, you would be crowing about the merits of the scientific method.

Unless every single one of these organizations is politically corrupt, you don’t have a leg to stand on, because without exception they ALL directly contradict your views on homosexuality.

104

[quote]forlife wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
Believe me, I really want to trust what the science says.

As long as it supports your preconceptions about homosexuality, right?
[/quote]

Not really. I’m actually fine with letting the science speak for itself. I’m not fine with angry gay mobs influencing it and then claiming they haven’t influenced it and that we need to believe it hasn’t been influenced.

Then, what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander, right? See my comments immediately above.

This contradicts what you just said.

Alright, I think it’s time to tally up the number of times you’ve used this. This has to be a record.

Really? You know something I haven’t done yet? You can predict the future?

[quote]
Unless every single one of these organizations is politically corrupt, you don’t have a leg to stand on, because without exception they ALL directly contradict your views on homosexuality.[/quote]

I think gays tend to view these organizations as conquered territory that they’re not willing to cede without enormous struggle. Clearly, the gains made from 1973 hence have come through a lot of time spent organizing, protesting, and threatening. You would be foolish to stop now. Like I said, I would believe what they said a lot more readily if I knew it was just the science speaking. But as you pointed out earlier, it’s not.

105

[quote]forlife wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
forlife wrote:
Right, exactly. Once you’re done with marriage, you’ll still have the same issues that you’ll need to project onto the next cause du jure.

“Once you blacks have the right to vote, you’ll never stop there. Before we know it, you’ll be pushing some other black cause like…wanting to marry someone of another race. OMFG!!!”

[/quote]

Except that blacks themselves don’t view your struggle as the equivalent of what they went through. Actually, the blacks all voted against you. Probably time to stop trying to appropriate them for yourselves.

106

So where is your proof that every major medical and mental health organization is so politically corrupt that 47 years of research is a sham and should be ignored? I must have missed it in your lecture.

The point of my statement about blacks was that granting one civil right doesn’t justify continued discrimination on other civil rights. But you knew that already.

107

[quote]forlife wrote:
So where is your proof that every major medical and mental health organization is so politically corrupt that 47 years of research is a sham and should be ignored?
[/quote]

That makes 6 times so far.

My argument was never that the “research was a sham and should be ignored.” My argument is quite simple, really: a) more investigation into reparative therapy should be allowed considering that homosexual behavior itself is equally likely to produce all the negative outcomes attributed to reparative therapy. I think that, if caught early enough, some cases of homosexuality are treatable. b) People seeking to publish papers on results with reparative therapy should be published. Journal editors can’t disallow publication based on ideological differences, only on methodological quality. c) Gays can’t claim science is a dispassionate observer when they’ve demonstrably influenced it. Straights should therefore be allowed to do the same, or both sides should stop trying to influence it right now. The same rules have to apply for everyone.

108

[quote]forlife wrote:
kodiak82 wrote:
Islam is number one. in sharia law , homosexuality carries the death penalty. Other religions my condemn it and be intolerant of it , but they don’t order your death. what gets me, is all these gay groups attack christianity, but the never ever mutter a word about how Islamic countries treat gays. Iran has executed a lot of gay people. look it up

Jews used to kill gay people too. They just became more civilized once Jesus hit the scene.
[/quote]

you’re talking about a couple thousand years ago, they don’t any more, step into any muslim country openly gay, and we’ll see how long you and your partner survive.

109

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
My argument was never that the “research was a sham and should be ignored.”[/quote]

If 47 years of research isn’t a sham, why aren’t you willing to accept it as valid? Do you consider yourself better qualified than every major medical and mental health organization to draw scientific conclusions on homosexuality (x7)?

Knowing that reparative therapy DOUBLES the risk of suicidal thoughts, drug/alcohol abuse, depression, and anxiety OVER AND ABOVE what gays already experience, you would still push people into this snake oil business?

Homosexuality isn’t a disease, and doesn’t need to be treated. Would you like me to provide quotes from every major medical and mental health organization to that effect?

Research also is subject to approval by ethical boards, which is as it should be.

Rabid religious bigots do their share of influencing as well; it’s the responsibility of science to ignore both camps and draw valid conclusions based on well designed research, which is exactly what the major medical and mental health organizations have done. You just don’t like the conclusions they’ve reached.

110

[quote]kodiak82 wrote:
you’re talking about a couple thousand years ago, they don’t any more, step into any muslim country openly gay, and we’ll see how long you and your partner survive.[/quote]

So it’s ok to deny equal rights to gays in this country, because if we lived in Iraq we would be killed instead?

Genius.

111

Seven.

Eight. You’re really picking up steam now.

Well, I demonstrated earlier that these organizations HAVEN’T been ignoring the gay community’s demands. It started in 1973 and has been snowballing. So you get to claim 1 thing, and 1 thing only: that the science HAS been influenced by outside lobbying and is not as pristine as you’re making it out to be. Moreover, the boards of these organizations, for their own welfare, are likely to pay the most attention to the most threatening organizations. It would be pretty hard for you to claim that the bullying from the “religious zealots” (the term you use for everyone who disagrees with you) surpasses that of the gay community at this point, and I provided examples when gay marriage went down in flames last year.

Unless you want to keep maintaining this “science has been influenced by lobbying, but it hasn’t been influenced by lobbying” line of thinking, the only thing you can conclude is that more research should be allowed because they science simply isn’t settled, unless the conclusions reached under political influence constitute “settled” consensus in your mind.

112

Where is your PROOF that the American Academy of Pediatrics is so influenced by the gay lobby (and so oblivious to the the religious right lobby) that their conclusions are worthless?

Ditto for National Association of Social Workers.

Ditto for American Medical Association.

Ditto, Ditto, Ditto.

You can’t prove that every one of these medical and mental health organizations is politically corrupt. You know it as well as I do.

The reality is that these professional organizations take their responsibility for public health seriously. Sucks that they disagree with you, doesn’t it?

113

[quote]forlife wrote:
kodiak82 wrote:
you’re talking about a couple thousand years ago, they don’t any more, step into any muslim country openly gay, and we’ll see how long you and your partner survive.

So it’s ok to deny equal rights to gays in this country, because if we lived in Iraq we would be killed instead?

Genius.
[/quote]

I’m not saying that at all, but it will take time.

114

[quote]forlife wrote:
Where is your PROOF that the American Academy of Pediatrics is so influenced by the gay lobby (and so oblivious to the the religious right lobby) that their conclusions are worthless?

Ditto for National Association of Social Workers.

Ditto for American Medical Association.

Ditto, Ditto, Ditto.

You can’t prove that every one of these medical and mental health organizations is politically corrupt. You know it as well as I do.

The reality is that these professional organizations take their responsibility for public health seriously. Sucks that they disagree with you, doesn’t it?[/quote]

Here’s the actual APA report, forlife. I highly suggest that you actually read it, because it doesn’t exactly make your case. It makes mine better than it makes yours:

[quote]The review covered the peer-reviewed journal articles
in English from 1960 to 2007 and included 83 studies.
Most studies in this area were conducted before 1978,
and only a few studies have been conducted in the last
10 years. We found serious methodological problems
in this area of research, such that only a few studies
met the minimal standards for evaluating whether
psychological treatments, such as efforts to change
sexual orientation, are effective. Few studiesâ??all
conducted in the period from 1969 to 1978â??could be
considered true experiments or quasi-experiments that
would isolate and control the factors that might effect
change (Birk, Huddleston, Miller, & Cohler, 1971; S.
James, 1978; McConaghy, 1969, 1976; McConaghy,
Proctor, & Barr, 1972; Tanner, 1974, 1975). Only one
of these studies (i.e., Tanner, 1974) actually compared
people who received a treatment with people who did
not and could therefore rule out the possibility that
other things, such as being motivated to change, were
the true cause of any change the researchers observed
in the study participants.
None of the recent research (1999â??[/quote]

Be sure to read the parts in bold. You keep pointing to this mountain of evidence that makes your case. Most of the studies were conducted before 1978 (Gee, isn’t about the time the gay lobby made their huge impact on the APA?) ONly a few recent ones have met the methodological quality to even be considered science, and pre-1978 studies with proper controls were few in number.

[quote]None of the recent research (1999â??2007) meets
methodological standards that permit conclusions
regarding efficacy or safety.[/quote]

See my point? But the gay lobby wants the consensus to be settled. I say that the gay lobby should stay out of the discussion altogether. In fact, all lobbies should stay out of the discussion and let it take its natural course.

115

[quote]forlife wrote:
lucasa wrote:
Just being homosexual can induce depression and suicidal tendencies.

Hmmm, you think the fact that people condemn, demonize, and ridicule gays may have something to do with that?[/quote]

Nah, you guys are crazy. Not like woman-crazy, but pretty close. You must be, the bible said so and there is no way a story book that old could be wrong.

116

One thing to consider is the acceptance of society and relatives around them. Consider this:

Perhaps in pre 1973, being a homosexual would have led one to a life of celibacy, maybe becoming an “old maid” or “old bachelor”. In the “old days”, societal pressures would have condoned homosexual behavior so strongly that it would be better to conceal it than express it. It would be an external incentive for some homosexuals to WANT to be “cured” and successfully undergo reparative therapy. In other words, there is strong societal pressure for them to be motivated to change, even though it may run contrary to their nature.

Fast forward to today and that external negative pressure from society is dwindling. There is more acceptance from both family and friends if you come out as homosexual.

It’s been said that sexuality is a spectrum.

Consider this hypothesis: Say the spectrum runs from 1 to 10 (1 being completely straight, 10 being completely homosexual). So pre 1973 ish, maybe the 9s & 10s lived the lifestyle and accepted being shunned by family or kept it secret, while the 6, 7 & 8s were more likely to marry or stay single and just think there was something wrong with them. In 2009, this is no longer the case. Now the 7 & 8s are joining the 9s & 10s and maybe the 5’s and 6’s are bisexual.

My great aunt (my grandmothers sister) never married. She did live with some women in her younger days. She majored in art and was the “artsy” type. She DID experience some mental problems requiring medication and such. I’m about 90% confident that she was not straight. I’d venture to guess that she was a 7 or 8 and for a woman born in the 1920’s and raised in the Greek orthodox church, you just didn’t grow up thinking homosexuality was normal.

117

The whole agenda of turning women into men and men into sperm donors may have led to this massacre:

"PITTSBURGH â?? Before opening fire on an aerobics class, George Sodini wrote about feeling lonely and rejected â?? yet those very characteristics put him in the company of other mass killers whose isolation helped create a murderous cocktail.

Sodini’s deadly rampage at a suburban Pittsburgh health club shares threads with other massacres analyzed by psychiatrists and legal experts, who say the line between lonely and homicidal remains hard to place.

“These people get into a very self-centered, sometimes self-aggrandizing, often psychotic path that enables them, in their mind, to finally get the attention they crave,” New York attorney Carolyn Wolf, whose firm specializes in mental health issues, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday."

As the homo agenda gets pushed and real women get brainwashed into acting like men, then more and more hetero men will go nutz, like this guy.

Forlife, the homo agenda you promote is insane and leads to destruction, like this shit.

118

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
Here’s the actual APA report, forlife…[/quote]

I love how you claim to provide the actual APA report, while blatantly omitting the actual conclusions of that report. Here you go in case you missed it:

[quote]The “Resolution on Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts” also advises that parents, guardians, young people and their families avoid sexual orientation treatments that portray homosexuality as a mental illness or developmental disorder and instead seek psychotherapy, social support and educational services “that provide accurate information on sexual orientation and sexuality, increase family and school support and reduce rejection of sexual minority youth.”

“Contrary to claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation,” said Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD, chair of the task force. “Scientifically rigorous older studies in this area found that sexual orientation was unlikely to change due to efforts designed for this purpose. Contrary to the claims of SOCE practitioners and advocates, recent research studies do not provide evidence of sexual orientation change as the research methods are inadequate to determine the effectiveness of these interventions.” Glassgold added: “At most, certain studies suggested that some individuals learned how to ignore or not act on their homosexual attractions. Yet, these studies did not indicate for whom this was possible, how long it lasted or its long-term mental health effects. Also, this result was much less likely to be true for people who started out only attracted to people of the same sex.”

Based on this review, the task force recommended that mental health professionals avoid misrepresenting the efficacy of sexual orientation change efforts when providing assistance to people distressed about their own or others’ sexual orientation.[/quote]

It’s not rocket science. Reparative therapy doesn’t change people’s orientation, and has double the chance of causing harm. Instead of trying to pray away the gay, people should either choose a celibate life if their religious beliefs demand it (sad, but better than lying to themselves), or find a religion that allows them to live true to who they are.

119

[quote]ds1973 wrote:
Fast forward to today and that external negative pressure from society is dwindling. There is more acceptance from both family and friends if you come out as homosexual.[/quote]

Not surprisingly, there’s a direct correlation between social acceptance and coming out as gay. If people demonize you, of course you’re going to want to hide who you are. Unfortunately, repressing your orientation only hurts you and the people closest to you, while allowing external observers to pat themselves on the back since, from their perspective, people have been “cured”.

It would have been nice to be born today rather than 40 years ago, but I still feel fortunate overall. There has been dramatic progress toward social acceptance and equality just in the 6 years since I came out. I can’t imagine being born 100 years ago, and having to deal with it.

120

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
As the homo agenda gets pushed and real women get brainwashed into acting like men, then more and more hetero men will go nutz, like this guy.

Forlife, the homo agenda you promote is insane and leads to destruction, like this shit.
[/quote]

Explain to me again how homosexuality has anything to do with this nutjob killing women? My understanding is that he was a straight guy who hated women because he couldn’t get any action.