Junk Science on Stage: Psychiatrists Allow Ex-Gay End Run

[canis_lupus]

From New York's Gay City News:

In 1973, in one of the signal achievements of the emerging gay liberation movement, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), at its annual convention, voted to remove homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Yet, 35 years later, on May 5, at APA's 2008 convention in Washington, the group will host a symposium, at which one of the two mental health practitioner-panelists is Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a psychologist without state board certification and an advocate for "Sexual Identity Therapy," which he says he has successfully applied to help patients "alter homosexual feelings or behaviors" and live their lives "heterosexually" with "only very few weak instances of homosexual attraction."

The symposium, moderated by Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Peteet, who chairs APA's Corresponding Committee on Psychiatry, Religion and Spirituality, is titled "Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension." Indeed, the panel includes two prominent religious figures from radically different perspectives - New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson and the Reverend Dr. Albert Mohler. Robinson came to nationwide attention in 2003 when he became the first non-celibate, out gay person elected an American Episcopal Church bishop, for the Diocese of New Hampshire.

Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, a nationally syndicated radio host, and a board member of James Dobson's stridently anti-gay Focus on the Family. The symposium's primary booster has noted that Mohler has distinguished himself among Christian right evangelicals in acknowledging that homosexuality may not be a choice. Left unmentioned, however, was Mohler's statement that "if a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use."

http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19514615&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=6

I thought the APA finally drove a stake through the heart of the whole "reparitive therapy" movement when they denounced it as not only bogus but harmful severl years ago. It's disheartening that the organization would provide snake oil salesmen like Throckmorton and Mohler with a soapbox.

[Ian David]

1. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. His ideas will not withstand the criticism of his peers. n/t

[cbayer]

2. They will eat him alive, I promise you.

The APA's position on this issue is crystal clear, widely held and not up for debate. The APA likes to stay aware of some of the crackpot therapies that abound in this country. I don't see it as a soapbox at all. It's a symposium and they will humiliate him and anyone who supports him.

Of note also, is that a lot of GLBT physicians choose psychiatry as their specialty because there has traditionally been more acceptance and support.

[msongs]

3. bible thumpers will never give up their fear based hate group thinking nt