Wingnuts unhappy that scientific community rejects their version of truth.
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
The APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 1973 and the homophobes have yet to get over it. In 1999 the APA denounced so-called “reparative therapy” as the harmful sham that it is. Nonetheless the charlatans that perpetrate this psycho-spiritual terrorism upon the GLB community continue to fight scientific fact with misrepresented “studies”, propaganda, and blatant lies
They are currently decrying the APA’s refusal to accept the results of a study that allegedly proves sexual orientation can be changed through religious means.
Conducted by psychology professors Stanton L. Jones of Wheaton College and Mark A. Yarhouse of Regent University, the study, Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation, was published in book form and scheduled for an October release.
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The results were impressive: 38 percent of the participants in the Exodus program had either embraced “chastity with a reduction in prominence of homosexual desire” or experienced “a diminishing of homosexual attraction and an increase in heterosexual attraction with a resulting satisfactory heterosexual adjustment.” According to press reports, another 29 percent had had only partial success in leaving the homosexual lifestyle but were committed to continuing their efforts.
Those results are “impressive”? Chaste homosexuals are still homosexuals just like chaste heterosexuals are still heterosexuals. Therefore they are not “ex-gays”. Furthermore a “diminishing of homosexual attraction” means essentially nothing. They’re still gay, or in the case of those who claim to be attracted to the opposite sex as well, bisexual.
The study has likely fallen prey to the hawthorne effect. Subjects so want to change–for the researchers, for themselves, for the program leaders, for God/Jesus–that they temporarily cease same-sex activities. It’s also possible they’re unconsciously or purposely telling Jones and Yarhouse what they want to hear. It’s called the subject-expectancy effect. In any case, that study is hardly indicative of success.
In case you don’t want to take just my analysis of the study, read Dr. Patrick Chapman’s brilliant response to Dr’s. Jones and Yarhouse.
Now back to the wingnuts.
Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, said the shift in opinion among mental health professionals is probably helping to lead the large shift in public opinion toward acceptance of homosexuality. “When ordinary people continually see and hear and read what many mental health professionals believe — that gays and lesbians were born that way and that homosexuality cannot be changed — it’s bound to influence the opinion of the average man on the street,” he said.
You mean the more the public is exposed to facts as opposed to hateful RRRW propaganda, the more they’ll realize that GLBTs are not the monsters the homophobes have made them out to be? LGBT people are ordinary people. They go to work, pay taxes, raise families, attend church and do the same sorts of things everybody else does. RRRW wingnuts who obsess about what other people are doing in their bedrooms are the abnormal ones.
“But we’ve got to keep at it,” Wildmon said. “Even though lies often get a huge head start, ultimately we have to believe that the truth will be victorious.”
It’s already happening, and that’s what the you’re frothing at the mouth about. Your propaganda is falling to the wayside and the real truth is taking over. You can have your own version of reality, but not your own version of the truth.
