Shocker: Am I Anti-Gay? ["Gays" malign "Gay"-friendly Pychology Today editor]

Psychology Today ^ | Jan/Feb 2003 | Robert Epstein

[Notwithstanding]

Summary: You be the judge. A letter form the editor in chief.

... I bring these matters to your attention because of a threatening phone call I received a few weeks ago from a fellow psychologist. On page 78 of our last issue, PT ran a small ad for a book called A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D., and his wife Linda. Nicolosi is a psychologist who specializes in trying to help unhappy gays become straight. Apparently feeling that this rather modest contribution to the literature on homosexuality wasn't getting enough attention, the psychologist, who identified herself as a lesbian activist, called me at home on a Saturday to tell me that PT should not have run such a heinous ad, that she was speaking for "thousands" of gays who were going to boycott PT, "and worse," that Dr. Nicolosi was a "bigot," that no gay person had ever successfully become straight, that homosexuality was entirely determined by genes, and that sexual conversion therapy had been condemned by the American Psychological Association. I told her that the editorial department at PT has no connection whatsoever with the advertising department, but she was unimpressed. She subsequently posted messages on the Internet urging people to harrass me at home (no one else ever did) and to send me complaint letters.

In all, I received about 120 letters, many of which exemplified a bad game of Telephone: Some people complained about an anti-gay "article" PT had published; others referred to an anti-gay book I had published and people who weren't subscribers said they were dropping their subscriptions. Several writers suggested I was a "Nazi" and a "bigot," and one compared me with the Taliban. A surprising number of letters asserted that gays have a right to be rude or abusive because they themselves have been abused. Most echoed the same points that my caller had made....

[yendu bwam]

There is absolutely nothing but a desire for acceptance of a mental condition that suggests otherwise.

Exactly, malestrom. Homosexuals have a serious psychological and mental disorder. One should have compassion for those who are afflicted with such. But to insist that our society and children consider such normal (it's not), healthy (it's not), or good (it's not), does a grave disservice to our children. I have no problem with homosexuals doing what they want with their private lives. But when they insist (as they do) that they be allowed to be in close quarters with my sons in Boy Scouts, in my (Catholic) Church - where thousands to teenage boys have been sexually raped and molested by homosexual priests, in my schools - when they insist and teaching 6th graders about homsexual anal sex, when they insist on marching down the streets in bikinis, simulating homosexual sex, they are encroaching on my rights. When they come after my children - they have declared war on me and my family.

[yendu bwam]

My credo had always been, "If they leave me alone, I'll leave them along." They broke the rules.

That was my credo too, maelstrom. In the last two years, a liberal Jewish rabbi has declared war on our local Boy Scout troop, and insisted that we accept a 20-year old homosexual assistant scoutmaster to go on camping trips with our sons (yeah, right), my Church has been exposed as having allowed a couple of thousand teenage boys be raped and molested by homosexual priests (and then attempting to hide the whole thing), our public schools have started teaching young kids about homosexual sex. In my son's Catholic high school, we learned about a monk who solicited sex from high school boys, and tried to lure them into it. In my son's elementary school, we learned that the previous pastor seduced and raped six teenage boys over a period of several years. One Catholic boys school was closed in our area, after it was revealed that priests were sleeping in the same beds as the boys. Our bishop was shown to have been sharing a beachhouse with a homosexual priest who was sleeping (in the bishop's house) with a 14-yr. old boy. And finally, the former headmaster of a prestigious Catholic boys school near us was arrested in Toronto for paying for homosexual sex from a 14-yr. old boy - along with his homosexual priest friend. They have crossed way, way, way over many lines for me. They have declared war on me and my family.

[yendu bwam]

As always, your "Gaystapo" references are somewhat amusing... but cannot be taken seriously.

WHen a rabbi tells me that I'm a hater and a bigot for not wanting a 20-yr. old homosexual man to take my sons camping overnight in Boy Scouts, when judges are deemed unfit in California for believing the same thing, when I'm told that I'm a neanderthal for not wanting my young teenage sons taught the particulars of perverted homosexual practices, that's the Gaystapo at work. The homosexual community is the most intolerant I know of. Most people are glad to tolerate them. They refuse to tolerate all those who dare to disagree with them.

[RAT Patrol]

Josh, Josh, Josh....

Let's just agree to disagree and maybe on another thread we'll find some common ground. Deal?

Can I sneak in this comment: I really do not care that you want to. I just don't want it taught in schools, forced on the Boy Scouts, the Salvation Army, and Churches, ect... I don't want it equal to heterosexual marriage in the law. I want anyone who harms a homosexual punished equally to those who harm heterosexuals, not more severely. Stuff like that. I fight "it is not equal" for those reasons, not to deprive you of your desires.

[JoshGray]

I s'pose.

I seem to have lost my appetite for debate/discussion today

[Kay Ludlow]

Oh yeah...and how many female sheep have oral sex exclusively...or use fake penises to penetrate female sheep? Does lesbianism exist AT ALL in the sheep world?

While I agree that homosexuality is primarily learned, I have to tell you about a couple dogs I knew. My mother's dog Coozie (female) and my aunt's dog Dreyfuss (male) were somewhat mixed up. When they were together, they'd always wander off and provide quite a spectacle with Coozie trying repeatedly to um, mount Dreyfuss. For some reason they never figured out that was the wrong order...

[Maelstrom]

I know from personal experience that the vast majority are...and seek to make more of themselves.

I really don't care that you can't believe it. My wife didn't either, even after I presented her with the results of my personal study.

She did, however, come to believe it after a lesbian attempted to recruit *her*.

[Maelstrom]

PFffttt!!!! Can we have some citations please? What public schools teach 6th graders aboutr anal sex?

Braintree, Mass. started doing this 4 years ago. It has spread to the extent that it is no longer even considered uncommon.

Not that you really care. It's fact is irrelevant to the discussion.

[Maelstrom]

It's in the archives here.

It'll be in any google search.

[Maelstrom]

http://www.youth.org/loco/PERSONProject/Alerts/States/Massachusetts/controversy.html

Very old collection, seems to include several of the links.

Let it be your springboard to enlightenment.

[RAT Patrol]

LOL. Dogs can be so silly. I had a couple of labs once that were interesting. The female was about nine months older than the male. She wamted to have sex with little Watson when he was just a baby. He wanted NOTHING to do with that. He hid from her. I had to keep them appart at times.

They were really sweet dogs, btw. But poor Watty had it bad as a baby.

[freebilly]

how many female sheep have oral sex exclusively...or use fake penises to penetrate female sheep? Does lesbianism exist AT ALL in the sheep world?

This natural argument just does not hold up.

No, of course it doesn't hold up, but does the fake penis...?

[equus]

Mostly genes work in a range (you can see this for instance in plants that, at sea level, will grow very luxuriously and large, and a few thousand feet up, will look very very different, small, spindly etc--with different characteristics). Genes are switched on and off, or activated to lesser or greater extent, by environmental triggers. That can be as simple as food (you can shift the expression of a gene that regulates the type of estrogen in your body, in just a few weeks by changing your diet, for instance), or toxins/infections, or latitude/longitude (length of day), etc etc. I have geraniums on my windowsill and they don't bloom in winter because the day isn't long enough.

So, you have to understand that many genes do not strictly lead from a to be (i.e. genes for brown hair or brown eyes). And also many genes work in concert.

I tend to think homosexuality is genetically/hormonally driven. I say that becuase the gay people I've known all tried to be straight, but very early on, as teens, they felt powerfully attracted to the same sex, and not so much to the opposite sex. Yet they experimented, they wanted and tried to be heterosexual but their response just wasn't there.

In addition, I was even more curious at one point about those who get sex changes. There are stories of poeple who are happily marrie w/ kids who will tear up their entire lives and ruin their marriages because they feel suicidal because they feel trapped inside the wrong body (i.e. female instead of male). In doing research on this I discovered that there are some very specific genes that can regulate whether we become male or female.

One powerful gene, known as SRY, seems to jumpstart manhood and can change a genetic female into a male. French scientists discovered SRY on the Y (male) chromosome in 1990 when they tried to treat four infertile adult men and found out all were genetic females—with two normal X chromosomes. But there had been one small glitch: The crucial SRY gene was tacked onto one of the X chromosomes, turning these men into perfect anatomical males, although without the help of other genes that would allow them to produce sperm. Since then, other sex genes have been discovered—one (WNT4), if it occurs twice, can convert an embryo from male to female and lead to ambiguous genitalia.

Biologically, SRY is clearly the first sculptor of gender: It kicks into gear at about seven weeks, when the fetus is as small as a thumbnail, triggering development of a testis and the lifelong supply of testosterone that turns the tiny embryo into a male. Without SRY, the embryo waits another six weeks, develops an ovary, and begins to pump out estrogen, leading to the cascade of events that creates a female. From these early weeks onward, hormones shape the brain and body. The first stage of puberty begins at age five or six and is characterized by an outpouring of hormones from the maturing adrenal glands. These hormones are thought to prime children for what is known as gonadal puberty, and may explain differences in the way young children play: Boys are more aggressive than girls (although girls exposed in the womb to high levels of androgens tend to play like boys).

But gender isn't always so straightforward. As many as thirty genetic and hormonal mistakes may lead to ambiguous gender, or intersexuality. Intersexuals are not common, but at one in 2,000 babies born they aren't all that rare either.

So I think you could draw similar conclusions about homosexuality, that there are many genetic doors to homosexuality (rather than going, 'duh, there is no homosexual gene'). I suspect that those who switch from gay to straight, or straight to gay, are in the middle of what Kinsey called the bellcurve. They have at least some attraction for both sexes.

Genetics is complicated, if it wasn't, nature wouldnt be able to have created such a wide array of creatures on earth.

[RAT Patrol]

Oopps! It apppears I accidentally typped too many pppppps.