Posted on 05/29/2003 11:42:24 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
Even though people on both sides of the issue deny it, it is increasingly obvious that homosexuality is dominating a new place on the scale of American political life. Even in conservative circles, prominent voices – some of whom I call friends, all of whom I respect – continually find themselves divided on not only the issue, but also how people of conscience respond to it.
In recent weeks, David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, and Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America, have been "duking it out" on the issue of whether or not prominent faith-based conservatives (Gary Bauer, Paul Weyrich, Sandy Rios, et al.) should have confronted RNC Chairman Marc Racicot his meetings with the Human Rights Campaign and Log Cabin Republicans.
I have also had some recent spirited discussions with everyday people, fellow pundits, and talk-show types, among them Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter and Dennis Prager, who also disagree as to the basic tenets of some of what those "religious-right" types had to say to Chairman Racicot.
And since we are on the issue of the chairman of the RNC meeting with the "Log Cabins," let me take my position on that first. Chairman Racicot did nothing wrong in meeting with this group. The chairman's job is to meet with groups of all sorts. He is to allow them to say what they have to say, respond, and let them go. The devil is in the details.
Did he make concessions to them? Did he promise them things that compromise President Bush's otherwise stellar performance for social conservatives? If he did, then that is where and when all that is holy should break loose and crumble around him. On this point, I believe Horowitz is right – Chairman Racicot should be allowed to determine whom he will and will not meet with.
But I have noticed that when it comes to the entire issue of homosexuality, increasing numbers of banner conservatives are going soft on truth that has been commonly understood for thousands of years. That truth is this: Homosexuality is behavior that is damaging to individuals, to families and to society.
Conservatives have been scared into believing that there really is something about homosexuality that is uncontrollable or inherent in genetic or biological make-up to cause these people to behave in this manner. On this point, Horowitz is dead wrong – there is not a scintilla of proof that homosexuality is a genetic or biological trait. To believe otherwise diminishes Horowitz's credibility, at least on this issue.
So let's examine the statement that has been commonly understood for thousands of years.
It is damaging to individuals. It's true – from AIDS to suicide – look at the numbers. What single group of people is more affected than any others? Homosexual men. At the "International Mr. Leather" contest held in Chicago in 2002, a man died from the "activities" of the weekend. The sex was billed as blockbuster, but what difference does that make if you are found face up in a pool of your own blood after having been given larges dosages of the date rape drug?
The "gay" lifestyle does nothing to promote monogamous healthy relationships. Why? Because there is little, if anything, healthy about nihilism, narcissism and compulsive sexual addiction. Yet the community where these traits are not only seen, but also encouraged, is again among individuals wrapped up in the "gay life."
It is damaging to families. Heck, it destroys them. The "alphas" in homosexual relationships, be they men or women, are many times recruiting younger partners. A vast percentage of those who enter the homosexual life do so after having been sexually initiated by an older person of their sex – be it consensual or not – it usually has the feel of enticement or seduction. Homosexuality also destroys families by preventing their future possibility. Frank and Charlie can't have kids – at least not as God designed it. This basic, simple word picture should be easy to understand.
Homosexuality is damaging to society. Over Memorial Day weekend, here in Chicago, the International Mr. Leather event returned. First-hand accounts of hotel workers who were molested, security guards who resigned over fondling, as well as the inability to be allowed to keep order, and the city police who looked the other way while the most disgusting displays of ingestion, consumption, expulsion and any other bodily functions took place in public rooms should settle this issue.
But if you are still not convinced, go out and buy a copy of Dr. Cary Savitch's book, "The Nutcracker Is Already Dancing." Our fear to speak out on basic understandings of right vs. wrong is preventing our society from reaching its potential. But beyond that, we are also laying the foundation for a destructive future.
So what am I suggesting? That my otherwise clear-thinking conservative friends and colleagues be courageous and remind the world that one of the basic tenets of conservative values is knowing that there is such a thing as right and wrong. And for as long as God's creation has been here, homosexual behavior has always been – and continues to be – morally wrong.
Love for our fellow humans can only exist in the presence of truth. When will we as compassionate conservatives show enough compassion to love people to a better tomorrow?
Wow, in that stunning example of factual presentation of data and clear, logical reasoning you have left me undone.
The reason and method for the APA delisting homosexuality as a mental illness have been detailed for you. When you decide to live in the real world, please give me a ping. Until then I will consider myself fortunate if you forget you know me.
Shalom.
Yes, and it has all the veracity of Elvis sightings.
Some additional information:
The A.P.A. Normalization of Homosexuality, and the Research Study of Irving Bieber
"Dr. Bieber was one of the key participants in the historical debate which culminated in the 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from the psychiatric manual.
His paper describes psychiatry's attempt to adopt a new "adaptational" perspective of normality. During this time, the profession was beginning to sever itself from established clinical theory--particularly psychoanalytic theories of unconscious motivation--claiming that if we do not readily see "distress, disability and disadvantage" in a particular psychological condition, then the condition is not disordered.
On first consideration, such a theory sounds plausible. However we see its startling consequences when we apply it to a condition such as pedophilia. Is the happy and otherwise well-functioning pedophile "normal"? As Dr. Bieber argues in this article, psychopathology can be ego-syntonic and not cause distress; and social effectiveness-‹that is, the ability to maintain positive social relations and perform work effectively--"may coexist with psychopathology, in some cases even of a psychotic order."...
Dr. Bieber describes the deletion of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic and statistical manual as "the climax of a sociopolitical struggle involving what were deemed to be the rights of homosexuals."
Gay activist groups believed that prejudice against homosexuals could be extinguished only if, as homosexuals, they were accepted as normal. "They claimed that homosexuality is a preference, an orientation, a propensity; that it is neither a defect, a disturbance, a sickness, nor a malfunction of any sort." To promote this aim, Dr. Bieber reports, "Gay activists impugned the motives and ridiculed the work of those psychiatrists who asserted that homosexuality is other than normal."
A task force was set up to study homosexuality, but the members chosen included not a single psychiatrist who held the view that homosexuality was not a normal adaptation. There followed riots at scientific meetings by gay activists who increased the pressure on the Psychiatric Association.
Will preventive therapy for homosexuality be prohibited, Dr. Bieber wondered, when homosexuality is normalized?
Furthermmore-‹is it the proper domain of psychiatry to remove diagnoses to eliminate prejudice?
Dr. Bieber pointed out that there were several other conditions in the DSM-II that did not fulfill the "distress and social disability" criteria: voyeurism, fetishism, sexual sadism, and masochism. A.P.A.'s Dr. Spitzer replied that these conditions should perhaps also be removed from the DSM-II -- and that if the sadists and fetishists were to organize as did the gay activists, they, too, might find their conditions normalized.
Summary
The factors that determined the decision of the APA to delete homosexuality from DSM-II were summarized as follows:
- Gay activists had a profound influence on psychiatric thinking.
- A sincere belief was held by liberal-minded and compassionate psychiatrists that listing homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder supported and reinforced prejudice against homosexuals. Removal of the term from the diagnostic manual was viewed as a humane, progressive act.
- There was an acceptance of new criteria to define psychiatric conditions. Only those disorders that caused a patient to suffer or that resulted in adjustment problems were thought to be appropriate for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
To: Clint N. Suhks
Thanks for the data, and I suspected some high proportion of gays on the 44 Committee (I believe I've noticed a reference to that group on their site).
David Ehrenstein, a gay fascist propagandist and Hollywood film critic (and self-appointed persecutor of magazine editor Andrew Sullivan), has written a book on the overthrow of the APA. He of course took another point of view, but in between his agitprop-terrorist fulminations on Salon's "TableTalk", his pride of authorship led him to divulge the method by which the APA was turned.
It seems that the principal investigators of homosexuality were, some of them, themselves gay. Gay-rights spear-carriers went to these people and offered to "out" them if they failed to see the light and support the new position rallying around the famous study that laid down the new rationale you outlined for "discovering" that homosexuality was not a paraphilia and not a disorder, if other mental-health criteria were satisfied.
So in short, major support was gathered for the DSM-3 rewrite via plain old blackmail.
Ehrenstein was eloquent in his disgust for gay psychiatrists who were engaged in psychotherapy work on other gays to attempt to reorient them. He said that he felt that it was a) hypocritical of them and b) deeply cynical of them to accept pay and emoluments for doing what the straight community wanted done "to" other gays.
Ehrenstein is a gay essentialist who believes it is the duty of the gay psychiatrist or psychologist to assist the embryonic gay in his development and self-realization. Ehrenstein didn't share his opinion of the practice described by the street phrase, "skinning some chicken".
96 posted on 07/24/2002 7:20 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus
Oh please…you have no clue what the medical community thinks about homosexuality, how or why it was removed from the DSM or even how to read, interpret or even understand science much less make any reasonable assertion about the matter. You are simply a charlatan hiding behind the propaganda of the homosexual agenda.
If you know so much answer these simple questions. What scientific studies were used to remove homosexuality from the DSM? How did said studies debunk the studies responsible for putting homosexuality in the DSM? Who was responsible for removing homosexuality from the DSM and how was it done?
If you can’t answer these you are nothing more than a silly antagonist.
You really don't have a clue do you?
Interesting word, 'malfunction.'
Even if it did not require two sexes to reproduce, even if reproduction were not a common end, indeed part of the definition, of all life (from a material point of view), even if there weren't potential health risks to anal sex that don't exist with vaginal sex, every culture on the planet is heterosexual. If not a biological malfunction, homoerotic attractions are a social malfunction.
Suppose we had the technology to "change someone's orientation" without harming them in any way. No other aspect of their personality, physical health, etc, would be touched. Does anyone doubt that people so changed would fit into our society better and be happier? Of course not. Encouraging gays to think they are normal, and asking our society to adapt to them, is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
One or the other will be hurt.
Or more likely both.
Shalom.
He is not a tame lion, but He does have His pride.
Shalom.
But I really don't expect you to care what I think.
Shalom.
The problem here, is the homosexuals are NOT asking. They have come not merely out of the closet, but out of the bedroom and into the street, getting in your face and demanding acceptance.
"You will accept us!" they yell. "Or you are a bigot!"
They refuse to give anyone an option, especially those who respectfully disagree with their behavior.
Response: An inevitable result of egalitarianism and its pendant "tolerance." The social outcasts now moving into positions of authority.
Obviously, the origins of homosexuality will remain mysterious to us in the foreseeable future.
But I'm curious to see if researchers (objective researchers) can tie homosexuality to fetish behavior. Since my email mailbox is full of all kinds of depressing spam these days, I've come about my education in bizarre sexuality reluctantly. There are many who become aroused by *feet*--surely they're not born that way, but have something derailed in their responses? And it's so peculiar to me that there is clearly a large number of men who respond to images, but not flesh.
There's a lot of "lifestyle choices" out there. Homosexuality is only one variant--
....from our Church!
....from our Government!
....from our Schools!
....from our work place!
....from HOLLYWIERD!....Opps NOPE, their quite accepting!!!!
1. What's more outrageous, the fact that hate crime laws have already been passed, schools all over the nation are already teaching homosexuality as a viable alternative lifestyle, the Boy Scouts have been demonized, defunded, and pushed out of facilities in many areas of the country, or, they fact that Gary Bauer, and some other Christians think the RNC chairman is giving a level of approval to the gay agenda by both meeting with the HRC and using their rhetoric?
2. If you find the first part more outrageous, why aren't you arguing passionate against it? If you find it equally outrageous, why aren't you giving equal time to it? If you find the latter more outrageous, we have no common ground at all and belong in different political parties.
Let me tell you something: If I had been running a business and the Lambda Legal Foundation or the Human Rights Campaign came knocking on my door, trying to tell me how to run things, I'd immediately have security escort them from the premises. If they tried to use the courts to get their way, and a judge ordered me to do what they wanted me to do, I would tell the judge no. I'd go to jail, certainly, but I would sit there for as long as it took, using the media to tell my story (ala Vanessa Leggett) until those A-holes backed down.
If people would just stand up to these jerks and tell them this is as far as they will go, they would be doing what Jesse Jackson is doing right now: Fighting for relevance.
....same thing my husband said! He has been in business for 37 years, and says he'll be damned if the government thinks they're going to tell him who he has to hire! We are talking one mean 73 year old Italian boy here! I say boy cause inside his mind, he is only 18, if that!!!!
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