Male homosexuality or male heterosexuality, you decide.
Posted on 06/25/2004 7:32:18 AM PDT by scripter
The Titanic of Gay Rights, leaving all in its wake, is about to founder on a large and immovable fact.
My concern is not for the glamorous first-class passengers - the prominent doctors and judges - or for the Mardi Gras exhibitionists leering and lurching across the deck - but for the unknown homosexuals down in their lonely cabins feeling sick.
These are the ones who want to stop the ship and get off. The homosexuals who do not want to be homosexual but who are told that change is impossible, and that any talk of change is disloyal to the Gay crew, even mutinous.
The iceberg of clinical fact looming up in the dark is this: that homosexuals who want to become heterosexual can and do change, as authoritative medical research has now demonstrated. Given the will, and skilled therapy, there can be an end to the nightmare of same-sex attraction. That is the best news for our heartsick friends down below deck, but it is bad news for the complacent triumphalists of the Gay Titanic.
Bad news for their tall tale that being gay is like being black, an immutable inborn identity. Bad news, in the debate on gay marriage, for their false analogies with apartheid and Aborigines, since blacks cannot stop being blacks, but gays can stop being gay.
Homosexuality emerges in its truer light, not as a minority "genetic identity" but as a complex conditioned behaviour, which can and does change.
As to the exact causes of homosexuality, the medical jury is still out. But the baseless claim, promoted by Justice Michael Kirby and others, that gays are just born that way, is given no support by the American Psychiatric Association. Their Fact Sheet on Sexual Orientation (2000) sums it up: "There are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality".
As to the ability for homosexuals to change, late last year a remarkable research paper was published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour (October 2003) by one of America's senior psychiatrists, Dr Robert Spitzer. Significantly, this was the same Spitzer whose reforming zeal helped delete homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's manual of mental disorders back in 1973. Now he has published a detailed review of "200 Participants Reporting a Change from Homosexual to Heterosexual orientation". He writes of his research: "Although initially sceptical, in the course of the study, the author became convinced of the possibility of change in some gay men and lesbians."
In his structured analysis of homosexuals who claimed to have changed their orientation through "reparative therapy", he concluded that the therapy had been genuinely effective: that "almost all of the participants reported substantial changes in the core aspects of sexual orientation, not merely overt behaviour". Against critics who say that attempts to change sexual orientation can cause emotional harm to homosexuals, he notes: "For the participants in our study, there was no evidence of harm".
So our seasick travellers down below in the Titanic can take heart: the desire to shake off sexual disorientation can be, in this eminent and gay-friendly doctor's opinion, "a rational, self-directed goal", and for some it can be successful. The enforcers amongst the ship's crew who accuse you of desertion, of "irrational internalised homophobia", are wrong.
To our shame, some of these enforcers are health professionals. To them Spitzer says: "Mental health professionals should stop moving in the direction of banning therapy that has as its goal a change in sexual orientation. Many patients can make a rational choice to work toward developing their heterosexual potential and minimizing their unwanted homosexual attractions."
Spitzer, once a medical darling of the Gay Rights movement, may now have to walk the plank, because his stubborn telling of the clinical truth has political implications.
The success of Gay activism has been due to portraying Gays as a persecuted minority group, identifying with historically persecuted minorities like blacks, women, Jews. This illusion cannot survive Spitzer's findings, that being Gay is a treatable psychological condition like any other, not an inborn identity.
In the current political debate about same-sex marriage, all talk is of persecuted minorities and human rights, while Spitzer's truth of a treatable condition is nowhere to be heard. Gay activist Rodney Croome thinks back to the Aborigines and accuses the Prime Minister, who opposes same-sex marriage, of denying gays "the full humanity of a disadvantaged group".
In The Australian, Former AMA President Dr Kerryn Phelps likewise accused the Prime Minister of "apartheid" against the gay "minority" in denying them marriage rights. But turning from that bogus racial minority model to Spitzer's therapeutic model, we see that gays can in fact marry, and in Spitzer's study many were married - but first they had to become biologically marriageable by successfully reorientating from homosexual to heterosexual.
The titanic illusion of homosexuality as a fixed inborn identity will take time to sink, but Spitzer's therapeutic iceberg will be more liberating than destructive. Below decks are the passengers I care about, and they need to know that it is OK to want to escape the suffering of same-sex attraction, and possible to do so. And our health professionals, who alone can man the life rafts, owe them a duty of care in aiding that escape.
Dr David van Gend is a family doctor in Toowoomba, Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine, University of Queensland, and a medical advisor to the Australian Family Association.
I'm sure this will lead off the 6 o'clock news.
Male homosexuality or male heterosexuality, you decide.
Actually, instead of alcoholism, I was going to use "cleft palate" as an analogy to homosexuality. That does have a genetic component, and is a physical rather than psychological abberation, so I didn't.
I ask because Identical Twins are formed from the same egg & sperm and have IDENTICAL DNA. Any case of a homosexual identical twin with a hetrosexual twin would discredit a "gay gene" theory.
And I used google also to make sure I had the correct word.
Other genetic mutation/problems/diseases aren't rooted in the rejection of heterosexual sex, which sends genes up the line. 
What specific points on the pro-homosexuality side do you find overwhelming?
I used to work with three people who listened to his hit-and-miss-speculations and I saw him on c-span a few times. (so please spare me the 'why do you listen to him' or' don't listen to him' line.
Bohannon bought the bogus 'homosexuality is genetic' nonsense...hook, line and sinker. Not only did it make a fool of him, but he gets angry if someone questions it.
I doubt he ever read the psuedo-science he often referred to on his show to justify his preaching.
Jim, if you happen to see this advice, please read the original lies and reconsider. If not, please read this updated news and stop lying.
You need to consider the incidence of early child sexual abuse on the numbers of later self-identifying homosexuals. You will find some startling correlations.
What would you call compulsive behavior that uses organs not designed, or antithetical to the use thereof, for sexual gratification, in disharmony with the fundational physical and psychological paradigm of physical reality with respect to mammals, and so doing cause damage, disease, sickness and death?
That doesn't mean somebody is born with homosexual tendencies and it doen't mean there are any ties between genetics and homosexuality (behavior). I often quote the following excerpt from the above article:
The author of this piece is trying to get us to buy off on a purely environmental model, which is not believable.What are these traits? If we could identify them precisely, many of them would turn out to be gifts rather than "problems," for example a "sensitive" disposition, a strong creative drive, a keen aesthetic sense. Some of these, such as greater sensitivity, could be related to - or even the same as - physiological traits that also cause trouble, such as a greater-than-average anxiety response to any given stimulus.
No one knows with certainty just what these heritable characteristics are; at present we only have hints. Were we free to study homosexuality properly (uninfluenced by political agendas) we would certainly soon clarify these factors - just as we are doing in less contentious areas. In any case, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the behavior "homosexuality" is itself directly inherited.
Homosexuality, the behavior, and what science tells us, is just that. The behavior itself is learned and not genetic. As stated above, some may be born with certain traits that in a politically correct culture, others will improperly encourage homosexuality (behavior). The author is stating what science supports.
That is, homosexuality (behavior) stems from purely environmental factors. I keep saying behavior for a reason. Some are more susceptible to that behavior, yes, but those traits, as the article says, are better described as gifts, just as those without these gifts have gifts of their own. You seem to want to believe that some gifts imply homosexual behavior when they do not.
Because homosexuality (behavior) is environmental or learned then we would expect it possible for homosexuals to leave (or escape) the lifestyle. And that's just what we see, and we're seeing more and more of it.
Did I mention that I have a steel plate in my head? I don't remember. Thinking about it on the couch, identical twins with one gay, one hetero not a good argument for genetic differences. Unless (weakly) unless these twins would be a great way to compare/determine a minor minor genetic difference. Aw geez, even I don't believe that. Note to self - start drinking heavily.
Reminds me of a news story several years ago when medical science developed the cochlear implant. Some Organization for the Deaf was enraged when the parents of a deaf child had the implant inserted into their child's ear. The organization saw it as a betrayal of the child's "natural" deafness.
Yes, but my brain is not constrained by the shackles of "logic".
None. I'm neither pro nor anti homosexual except as it applies to the 'homosexual agenda'.
I think you have gotten in late on this discussion and misinterpreted something I posted.
What we're talking about here is the continued debate about homosexuality being genetic or behavioral.
Acually it's less than 50%. Some better studies were done - you may find this article very intersting: The Importance of Twin Studies.
Answer: Perversion.
I do not doubt it in the least.
You said you found the evidence overwhelming on both sides of the debate. What did I misinterpret? Also, I'm trying to understand how arriving after the discussion has been going on for a while has something to do with the statements made during the discussion. Did you retract a statement of yours somewhere along the line, and I missed it?
I seem to remember something about that, and what a parallel! That is indeed what we see here, only the ramifications of some being wrong on homosexualtiy are so great they will go to great lengths to believe themselves right. They will probably wear blinders to the grave.
You don't think perversion is a mental illness? If it isn't, it can only be, therefore, mental health.
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