Posted on 06/21/2005 5:51:45 PM PDT by Without Barbarians
Here is the whole text (from the link above):
Psychiatry Turns A Hard LeftThe American Psychiatric Association, in an attempt to expedite its descent into irrelevance, this week at its annual meeting chose to endorse same-sex marriage.
Before one applauds the moral fortitude and progressive instinct of this august body, we may want to ask not whether there should or should not be same-sex marriage, but what psychiatry could possibly contribute to this discussion. The answer is nothing.
You can't get away with pat answers, such as psychiatrists see the psychiatric ramifications of discrimination or being unable to marry. There are psychiatric ramifications of bankruptcy, and war, but no one felt compelled to write a policy statement on it (and thank God.)
And no, there isn't a difference between bankruptcy and gay marriage-- not to psychiatry. That's the exact point. These are social problems about which psychiatry is definitionally ignorant. The APA did not endorse polygamy. What's the difference? If homosexuality is not a psychiatric disorder, than there is no more reason to be more for or against it than there is for any other kind of marriage. The APA is no better suited to answering these questions than, say, the NFL.
Perhaps the APA should try to diagnose itself. What other explanation, beyond collective malignant narcissism, could there be for thinking that psychiatry has anything meaningful to say on this topic, or that it should say anything at all? What if the NFL came out against antidepressants in children? This is a perfectly valid analogy, because neither the NFL nor psychiatry have special knowledge that would allow them to be able to make such statements. What do psychiatrists know about same-sex marriage that the quarterback for the Eagles doesn’t? Don’t laugh—I’m serious. What’s the answer?
Has it occurred to the APA that not every psychiatrist agrees with gay marriage? Or that it does not—and has no right to—speak for psychiatry, or for psychiatrists? Does it think it is above its constituents, or that it knows something they do not? It is only allowed to legitimately express a policy above the objections of its members is if the policy was based on science. Perhaps the APA cares to release this intriguing scientific data? While it is at it, perhaps it can also release the data supporting the use of half of the medications currently favored by APA Guidelines, because my own investigations find very little in the way of evidence. But this seems pretty much business as usual for the APA. Rather than work on its own serious failings, it involves itself in social policy. Outstanding.
“Modern” (read: pharmacological) psychiatry is obsessed with reinventing itself as a biological and scientific discipline. Well, if it wants to be a science, it better start acting like one.
Meanwhile, psychiatry watches itself rot from the inside. The FDA demands a "class labeling" that all antidepressants can cause suicide. But this is no more logical than saying that all antihypertensives cause urination; or that all sodas cause insomnia. But rather than the APA re-evaluating the actual data on this issue, rather than directing policy on _antidepressants_, rather than doing its _job_, it allows itself to be directed by the FDA.
The FDA effectively killed Vioxx, and not a peep was heard from the APA about the dangers of letting the government regulate their practice. You can say Vioxx has little to do with psychiatry, but I can assure you it’s a lot more than gay marriage.
Determining what is true and what is not, through serious and often disconcerting scientific enquiry, is very difficult. It is much easier to involve oneself in matters of opinion and debate, in activism, because it is both immediately rewarding and it is easy. It’s hard to measure things in psychiatry, and when it is possible the results are often disappointing. So it busies itself with matters of conviction because it feels some responsibility to have convictions. It doesn't. It has a responsibility to the truth, and if it doesn't want to invest any energy in that pursuit, it is on them. But don't mask it with whimsy and dilettantism.
I should point out that gays, far from being pleased with the APA’s stand, should actually be horrified. I want serious attention to the following question: Do you-- does anyone-- want social policy suggested by psychiatrists? Think long and hard.
Imagine the outrage if the APA had come out _against_ gay marriage, or _for_ the war in Iraq. There would be battalions of people saying, "well, what the hell do psychiatrists know about war in Iraq? Who the hell do they think they are telling gays not to get married?" There is no protection in being confident of the rightness of your current position, as history is soaked with examples of how terribly bad doctors are at determining what is right and what is wrong. Not long ago homosexuality was considered a disease. The APA Convention in Atlanta isn't too far from Tuskegee. See? If you are interested in learning what is ethical and what is not, you should not ask a doctor. Especially not a psychiatrist. If we allow psychiatrists to tell us what is legally or even sociologically acceptable, then there will come a day when they will tell us something that turns out to be very, very wrong. The Tuskegee experiments were endorsed by the AMA—and the AMA gave its endorsement _after_ ethics concerns were raised by Peter Buxtun. Remember that.
When you want to know how to fight a war, you ask the Generals. But if you want to know when to fight a war, you ask the statesmen—not the Generals.
I would demand the immediate cancellation of my membership to the APA if I had ever been deluded enough to have given one dime to that vacuous ochlocracy in the first place. Psychiatry would do well to remember Wittgenstein TLP 7: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
I'm SHOCKED, I tell you, just plain SHOCKED!! sarcasm/off
When I was but a tad in the Mental Health industry, the Diagnostics & Statistics manual listed homosexuality as a Character Disorder. That was in 1965. Over the years it was ignored and finally accepted as a "live choice". Using "normal" as a milestone, one must consider whether or not this condition is pathological, genetic, attention getting or, a result of the feminist castration revolution.
Just so you know. I have studied the Communist Manifesto as well as the Federalist. Our Constitution is being interpreted by marxists and that has to stop.
ping
The infiltration of the 'professional' medical associations by homosexual activists was ( and continues to be ) part of a well planned and well financed campaign to redefine homosexuality as normal. The campaign began with the infiltration of the American Psychiatric Association, with the goal removing homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
Make no mistake, the homosexual activists knew exactly what they were doing in the days leading up to the removal of homosexuality from the DSM. Once they had control of the American Psychiatric Association, all the other 'professional' organizations ( such as the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Mental Health Association, the AMA , the American Counseling Association, etc.) fell in line and now accept, and march to, the APA's pro-homosexual party line. Click here (then scroll down the page to "The American Academy of Pediatrics") for a list of other pro-homosexual 'professional' associations that toe each others' homosexual agenda lines.
Forcing the removal of homosexuality from the DSM was the homosexual community's greatest achievement. It permitted them to claim that "homosexuality is normal" and set the stage to present this "normalcy" to the general public via a well planned media campaign ( outlined in 'The Overhauling of Straight America' ), and to kids in the public schools via Kevin Jennings' homosexual organization GLSEN. Kids as young as kindergarten age are now being indoctrinated with "homosexuality is normal" propaganda.
It wasn't science, but rather pro-homosexual activism that was, and continues to be, the primary force behind policy changes and the politically correct statments made by the APA and the majority of the other "professional" medical organizations.
For documentation of homosexual activism in both the APA's and the AAP, see the following replies in scripter's "Homosexual Agenda: Categorical Index of Links (Revision 1.1)" thread:
American Psychological Association: 121, 240, 242, 300, 329, 331, 336, 357, 449, and 503.
American Psychiatric Association: 46, 139, 213, 232, 237, 239, 241, 243, 246, 300, 363, 364, 443, 449, 467, 470, 514, and 524.
American Academy of Pediatrics: 284
Additional documentation:
An excerpt from "GAY ORTHODOXY AND ACADEMIC HERESY"
I haven't left the The American Psychiatric Association, the The American Psychiatric Association left me.
Has it occurred to the APA that not every psychiatrist agrees with gay marriage? Or that it does not—and has no right to—speak for psychiatry, or for psychiatrists?
Sure it occurred to them. They just made sure that those who disagreed with the APA's pro-homosexual agenda were kept out of the association's leadership positions.
"The decision by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness was considered a watershed in the fledgling gay liberation movement. "This was, I think, a major issue that allowed society and the government to change a lot of stances that had been based on the pseudo-friendly idea that gayness was an illness," Hartmann explains. "Gayness traditionally, historically has been considered a sin, and a crime and then an illness. And to consider it simply a difference involved a major shift..."
The APA's decision was the result of a three-year process that began when the Gay Activists Alliance, energized by the 1969 Stonewall riots, disrupted an APA meeting in San Francisco in 1970 to protest APA seminars on treating and curing homosexuality. In 1971 the APA allowed a gay activist to address the APA meeting directly... Meanwhile, Hartmann and a group of psychiatrists worked successfully behind the scenes to install more liberal leadership in the APA. In 1973, the APA agreed to re-examine the scientific literature on homosexuality in preparation for revising the DSM and concluded that homosexuality did not fit the criteria of a mental disturbance...
But declassifying homosexuality as an illness was not immediately accepted by the entire membership of the APA. After the decision was announced, roughly 200 psychiatrists and psychoanalysts opposed to the move called for a member referendum on the issue. The membership voted to uphold the APA board of trustees decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM. "Whether they voted because they believed it is another question," says Drescher.
Since then, the APA has taken positions in favor of gay civil rights, for instance by supporting civil unions and gay parenting. The organization signed on to an amicus brief in Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, in support of overturning Texas' anti-gay sodomy law. The case was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court March 26. "I think the organization thirty years later is on the right side on all these issues," says Drescher.
And gay psychiatrists have become much more integrated into the profession and its institutions, as a result of the APA's declassification, say both Drescher and Hartmann. "It made a huge difference of course to whether people could be open, whether they could be respectful of a wide variety of patients, whether they themselves could be open enough to get professorships and distinguished positions. At the time it was impossible to be openly gay and to be in a psychiatric residency training program or in a psychoanalytic training program." Hartmann himself has served as both president and vice president of the APA. Drescher, who practices in New York City, is a past president of the APA's New York branch, the largest in the country.
But is the position that homosexuality is not an illness accepted by the entire APA membership today? Drescher concedes that there could be members who disagree. He adds, however, "They're not in positions of leadership in the organization and the American Psychiatric Association, for example, in 2000 ... put out a position statement which was critical of reparative therapies, saying that they're not proving to be effective, some people may be harmed by them, there has not been much good research done in this area. And the APA is publicly against religious groups or other non-mental health groups calling homosexuality an illness when it's not"..."
From the 'other' APA:
Gay Psychologist Urges Associates To Use Psychology As A Liberationist Tactic
Good articles EdReform! Thanks and BTTT!
It sure has become Lysenko science.
Homosexual Agenda Ping.
Surprise, suprise. Just think - psychiatrists, the high priests of mental illness, support "gay" marriage. I really like the phrase "collective malignant narcissism". The write really skewers these docs for their increasing dependence on pharmaceuticals to make people mentally "well".
I know how people can get mentally well, and it does not involve drugs, either legal or illegal.*
Freepmail me if you want on/off this pinglist.
*It's called "realizing that God exists, He loves me, I should try to love and serve Him with my life, and He will take care of me like a mother bird takes care of her baby bird. And as God is eternal, the soul is eternal."
This is what it was all about: it's called "Capture the Flag".
Never mind that their motivations and methods are no more scientific than those of the people they criticize so bitterly.
Yeah, I saw this coming when I got to write my paper on homosexuality... oh 3/4 months ago. On their push to normalization, they take it off the list of mental disorders, and now they glorify it.
You're welcome, Bump!
Thanks!
You nailed it. Few insurance companies pay for more than 10 visits, and the vast majority of gays have series disposable income, and no children.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.