Posted on 08/25/2006 2:56:54 AM PDT by FairOpinion
NEW ORLEANS (BP)—Approximately 50 people from various pro-family groups protested the American Psychological Association’s convention Aug. 11, opposing the organization’s position that says homosexuality cannot be changed.
“The fact of the matter is that there are tens of thousands of men and women just like me who have overcome homosexuality. ... We’re living proof,” Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, a ministry to homosexuals and ex-homosexuals, told Baptist Press. He took part in the protest in New Orleans.
APA has been one of the leading organizations to back the claims of homosexual activists. A statement on its website says that homosexuality “does not require treatment and is not changeable.” In addition, the statement says that “close scrutiny” of conversion therapies “cast doubt on their claims” that people have been freed from homosexuality. APA even has a Lesbian, Gay, & Bisexual Concerns office.
“The American Psychological Association is concerned about such therapies and their potential harm to patients,” the statement says.
But that statement also says clients have a “right to unbiased treatment and self-determination” — something that Chambers and others say is not the case when it comes to APA’s stance on homosexuality.
Caleb Price, research analyst at Focus on the Family, called APA’s position “hypocritical.” Price says he identified himself as a homosexual for about 14 years but now is a Christian and heterosexual.
“If they are about science and not about politics, then they should be willing to look at issues involving homosexuality … in an intellectually honest way,” Price, who also took part in the protest, told BP.
APA’s position on homosexuality has given homosexual activists a significant boost in the national debate over such issues as homosexuality and “gay marriage.” The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest homosexual activist organization, lists APA’s position statements on its website, along with similar statements from the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association.
“I think the most harm that the APA is doing is they’re using their position to steer the debate in the media and in the public to cast doubt on the tens of thousands of men and women who have changed,” Chambers said. “That’s unfortunate and it’s unfair. But what the governing board of the APA is doing doesn’t resonate with the members of the APA.”
Chambers said the majority of the psychologists they came in contact with were “very supportive and very interested in what we were saying.”
“But as far at the governing board of the APA, they are the ones who don’t talk about a client’s right to self-determination,” Chambers said. “They basically say homosexuals can’t change and that’s the end of the story. That’s very different from what the psychologists within the movement say.”
Clinton Anderson, director of the APA’s Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual office, told the Associated Press that there “is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.”
Price, though, strongly disagreed.
“The reality is that people’s lives are changed,” Price said. “We are living testimonies of the fact that people can and do change.”
Exodus International, Focus on the Family and other likeminded groups will protest APA’s meetings in the future, Chambers said.
“We hope to do these every single year until we reach our goal, which is to help the APA understand that they need to respect every client’s rights,” he said.
For information about the national debate over “gay marriage,” visit www.bpnews.net/samesexmarriage.
If you think we should fail to correct my son's club foot and cleft lip and palate because as an innocent baby he was born that way, there's really not much more I can say to you at this point.
If he had a defect of his sexual anatomy or physiology rather than of his face and limbs, we would react the same way: by corecting his problem to the best of our ability, while loving him all the same.
A club foot and cleft palette are a physical defects which prevent many physical activities and cause outward defects in speech and eating.
And, there is no implied mental "defect" to go along with that physical one.
However, you would want to change - by surgery and/or hormone therapy - a perfectly happy hermaphrodite into one sex or the other....when there is nothing wrong with them except for the fact that they don't fit into your view of "male" or "female".
You would never even know if a person was a hermaphrodite - unless they told you.
But, you would want to "fix" them.
Why?
The difference is, if I had a child born with both sex organs...I wouldn't consider it a defect. I would just think they are different than most people. And, whichever sex they fell in love with, I would support and love them.
Actually, in addition to the cleft palate, my son had a somewhat defective Eustachian tube (abnormally short, and not tilted at an angle that would drain the ear canal into the back of the throat as a normal Eustachian tube would do.) As a result, he had chronic ear infections. This led to Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD), which IS a mental defect which goes along with the physical one. In other words, he has a brain-related learning disability.
Let me make it clear: we love him regardless. And because we love him, we have been working with him for years to overcome the CAPD.
The analogy is this: a person who is born a hermaphrodite has an objective sexual defect. For one thing, their genitals are out of sync with their cellular sex. For another, their defect usually renders them infertile, unable to use their organs for successful procreation, either as a man or as a woman.
This is a very significant disability. Any legitimate surgery, drug or device which could restore the person's sexual reproductive ability would certainly be a blessing; and it would be a loving parent's duty to provide for healing intervention if it's available and possible and within their means to do so.
"There is nothing wrong with [hermaphrodites] except for the fact that they don't fit into your view of "male" or "female".
This is not just my view. This is our endowment as a mammalian species.
What you said is like saying "there is nothing wrong with a deaf-mute person except that they don't fit into your view of 'hearing' and 'speaking.' Please. This makes a mockery of our common desire for wholeness.
This is not to say that we must reject or ostracise people born deaf, mute, blind, cleft-palated, or hermaphroditic. It is just to say it would be a mercy if they could be helped to exercise all the powers which most of us possess as our human birthright.
I just made 24 pints of wild blackberry jam. Can't move without it.
:-)
Want me to send you a couple?
We used to have wild blackberry bushes around here, before they tore down the F@#$%! woods.
And, they are. Being a hermaphrodite is just the FAR end of the spectrum. However, having the equivalent of "a female brain in a male body" is much closer to center. And, like it or not, some of those folks are gay.
It is not something that can or should be fixed. IT is just "the way it is".
YOu even state that a Hermie has "an OBJECTIVE sexual defect". "Objective", I believe, in this case, means "most people would think it's a defect". That's nice. But who are you to judge God's work. Maybe, in God's "objective" opinion, they are perfect.
And, as I stated, this is the far end. Some of God's children are born gay. Should they suffer in silence - as if their desires to have homosexual love were a punishment, or an evil to be overcome. No, that's vile.
They are what they are. YOu keep trying to make everything jive with "The Bible". It doesn't. The Bible is a flawed work corrupted by man. Nature and God don't give a Rat's butt about what some misguided lackey or corrupt power-hungry catholic priest wrote in a book 2,000 years ago.
Not that it doesn't contain truth - and some good rules for helping individuals and society.
But, to put so much importance on a work of man - while denying the works of God - evident all around you...is just ludicrous and sad.
Of course! We love that stuff. Do I have to share with the kids?
"[His 1991 research] made the unassuming LeVay one of the most misunderstood men in America. "It's important to stress what I didn't find," he points out with the courtly patience of someone who long ago got used to waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. "I did not prove that homosexuality is genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay. I didn't show that gay men are 'born that way,' the most common mistake people make in interpreting my work. Nor did I locate a gay center in the brain--INAH3 is less likely to be the sole gay nucleus of the brain than part of a chain of nuclei engaged in men and women's sexual behavior. My work is just a hint in that direction--a spur, I hope, to future work."Source: Interview with David Nimmons (March, 1994) "Sex and the Brain", Discover, Vol. 15, No. 3, p. 64-71.
That was 15 years ago and now they have less. They have less because all the evidence they thought supported their research actually disproved it. The more homosexuality is studied, environment becomes a larger and larger factor.
They wouldn't appreciate it. You can have it all to yourselves. It's good on vanilla ice cream, as well as on hot buttered toast.
You'll get something in the mail shortly, then.
;-)
Would you like a jar too, then?
There's so much woods, berries (and bears) around here that you could pick berries (should be called "bearies"), make jam and practically make a living at it!
Yes indeed! I can choose to be a pedophile, an adulterer, a murderer, a liar, a thief, a heterosexual, a homosexual, a transexual, a bisexual, or celibant, a Christian, a Muslim, a Bhudhist or an atheist. These are called choices and the Creator formed us as creatures of choice! We all make them daily! I could choose to leave my wife and run off with a man if the opportunity presented itself. I have chosen to do what the truth declares is best for me. That's a choice all of us have been given and we shall all answer for the choices we make someday.
"Objective" means "undistorted by emotion or personal bias; based on observable phenomena." Any creature, whether a fish or a bird or a horse or a human, which has malformed, non-functional genital organs, has an objective sexual defect.
"YOu keep trying to make everything jive with "The Bible". "
I think you are confusing me with somebody else. If you will review this thread, you will see that though I did refer to God as a healer, I have not focused on the Bible. But you have done so, repeatedly. My principal reference point has been mammalian anatomy.
This phenomenon is more complicated then you reduce it to. There are many causes for same-sex attraction and are treated differently.
That makes a lot of sense. So many "mental illnesses" are about people that sit around with nothing on their minds but themselves.
Here's one - there are plenty more, however since I am not fixated on the subject of homosexuality (as some seem to be) - I don't have the time nor the inclination to post them all. You can Google as easily as I can.
One note of interest - the only sites that I can find that "debunk" the scientific studies are all religious sites that have an agenda to disprove any study that doesn't agree with their "homosexuality is a sin" viewpoint. Just because the Family Research Institue or Religious Tolerance.org or Christian Library.org all say these studies are wrong - does not make them wrong. Science is science and religion is religion. The same religion that says homosexuality is wrong also says that eating bacon is wrong or wearing a cotton/polyester blend is wrong. Ever eat a BLT??
"Research in Britain, America, and Germany has all confirmed that a prenatal exposure to deficiency of testosterone increases the likelihood of a man becoming homosexual. Men with an extra X chromosome and men exposed in the womb to female hormones are more likely to be gay or effeminate, and effeminate boys do indeed grow up to be gay more often than other boys. Intriquingly, men who were conceived and born in periods of great stress, such as toward the end of World War II, are more often gay than men born at other times. (The stress hormone cortisol is made from the same progenitor as testosterone; perhaps it uses us the raw material, leaving less to be made into testosterone.) The same is true of rats: Homosexual behavior is more common in rats whose mothers were stresses during pregnancy. The things that male brains are usually good at gay brains are often bad at, and vise versa. Gays are also more often left-handed than heterosexuals, which makes a sort of sense because handedness is affected by sex hormones during development, but it is also odd because left-handed people are supposed to be better at spatial tasks than right-handers. This only demonstrates how sketchy our knowledge still is of the relationship between genes, hormones, brains, and skills." (Ridley 1993: 264-5, The Red Queen)
None of these studies have been "debunked" - they have only been ignored.
Research says that only 60% of homosexuals engage in anal sex. Since only 2-3% of the population is homosexual there aren't that many homosexuals who do it. Research also says that 10% of heterosexuals engage in anal sex. That means there is 10 times more hetero anal sex than homo anal sex.
So according to your logic - heterosexuals should be condemned 10 times more than homosexuals.
Thank you for trying to support your position. That's more than most do when I challenge them to support their position. I can certainly understand time constraints and a lack of interest in a topic. And I just want to point out that you mentioned religious websites and the concept of sin. I did not and never do on this issue, unless somebody else brings it up first.
What you've posted is a paragraph from a book by Matt Ridley, but the full title to the book is The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. I've seen the paragraph before posted verbatim by others who I think pulled it from blogs or talk forums, which is what you may have done.
What you haven't done is posted a study or a reference to it that supports your position. I knew you couldn't when I challenged you to do so because there simply aren't any studies that support your position. In regards to "all the evidence that shows that homosexuality 'is genetic'?", Jeffrey Satinover says in The Gay Gene?:
There is not any, and none of the research itself claims there is; only the press and, sadly, certain researchers do-when speaking in sound bites to the public.I encourage you to read Satinover's article.
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