Posted on 11/21/2002 4:58:51 PM PST by Polycarp
B) But don't be surprised if you get a violent or even homicidal reaction when you start telling a mentally ill person that he is acting sinfully.
Which is it, CINO? A or B?
It is to some people. If you don't recognize that fact, then I suppose you would also welcome gays comming over to your house and trying to convince you to convert to the gay lifestyle?
Some people don't want to listen, no matter the message. Doesn't give them the right to kill the messenger. Does give them the right to slam the door in their face. People who think they have a right to force others to listen to them are fools.
I'll drink to that.
So what? According to SCOTUS, abortion is "legal" but in the eyes of God it is a heinous crime.
Likewise, according to the faith of which you claim to be a member, homosexuality is INTRINSICALLY DISORDERED.
The faith is right, by the way, not the DSM.
When they succeed in changing the DSM to say that pedophilia is OK, will you continue to accept their lies over God's Word?
The Pedophilia Debate Continues --And DSM Is Changed Again
by Linda Ames Nicolosi
The very fact that APA admits to holding a moral viewpoint on a psychological issue ought to have opened up a broad new challenge to psychology's authority as our culture's secular priesthood.
For many years now, psychology has been locked into a philosophical quandary. Exactly what is a "psychiatric disorder"? Many critics despair of ever devising a catalogue of mental illnesses which can be considered to represent science.
Exactly how puzzling this quandary actually is, will be illustrated in an upcoming issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior.
The Archives is the official publication of the International Academy of Sex Research. That journal will feature a symposium with at least one prominent psychiatrist arguing that pedophilia is in fact (at least in some contexts) a disorder--while another prominent clinician says that it is not.
But if pedophilia isn't a mental disorder, then just what is? If any man who violates the innocence and integrity of a child can be judged to "have nothing psychologically wrong with him"...then has the public in fact broadly misunderstood psychology's scope and explanatory power?
APA Reverses Diagnostic Change on Pedophilia
Although pedophilia remains illegal, and our culture still considers it morally wrong, recent changes in the APA's own diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM) have reopened the discussion of the psychological dimension of pedophilia.
History of the Diagnosis. In the DSM-III, the American Psychiatric Association contended that merely acting upon one's urges toward children was considered sufficient to generate a diagnosis of pedophilia. But then a few years later, in the DSM-IV, the APA changed its criteria so that a person who molested children was considered to have a psychiatric disorder only if his actions "caused clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning." In other words, a man who molested children without remorse, and without experiencing significant impairment in his social and work relationships, could be diagnosed by a clinician as a "psychologically normal" type of pedophile.
Challenged by NARTH to defend the change, the APA stated categorically that it had, in fact, no intention of normalizing pedophilia. However, "man-boy love" advocates cheered that DSM shift as good news.
Pedophile-Friendly Study Soon Follows
And a door indeed appeared to have been opened by the DSM change, because soon afterward, a journal of the American Psychological Association published the infamous Rind, et al. article--a study which downplayed the effects of, in particular, man-boy sex. Rind supported his argument with the finding that quite a few of the boys remembered their childhood sexual experiences positively.
As a result of the provocative Rind study's appearance in an APA journal, the American Psychological Association was struck with an embarrassing wave of criticism--what it called "the political storm of the century." That public-relations nightmare hit "with gale-force winds raging from the media, congressional leaders, state legislatures, and conservative grassroots organizations," according to the Association's journal, The American Psychologist.
The APA apologized for the study --- following later with another statement which sounded like backpedaling (with the Association insisting that researchers have a right to scientific freedom). Then it issued a new and quite surprising official statement.
APA said that no matter what the research showed about the psychological effects of pedophile relationships-- pedophilia remained, in its opinion, "morally" wrong.
Moral Philosophy and the Pedophilia Problem
Morally wrong? This was an odd statement indeed from a scientific organization. What, then, was the APA's moral position on, say...adultery or abortion? What about the morality of sexually open relationships? Would APA follow up with an official position on, say, the morality of polygamy?
The very fact that APA admitted to holding a moral viewpoint on a psychological issue ought to have opened up a broad new challenge to psychology's authority and its presumptions as our culture's arbiter of practically every social and moral issue now under debate.
Indeed, the time was then ripe for layman to issue a fruitful challenge to the entire concept of psychological health--its inherent limitations, its value-laden nature, and its meaninglessness without dependence on an underlying social-moral philosophy.
Most of all, the discussion could have addressed psychology's inability to scientifically answer the essential, basic questions upon which any meaningful psychology must be based...foundational questions such as, "What is good?" And, "What is the meaning and purpose of sexuality?" Or, "How does one define 'self-actualization'?" "What exactly is our distinctively human nature? How does our nature require that we live?"
In an age when even our culture's moral leaders feel obligated to look to science to defend their positions, such a discussion could clarify to the public what psychologists already know but tend to be loathe to publicly admit--that science alone has a limited capacity to either define or resolve our social-moral problems.
APA Recognizes the Threat to its Authority
The Psychological Association must have been aware of the implications of its own pronouncement that pedophilia was immoral, because the March 2002 issue of the American Psychologist carried an official article stating that the association had learned something from the Rind fiasco. Two of those lessons learned were that, first, the APA must build bridges to conservative groups, and second, in the future, psychology must be prepared to defend its validity as a branch of science.
The DSM Quietly Changes Again
Soon afterward, public outrage from the Psychological Association's fiasco may have moved on to touch the Psychiatric Association as well.
In fact, the Association has just quietly instituted a change in its most recent diagnostic manual--the Text Revision of the DSM-IV--regarding the definition of pedophilia. In a return to its previous standard, now, merely acting upon one's pedophilic urges is sufficient for a diagnosis of disorder.
NARTH Scientific Advisory Board member Russell Hilliard, along with psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, have just published a letter in the American Journal of Psychiatry which points out that in contrast to the DSM's statement that "no substantive changes" had been made in the latest DSM-IV Text Revision, "in fact, DSM-IV-TR has made a substantive change" in its criteria for pedophilia.
"Would it not have been better," Hilliard and Spitzer note about the APA's obvious silence, "for the DSM-IV-TR editors to have acknowledged that there were a few substantive changes in the criteria, and that for the Paraphilias they were correcting a mistake made in DSM-IV?"
The Missing Moral Dimension
But still, one thorny foundational question remains. How do we define the "harm" in pedophilia? Is that harm psychological, characterological, or both? How can psychology recognize harm resulting to the integrity of one's character? And what can psychology know about character, anyway?
Many religious traditions recognize pedophilia as an inherent affront to the integrity of the person--but such a characterological and spiritual concept may be difficult to conceptualize, and even more difficult to assess, in narrowly psychological terms.
Perhaps the harm done by pedophilia will be difficult to measure because it is subtle and values-laden. Maybe the molested boy will grow up to routinely sexualize his samesex relationships. Maybe he'll have difficulty with marriage and mature intimacy. Maybe he'll not only have a distorted concept of gender differences, but a distorted understanding of generational distinctions as well--which could lead to the sexualizing of his own mentoring relationships with children.
How Social Science Studies Mislead
In fact, the molested child who has been hurt the most, in a moral and characterological sense, may actually be the boy or girl who grows up as an adult who truly believes--and who reports to researchers (as many of those cited by the Rind study did, in fact, state) that they "remember the sexual relationship positively."
The man whom these psychological studies trumpet as being "unharmed" by their childhood molestation may, therefore, have been the most harmed by the experience--and he may be the person most likely to reenact it on another child.
Perhaps, indeed, many of the deepest harms to the child, and to the perpetrator, are largely outside of scientific psychology's understanding. So, in a curious twist, maybe the APA--in throwing up its hands and saying pedophilia was "morally wrong"--was right.
Psychologist Gerard van den Aardweg has observed that the Rind study didn't find significant harm to all molested children because Rind was " looking through the wrong glasses." Perhaps the pedophilia debate will challenge psychology to begin to openly incorporate the missing moral dimension-- recognizing our human nature in all its intertwined psychological, moral and spiritual complexity.
Copyright © NARTH. All Rights Reserved.
Updated: 30 September 2002
Summary
The factors that determined the decision of the APA to delete homosexuality from DSM-II were summarized as follows:
1) Gay activists had a profound influence on psychiatric thinking.
2) 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.
3) 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. Copyright © NARTH. All Rights Reserved.
You are kidding, right?
The last 11 months have shown us exactly what average homosexual behavior does to a huge community, in this case the Roman Catholic Church in America.
The current crisis is one of homopederasty, the normal predatory sexual behavior of at least 1/3 of homosexual men.
The community is indeed so horribly harmed. Ask the USCCB.
For one these guys were not out on the rampage looking for a homosexual to kill! They attempted to rob two other guys the same night and pistol whipped them. One had a huge gash on his head.
So they go to a bar and like a prostitute offering herself sexually to someone of this mind set, she may very well have been beaten to death also. Mathew approached these guys at the bar and solicited sex from them. I wonder if he did not do this if he would still be alive today and these guys would have found another victim to rob and beat.
And no I do not think that they would have done what they did to him the way they did. Some guys without there mentality get ticked when some dude tries to hit on them. As a matter of fact most men I know would not take it well.
MCD
My how tolerant you homo's are....
No problem then. Her soul is delivered. She is happy in heaven. God bless her. What is all this fuss about?
That is left to the Mercy (and Justice) of God.
None of us can judge the culpability of anyone who commits what is, objectively at least, a mortal sin.
By the way, no one has "debunked" reparative therapy, and neither can they, because it has proven to be effective for at least a percentage of all homosexuals.
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