[Gay] Activist interference--Dec 7 [medical] conference needs your prayers.

The Lansing Guild of the Catholic Medical Association's Dec 7 conference is under attack by gay rights activists. The MSMS has stated they are pulling credit for two of our lectures on same sex attraction. Please pray that the current problem gets resolved soon and peacefully.

Dec 7, 2002 conference "Understanding the Gift of Sexuality" (www.cmalansing.org) will be held at the University of Michigan Medical Center.

1. Application for Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit was approved in AUGUST for 6 hours of credit through the Michigan State Medical Society.

3. Nov 1st I received a call from an angry gay rights activist telling me she was going to interfere with the conference in various ways. (No other calls from them.)

4. 10 days later I received a letter from the MSMS stating that they were no longer going to jointly sponsor CME programs, but that CME courses that had already been approved and not yet held would still be honored.

6. Nov 25th. Received a call from MSMS stating they were "pulling" our CME credits for the two talks on same sex attraction. They mentioned gay rights complaints prompting the MSMS to do their "own" review of the literature with the help of the American Psychological Association and concluded therapy for homosexuality was not effective. They did not request the CMA's input!

7. Contacted Pat Gillen from Thomas More Center for Law and Justice. Pat helped me draft a very powerful letter requesting immediate reversal of MSMS's recent decision to pull credit.

8. With a few phone calls and emails--psychologists, psychiatrists, and experts from around the country helped me compile a large bibliography and some articles and other info supporting the CMA's position. This was sent to the MSMS last Tuesday along with the cover letter.

9. I should hear something by Monday. Please pray that this resolves. If it doesn't I may need to ask you to help by voicing your concern with the MSMS CME programming department. If this happens I will need help right away so please check your emails Monday and Tuesday.

A professional organization shouldn't have to function based on this approach. The literature should speak for itself. Please pray that we don't have to play this game in medicine, but please help me if we need to. I will update you as soon as I hear and give more specifics in what to "say" to them and email addresses.

Catherine Dowling, MD President, Lansing Guild of the Catholic Medical Association.

"reparative therapy ..... has never been scientifically validated,"

This is certainly a bogus claim if I ever saw one. It's clear from NARTH's website that they have no problem with researching their own success rates and publishing the results. No, it is certainly not they who are afraid to find out the true numbers.......

Near the end of one of those webpages you asked me to read is this revealing quote -

"NARTH asked the American Psychological Association to join with them in conducting such a study. But the APA has refused to participate."

Hmmm. What is the APA afraid of finding out, I wonder? If they are truly interested in the pursuit of scientific truth, then what is preventing them from taking advantage of this opportunity offered to them on a silver platter to prove or disprove NARTH's claims? I think we all know the answer to that ---- politics! In light of this inexcusable behavior of the APA, I find it ironic in the extreme that you can make claims like these -

.... considering the blatant politicization of "reparative therapy"
........ This whole "change" discussion has been thoroughly politicized.

Please tell me once again, just WHICH side is interested in science and which side is interested in politics?

I should point out though, that the religioustolerance.org webpages you asked me to read are mostly 1 to 1-1/2 years old, but based on the latest postings on NARTH, it appears now that a number of the powers-that-be at APA are changing their tune more than a little bit!

(BTW, the "creative logic" - so to speak - appearing on the webpages you reference above is quite impressive. Also, I got quite a chuckle out of the two ads that appeared on the first page I read through on this, err, umm, Enlightened Religious website. The first ad starts off with -
"Love Spells & Love Spell Kits - Purchase powerful love spells and spell kits to help you find--and keep--the love of your life. Also try our horoscopes, good luck charms, ....."
and the second one reads -
"Free Online Ordination - Become a legally ordained clergy person - for free online. Perform weddings, baby namings and religious services....."
I'm surprised they didn't add to the weddings and baby-namings list something like, "Speak with religious authority on the topic of alleged anti-homosexual passages in scripture!"
But anyway, quite an interesting website. Thank you for this pointer!)

"I don't think that any study on this therapy by its proponents has ever been published in the most respected journals"

How could you fail to notice that on this exact same discussion thread, just 12 posts above your latest post, is an article entitled - "Gay-To-Straight Research Published In APA Journal"??

Or perhaps I failed to grok what your definition of "most respected journal" is? Perhaps you were thinking more along the lines of The Advocate, or The Washington Blade?

The proponents apparently can't even decide what the word "gay" means...

And your point is ........... what? Has ANY OTHER group involved in this debate - whether psychologists or the most radical of the pro-gay activist groups - ever come together and agreed on an exact definition of what "gay" means? Do you truly think anyone ever will?

A GAY man enters the "therapy," and when he leaves he is STILL gay but has decided to remain celibate.

So, you have decided to define "gay" entirely as an urge rather than as a behavior! You totally discount his celibacy - i.e. his NEWLY CHOSEN BEHAVIOR - in determining whether he is defined as a "gay".

By this logic, my father-in-law would still be defined as a "smoker" seven years after his last cigarette, because even at that late date he still felt the nicotine urge come upon him now and again. If you were around before he died, you could have told him, "Sorry, buddy - I know that you THINK you're not a smoker any more, but your urges betray you! You still are a smoker whether you admit to it or not. Sorry to have to tell you this, but your hard-fought, painful struggle against nicotine that resulted in *NO* cigarettes for the last 7 years doesn't count for anything in the end. Because BEHAVIOR doesn't matter in determining what label we can slap on you! Only your URGES are of any significance in this determination."

And by your logic, 100% of heterosexuals are adulterers. And 100% are polygamists/polyandrists as well, because it doesn't matter if they've never committed the actual act of adultery; it doesn't matter if they've never even seriously contemplated the act. It doesn't matter if they've never "lusted" after someone other than their spouse. And even if they're someone who has worked so hard on self-control so that every time their brain calls attention to an attractive member of the opposite sex they immediately turn away and divert their thoughts to something else, it still makes no difference in the end! The only really important fact here is that at SOME level of their brain there is a hardwired attraction to ALL good-looking members of the opposite sex. If they could only wise up and stop denying the existence of these hidden urges and start acting on the urges (thus being "True To Themselves"), it would demonstrate once and for all that all heterosexuals are adulterers.

But in the end, why am I so concerned about logic or facts, anyway??? What does logic have to do with anything when debating with Politically Correct Thought? "We're Liberals! We feel, therefore we don't need to think! " Sighhhh......

NARTH is not a professional scientific or medical organization, such as the APA's, AAP, AMA, etc.

Then why did you refer me to a website (religioustolerance.org) that says the opposite? ---
"In North America, reparative therapy is mainly promoted by one small professional mental health organization, NARTH, and by......"

It would seem to me that "professional mental health organization" is a pretty good description of both APA and NARTH. (Hey - It was your pals who applied that phrase to NARTH, so don't blame me!)

Or perhaps you would rather I pay close attention to webpages you recommend only when they support some allegation you are making at the moment, and ignore them when the same pages destroy an allegation you are making at some later moment?

Yes, they certainly publish LOTS of "sciency-sounding" reports,...

The APA also publish lots of "sciency-sounding" reports too. Like that one last year that claimed child-molesting doesn't always harm children but rather may even be beneficial to them. Of course, they did disavow it when the public backlash was far greater than they had expected. (Though I'm sure they defended their furious backpedaling as being based solely on "scientific reasons" and not "political" reasons, right?)

NARTH is NOT mainstream science

I'm sure the majority of the PC Psychiatrists agree with this one, because it's an article of faith with all PC True Believers in any walk of life that "PC Thought = Mainstream American Thought". Therefore anyone or anything that's non-PC is non-mainstream, "extremist," and downright un-American. That's why PC people (like yourself?) are so confused to witness these seemingly endless GOP victories at the national level. "Where did all these EXTREMISTS come from?!!??!"

professional groups that oppose what NARTH stands for : the American Psychological Association,

But they publish their papers anyway! So, I wonder how you define this word "oppose"?

we see that Throckmorton's OWN EMPLOYER acknowledges that his is a MINORITY view

So a Christian college admits that the viewpoint of NARTH members is a minority viewpoint among psychiatrists? I certainly hope you didn't expect me to regard this as earth-shattering news??

Who should define what makes a Boy Scout_ the gay community, or the Boy Scouts?

WHAAAAAT?? I don't believe my eyes! You're implying that the gay community should NOT have the right to decide who makes it into the Boy Scouts? You mean that you do NOT agree with the NJ Soopreme Court and 4 of 9 justices on the USSC? You're saying the Boy Scouts SHOULD have the right of self-determination after all? Whoopee!! Wonderful! I'm glad you've finally come over to our way of thinking! Welcome! (So was everything else you said above, then, just a joke?)

And BTW - since you brought up the Boy Scouts, I'd like to close with a quote from some other Freeper in the past year about the issue of Gay Scout leaders that I really enjoyed (I didn't write it down, so this might not be an exact quote) --

Which part of "We don't want our boys staying overnight in the woods with homosexuals" did you not understand?

Heh heh! Love it!

Oh, I see_ if I post a link to one page then I must hold opinions that are in lockstep with everything on the site? Don't be silly.

Nope, you're missing the point here. The point is that even NARTH's bitter opponents admit they are a "professional mental health organization". Since you yourself do NOT, it would seem that you are "out of step" with even those on your own side of the gay/exgay debate. You are marching alone to the beat of a drummer that nobody else in the world but you can hear.

Tell me if I'm reading you wrong, but you seem to be stating or at least strongly implying that there is no such thing as an ex-gay. I have met ex-gays at 3 or 4 times in various cities. I only wish you could have been there at any of those times. I would very much like to have witnessed a conversation where you tell them to their faces that they don't exist!

The APA in 1973 removed homosexuality from their list of mental disorders in response to angry homosexuals who invaded their conferences. Dr. Robert Spitzer drafted the resolution removing it.

How utterly ironic that 26 years later the same Dr. Spitzer (a self-described flaming-liberal "atheistic Jew," by the way) was once again staring at a crowd of angry protestors at an APA meeting - only this time a crowd of EX-gays rather than gays! (Only these ones were on the sidewalk outside the meeting place rather than breaking up the meeting on the inside. Just one of many differences between gays and ex-gays apparently). They were there to protest recent APA pronouncements that reparative therapy was a myth. These ex-gays essentially looked into the eyes of the APA powers-that-be and said, "How DARE you tell me that I don't exist?!!?" But apparently Spitzer was the only one with enough integrity and compassion to open his mind to the possibility that he'd been wrong for 26 years in believing that gays could NOT heal.

The following excerpt from http://www.family.org/docstudy/newsletters/A0012066.html tells what happened next :
In 1973, the APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Now, the forces of political correctness have so overwhelmed the APA that those who even suggest the mere possibility of treatment for homosexuals are seen as virtual pariahs. In fact, two years ago, the APA issued a position statement "rebuking" psychiatric treatment for homosexuality.[16]
Dr. Robert Spitzer, a highly respected psychiatric researcher at Columbia University, drafted the 1973 APA justification for declassifying homosexuality as a mental disorder.17 Ironically, at last year's APA convention, Dr. Spitzer had the opportunity to meet and interact with several former homosexuals who have been greatly impacted by that decision. During those conversations, he became intrigued by the idea of reparative therapy, or treatment designed to help gays and lesbians overcome their homosexuality by addressing the root causes of such behavior. Dr. Spitzer is not a Christian, and he holds very liberal positions on most social issues. However, as a scientist and researcher, he felt compelled to undertake a fair examination of this treatment that the APA feels is so unworthy of attention.
Dr. Spitzer found his initial research so fascinating that he proposed that the APA schedule a symposium on the topic at this year's convention in Chicago. He arranged for speakers, received approval from the program committee and agreed to moderate the debate. Gay activists inside the APA recoiled at even discussing the subject. Weeks before the debate, they succeeded in canceling it. Meanwhile, a workshop entitled "Is Homophobia a Mental Disorder?"[18] proceeded without opposition.

It's clear that the gay-political-agenda contingent within the APA is very powerful and is determined to use their power and the sympathy of the liberal media to keep tens of thousands of ex-gays permanently in the closet for as long as they can.

And the year after the above happened, the pressure and the threats to Dr. Spitzer were still escalating, as this excerpt shows -

WASHINGTON_ Citing concern for his family, Dr. Robert Spitzer, author of a just- released study about people overcoming homosexuality, canceled his appearance at a press conference on Monday. Dr. Spitzer had caused an uproar last week with his survey of 200 former homosexuals. An architect of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, Spitzer said he had reassessed the issue and now believes that some people can change their desires from homosexual to heterosexual.
He had planned to appear at a press conference at the National Press Club, hosted by Anthony Falzarano of Parents and Friends Ministries, a support group for families with loved ones who struggle with homosexuality. But Falzarano, himself a former homosexual, instead read a statement by Dr. Spitzer announcing his regret and citing the vitriolic tone that critics have taken toward him since the study's release. Falzarano released copies of several e-mails sent to Spitzer and to Columbia University, where Spitzer is a professor of psychiatry. One of them, sent by James Minter, Columbia's Associate Director of Undergraduate Admission, read, in part:
You are an embarrassment to the University and a disgrace to science. Your "findings" are, in a word, despicable. If you are in need of a gay-related topic on which to do some constructive research, why not address the pathological homophobia of the bigots and reactionaries who will embrace your latest pronouncements? Better yet, why not address the crippling self-hatred and internalized homophobia of the desperate men and women who will find your hogwash a misguided reason to prolong their anguish, rather than to come out of the closet and into the light? "This shows they are going after him and trying to get him fired at Columbia," said Falzarano, who recounted how he overcame homosexuality through faith in Jesus Christ and through counseling. He said "gay activists" want to suppress the fact that people can leave homosexuality behind and regain normal gender identity. It was Falzarano, now married with two children, who first challenged Spitzer to look into the question of whether people can change their homosexual desires.
Spitzer's study, entitled, "200 subjects who claim to have changed their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual," shows that most of his subjects had testified to a significant change in their sexual attractions over a five-year period. For example, while 78 percent of the men studied said they once yearned for romantic emotional involvement with a member of the same sex, after five years only 8 percent still do. For more key findings of the Spitzer study, see our highlights.
Homosexual activist groups, which once lauded Spitzer as a groundbreaking scientist, are now attacking his credibility by falsely portraying him as a pawn of pro-family groups. Wayne Besen of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) assailed Spitzer in an interview with The Washington Times last week, claiming Spitzer was biased because he held conservative views on such issues as "gay marriage," adoption of children by homosexuals, and "gay" rights legislation. However, Spitzer, a self-professed atheistic Jew, is on record supporting the homosexual activist view of these issues. In presenting his new study to the APA, Spitzer said it would be a "misuse" of his study to use it to attack homosexual civil rights or to "assume that homosexual orientation is changeable for most highly motivated individuals."
When informed of his error by C&F Report, Besen said he had relied on an account of a previous Spitzer press appearance last year by the Chicago homosexual newspaper Outlines. Yvette Schneider (a CFI consultant), who attended that event with Spitzer, said she recalls that he spoke out in favor of "gay" public policy positions_not against them. So far, Besen, who is charged by HRC with discrediting ex-homosexual leaders and groups, has not issued an apology or correction for misstating Spitzer's beliefs. He and Cathy Renna of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) attended the press conference Monday .
Joe Nicolosi, director of the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (which supplied people for Spitzer's study), told the Times: "The assumption that people can't change is a political conclusion rather than a scientific conclusion. It points to the influential gay lobbyists within the [mental health] profession, of which there are many. When we issued a study last year saying more than 800 people had changed, it was pushed to the side. But when Spitzer issues this, it has to be listened to because of his track record as a gay advocate."

And he's not the only one living in fear for his safety and his life :

[http://www.angelfire.com/tx/PerryWebb/homosexual2.html]
When Yvette (Cantu) Schneider gave her testimony about leaving homosexuality to a Christian group at Dartmouth University, homosexual protestors interfered so that police had to escort her away for her own protection.

And some notes on a picketing by ex-gays of another APA meeting :

"Thousands of psychiatrists from around the world attend this meeting," said Mr. Falzarano, "yet we met with outright hostility from only five or six." TCM protesters said they distributed about 800 NARTH brochures to the psychiatrists as they arrived. A few tore up the brochures and made disparaging comments, he said, but others had sympathetic words for TCM's efforts. "Some people said, 'Yes, I do believe homosexuality is a disorder and it should still be in the psychiatric manual,'" Mr. Falzarano said. "Others said, 'I know there's no 'gay gene,' and I believe the APA decision to remove homosexuality was political."
..................................

It's a shame that more people did not realize the clearly contrived, deceptive, and political nature of the so-called "controversy."

Huh???? How could ANYone look at the venom dripping from the fangs of the radical homosexual lobby as they successfully paralyze the APA - using raw political power to prevent wiser heads in the APA from engaging in science .... how could anyone look at all that and NOT realize that science is being completely submerged by politics here? It's liberals like you who are determined to subvert science to politics - as evidenced by your stubborn refusal to even admit to the existence of ex-gays, and turn a stone-deaf ear to everything and anything they have to say.

"I'll instead note that you didn't answer my question."

And I'll instead note that you admit 2 sentences before this that "It was a rhetorical question". Huh? You expected a rhetorical question to be answered?
If that's really NOT the question you are referring to, then which of your 15 to 20 questions to me in this thread are you referring to? And I might note that I and two others here have posed you many questions which you have not answered. I'm of course not saying that you should have answered ALL questions nor that we should have done the same. I'm just asking you to not be a hypocrite.

Finally let's close with an excerpt from an article about the healing journey of one ex-gay :

http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:PB5HSmUVedYC:www.family.org/cforum/attorney /precedents/a0017561.html+%22Robert+Spitzer%22+APA+1999&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

My Brothers' Keeper - Part II By Barbara Pogue
...............
But emotional healing is exactly what they need, according to psychologists who advocate what's known as reparative therapy. They say homosexuality is a developmental and relational disorder in which a person attempts to repair wounds to his or her identity through sexual intimacy with same-sex partners. Ryan Rowe, Ph.D., a psychologist at Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic in Encino, Calif., who specializes in treating homosexual men wanting to change their orientation, said he sees a recurring pattern: a failure of the father-son relationship. "The longer I do this," Rowe said, "the more I realize homosexuality is much less about sex than emotions. They're using sex to meet unmet needs for attention, affection and approval from other men because sex is the quickest shortcut to intimacy. They're basically looking for a father in the arms of another man."
Transformation in Texas
Randy Thomas, a former homosexual who changed his sexual orientation nine years ago after becoming a Christian, says he fits the profile to a T. He'd been a sensitive child whose father abandoned the family when he was young, so he grew up longing for love, affection and security from a male. When his "hormones kicked in," he says, he eroticized otherwise legitimate emotional needs. His search for both an identity and male affirmation led him into homosexuality and he "came out" during his teens. By the time he moved to Texas from Tennessee in 1989, he said he had no desire to even consider heterosexuality. Rowe and his patients have for years heard homosexual activists and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) say it's impossible for gays to change their orientation.
...............
Rowe disputes claims by radical homosexual groups that anyone who claims to be ex-gay was never gay in the first place, but agrees with Spitzer that transformation is very tough. During sessions, he helps men to face their sadness and anger and express it. He also helps them establish healthy friendships with other men. That's consistent with the findings of psychologists Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse of Wheaton College, who estimate "success" rates to range between 33 and 60 percent. They said that although "every study ever performed on conversion from homosexual to heterosexual orientation has produced some successes . . . success rates have never been outstanding or suggestive of an easy path to change for the homosexual person." "It's hard to change if you've been hardwired into that lifestyle," Rowe acknowledged, noting that therapy doesn't work at all for about a third of the patients.
...............
Randy Thomas, who became a Christian prior to changing his orientation, said it takes total commitment to following the truth of scripture.
...............
But when he first arrived in Texas as a nonbeliever, Thomas had no interest in religion or in changing his homosexual lifestyle. When he sought help in a 12-step program for drug and alcohol problems, he even made sure his recovery group was pro-gay. Statistically speaking, it would take nothing short of a miracle to transform Randy Thomas.
And God obliged.
One by one, the members of his recovery group became Christians _ including the woman who'd originally taken him and one of two other homosexuals to their first meeting. Before the conversion of his friends, Thomas equated Christians with haters of homosexuality. Yet as they fell like dominoes before the Holy Spirit, he said, their transformation was "very real." But one thing never changed. "They knew me and they loved me," he said. Ultimately, Thomas accepted the Lord and, although he hadn't yet been convicted that homosexuality was wrong, he immediately threw out all the pornography in his apartment. Two months later, he had what he describes as his "Damascus Road experience." While praying in his apartment, Thomas suddenly received a revelation about the true meaning of Leviticus 18:22. He had always believed that he, as a homosexual, was an abomination to God. Now, he understood that God loved him and his former partners, but considered their homosexual acts an abomination. Thomas said he saw the Lord weeping for them and, overcome with sorrow, he also wept. That was in 1992, and he said from that day forward, he no longer considered himself a homosexual. Although reparative therapists say relapses are part of the healing cycle, Thomas said he's never slipped back.
...............

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