Psychologists Should Stick To Science

When the American Psychological Association meets Thursday in New York, it is scheduled to vote on a resolution by gay activists to “discourage psychologists and other mental health professionals from providing treatment designed to change sexual orientation or from referring to practitioners which claim to do so.”

The resolution also claims that “no data demonstrate that sexual orientation conversion therapies are effective … (and) may be harmful.” The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality specifically is singled out for criticism.

Since the American Psychological Association succeeded in removing homosexuality as a deviant disorder from the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” in 1973 - without any debate and without the usual scientific and medical inquiry - the race has been on by the gay rights lobby to finish winning the psychological war so that it might demand everyone to accept such behavior as “normal.”

If the association approves the resolution, it will contradict evidence by researchers predisposed to the goals of the gay rights movement and even some who see nothing wrong with homosexual practice - but whose studies have demonstrated a remarkable success rate for those who no longer wish to practice that lifestyle.

The noted sex research team of Masters and Johnson, writing in “Homosexuality in Perspective” in 1974, found a 71.6 percent success rate, after a six-year follow-up, among those wanting to change.

Psychoanalyst Irvine Bieber headed a 1962 study involving more than 100 homosexual men. After 10 years, Bieber found that 27 percent had not returned to the gay life.

Dutch psychoanalyst Gerard Van Den Aardweg studied 101 patients and discovered, in 1986, a 65 percent success rate in changed lifestyles.

Treatment should not be compared with a cure. Many define “cure” as a complete cessation of homosexual activity. What treatment does is reduce the power of the unwanted feelings and help people deal with them when they do arise.

Homosexuals are not cut from identical molds. Not all feel the same things with the same intensity. For some, there is a “cure,” meaning they never go back to that lifestyle. Others learn how to cope with their feelings.

The gay rights movement holds up people who have sought treatment and then occasionally have slipped or who have given up and returned to homosexual practice as proof that such treatment cannot work.

That makes as much sense as saying heavy smokers cannot be cured of their addiction because some occasionally sneak a cigarette, when they used to smoke three packs per day.

That the resolution to be considered by the American Psychological Association is being driven by politics, rather than by the rules of medicine and science, was asserted by Dr. Ronald Bayer in his book, “Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis.”

Bayer, a psychiatrist who favors many of the objectives of the gay rights movement, says earlier decisions by psychiatric and psychological professional organizations to overturn previous conclusions about homosexuality were based on political pressure and only partially on clinical research.

And polls of mental health professionals show that, as often happens with labor union leadership, large percentages of the rank and file do not accept the conclusions of the hierarchy.

Kevin Oshiro is a man who has changed.

At first, he simply gave in to his homosexual desires. “The absence of struggling gave me an illusion of freedom,” he says. But, he says, he was hanging out with people who led him deeper and deeper into a gay subculture which included drinking and sex clubs.

Then he met another group of people who helped him pull out of his self-destructive behavior. He now directs conferences for Exodus International, a Christian ministry to homosexuals. The group’s leadership includes many who have changed lifestyles.

The American Psychological Association is surrendering to political pressure when it ought to be standing by scientific and medical principles.

Instead of blindly accepting resolutions being forced on the organization by gay rights activists, the association should be approaching the matter scientifically.

And it should start by interviewing people like Kevin Oshiro.

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