Originally posted by earthlings73:
Quote from post by Atobe:
How did you come to a conclusive statement - "But you need to be a religious zealot before you can
"might" succeed..... " ?
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washingtonpost.com
Vowing to Set the World Straight
Proponents of Reparative Therapy Say They Can Help Gay
Patients
Become Heterosexual. Experts Call That a Prescription for
Harm
By Sandra G. Boodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 16, 2005; HE01
Nicholas Cavnar said he tried everything he could think of in his
30-year quest to become heterosexual. He spent years in therapy,
paying thousands of dollars for treatment designed to overcome his
homosexuality. He faithfully attended meetings of Christian
self-help groups for "strugglers." He married and fathered three
children, a metamorphosis featured on the cover of a Catholic
magazine.
Yet every day, the 54-year-old Washington publishing executive
recalled, he had to suppress his deepest feelings about who he
really was -- emotions he thought he had left behind at 20 when, to
the delight of his devout family, he abruptly renounced his openly
gay life in San Francisco.
Three years ago, Cavnar said, after soul-searching prompted by the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he decided his days of "white-knuckling
it" were over. "I told my wife I couldn't not be gay anymore,"
recalled Cavnar. His biggest regret, he said, was the devastating
impact ending their 26-year marriage had on the woman who had
struggled with him.
Cavnar's odyssey -- from gay to ex-gay to ex-ex-gay -- is
inextricably linked to his long involvement in reparative therapy,
a controversial form of psychotherapy aimed at making gays
straight.
While its supporters cite success stories from their clinical
practices as well as a recent and much debated study showing that
conversion therapy can work, the treatment is opposed by virtually
every medical and mental health organization, including the
American Medical Association, the U.S. Surgeon General and the
American Psychiatric Association (APA), which removed homosexuality
from its list of mental disorders in 1973.
Until the early 1990s the treatment, also known as reorientation
therapy, was largely relegated to religious groups or to the
fringes of mental health. Mainstream therapists have been taught to
help patients distressed about their homosexuality work toward
self- acceptance, to overcome the internalized homophobia thought
to be the cause of much emotional turmoil.
Reparative therapists reject the views held by an overwhelming
majority of mental health practitioners. They regard homosexuality
as a pathological preference forged in the crucible of a troubled
childhood and not, as most scientists believe, an inborn
orientation significantly influenced by biological factors such as
genetics and exposure to hormones in the womb.
"I don't think sexual orientation is genetically determined, but
like a lot of preferences we have in life is a complicated and
idiosyncratic mix of temperament and experience," said Warren
Throckmorton, a supporter of reparative therapy who is an associate
professor of psychology at Grove City College in Pennsylvania and
former president of the American Mental Health Counselors
Association. "The other reason I think change is possible is
that
I've worked with a lot of clients who've done it."
In the past decade, the growing influence of religious
conservatives and the national debate over gay rights, especially
gay marriage, has revived interest in the therapy, significantly
raising its public profile, spawning new practitioners and igniting
debate about a matter that had been considered settled, supporters
and critics agree.
"Reparative therapy is the laetrile of mental health," said New
York Psychiatrist Jack Drescher, referring to the quack cancer cure
banned in the United States in the 1970s.
To gay rights activist Wayne R. Besen, the author of "Anything But
Straight," a 2003 book that tracks the history of ex-gay groups,
the therapy is "a kinder, gentler form of homophobia. The argument
has shifted from 'You're harming society' to 'You're harming
yourselves.' "
After four postings from ONE referenced article that reported on
three ( ? ) cases of failure in corrective therapies, there still
is nothing that indicate that one has to be a RELIGIOUS
ZEALOT - in order to be successfully corrected as a
HOMOSEXUAL.
You prefer to highlight that part of the report to suit your
preferred position in this on-going debate, why did you not
highlight the part that states :-
Spitzer's study has special resonance:
In 1973 he was the driving force behind the removal of
homosexuality from psychiatry's diagnostic manual.
Thirty years later, he said, he decided to test the widespread
hypothesis that reparative therapy never worked. "I like to
challenge conventional notions," he explained.
Despite the active cooperation of NARTH and ex-gay religious
groups, Spitzer said it took him more than 16 months to recruit 200
people who had undergone treatment.
He conducted 45-minute telephone interviews and found that
66 percent of 143 men and 44 percent of 57 women, all of whom
Spitzer described as "highly motivated" and almost all of whom were
"extraordinarily religious," had achieved "good
heterosexual function" lasting at least five years.
They were in a committed relationship, had satisfying heterosexual
sex at least monthly and said they were rarely or never bothered by
homosexual feelings.
In an accompanying commentary, former APA president Lawrence
Hartmann, a professor at Harvard Medical School, called Spitzer's
study "too flawed to
publish."
Hartmann noted the study was retrospective, that it lacked
controls or independent measurements, and was based entirely on
self-reports by people who were motivated to say they had changed
because of their affiliation with ex-gay or anti-gay
groups.