NARTH calls American Psychological Association action irresponsible!
by Thomas Coy
The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) accused the American Psychological Association (APA) of irresponsibility for adopting a resolution that urges licensed medical health providers to “Avoid Telling Clients They Can Change from Gay to Straight.” NARTH pointed out that the six individuals on the Task Force that produced the resolution were “on record as opposing sexual orientation change efforts through psychotherapy” before they were appointed. The report produced from the bias Task Force “irresponsibly ignores fifty years of scientific and clinical evidence,” was “unscientific and lacks objectivity and impartiality” according to NARTH’s professional viewpoint.
The bias Task Force ignored the scientific and clinical evidence by demanding “an impossibly high standard of proof for reorientation therapy which [the] APA does not demand for therapies dealing with other difficulties such as alcoholism, obesity, and other behavioral addictions.” By setting its own impossibly high standard of proof the Task Force justified its dismissal of over a century of documented sexual orientation change through psychotherapy. Then in a hypocritical display of bias the Task Force pushed “’gay affirmative therapy’ – a virtually untested model – as a way to offer psychological care to those with unwanted homosexuality.” Gay affirmative therapy encourages a person with homosexual attractions to accept homosexuality as a lifestyle even when the client desires to change their sexual orientation. It is part gay political indoctrination and part support therapy.
NARTH charged the Task Force report of making false claims to support its recommendation of gay affirmative therapy. The report stated as scientific fact the gay propaganda “that homosexuality is normal and that homosexual relationships are equivalent to heterosexual relationships and families. …The evidence for these ‘facts’ either is not cited or nonexistent. The political decision to remove ‘homosexuality’ from the DSM-II, APA resolutions, and opinion pieces by gay activists do not prove such assertions.”
One part of the Task Force’s report affirms the psychotherapeutic principle that clients have the right to determine their own direction of treatment, then later in the report the Task Force recommends violating that principle if the client wants to change their sexual orientation from gay to straight. “This selective use of standards shows significant bias.” The hypocrisy and disregard of client autonomy by the Task Force was reprehensible.
Since the 1973 political decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the DSM-II, gay activists have been the dominating power influencing decisions on homosexuality in both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association. NARTH was formed in 1992 by medical professionals who wanted to help individuals with unwanted same-sex attractions change their sexual orientation. The founders of NARTH had watched the clinical science on homosexuality erased from textbooks by political maneuvering. NARTH professionals not only draw from past clinical research on homosexuality, they have advanced it.
