Baptists Promote Ex-Gay Therapy - III

Comment posted regarding Tennessean article Baptists reach out to gays, to make them 'ex-gays

clarksbar said,

" And you forget that the APA also supported pedophilia until Congress went after its arse."

Not so! The APA published research on the effects of pedophilia on a large number of children. They found that the degree of harm done varies considerably. No surprise there. Many were severely traumatized, most moderately so. For some the effect was modest and a few suffered little or no ill effects.

Therefore, clinicians should not assume the worst in every case. If the child rebounds quickly, shows none of the secondary characteristics of trauma: anxiety, withdrawal, bed wetting, nightmares, etc., then it's possible that the child is one of the few who was not as greatly effected as most children are. Long term therapy would not be indicated in these cases.

Suggesting that by publishing these results, the APA supports pedophilia is nonsense. It's like saying that while most people have severe to moderate headaches as a result of being mugged, a few don't end up with a headache at all, therefore mugging is okay. It's just that silly. The APA has a strong position against child molestation. Members deal with the psychological harm that results every day.

The APA promotes the mental health of the citizens it serves. It makes recommendations based on the best scientific information available. Removing homosexuality from the list of mental disorders was based on sound research findings like the first four I've already mentioned. Here's another:

Fifth, there's no "cure" for same sex attractions. Since environmental factors (upbringing, child abuse, etc) do not cause these feelings to develop in some people, environmental factors (therapy) can't make them go away. About every type of therapy imaginable has been tried, from Freudian psychoanalysis to electro-shock treatments, all to no avail. These limbic system responses occur at a primitive level that is not subject to conscious control or therapeutic manipulation.

If there were even the slimmest chance that one of these reparative or conversion "therapies" worked, wouldn't the National Institute of Mental Health be financing research in this area under the Bush Administration? Fifty years of science says that such attempts at therapy don't work. The NIMH is not wasting research funds trying to do the impossible.

We don't need to spend time and money on a "cure" for a disease that doesn't exist in the first place. Yet that's what the Southern Baptist Convention is doing in promoting its "ex-gay" programs.