A recent case involving the dismissal of a graduate student studying counseling at the Augusta State University in Georgia has Religious Right media outlets in a spin. The student is Jennifer Keeton, who was enrolled in the Counselor Education Program at the school. She identifies as a Christian and believes that homosexuality is a choice. Since every major medical and educational organization in the United States declares otherwise, this put her at odds with the University curriculum. She was offered a remediation plan to increase her “ability to be a multiculturally competent counselor, particularly with regard to working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (GLBTQ) populations.” The plan noted the following:
Jen has voiced disagreement in several class discussions and in written assignments with the gay and lesbian ‘lifestyle.’ She stated in one paper that she believes GLBTQ ‘lifestyles’ to be identity confusion. This was during her enrollment in the Diversity Sensitivity course and after the presentation on GLBTQ populations.
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Faculty have also received unsolicited reports from another student that [Keeton] has relayed her interest in conversion therapy for GLBTQ populations and she has tried to convince other students to support and believe her views.
She was instructed to attend at least three diversity workshops centered on the LGBTQ community and increase her exposure and interaction with gay populations. Failure to complete the plan would result in dismissal from the program. This prompted her lawsuit against the school.
In an Exodus blog post, Randy Thomas warns,
Professional organizations are finding that activist driven agendas cannot be proved as beneficial to all who struggle with same sex attraction. They are finding that a client’s right to self-determination cannot be trumped by gay activist ideology and morality. It should be obvious that further study on those of us who have benefitted from this type of counseling is needed, not disenfranchisement of conservative/Christian counselors.
Some gay affirming counselors and professors are finding it next to impossible to remove what is already in place. Now it would appear they wish to attack future potential counselors who don’t adhere to a liberal gay ideology before they ever get into practice.
This woman’s religious freedom isn’t at all being squelched. She has every right to study reparative therapy techniques from socially conservative point of view at the conservative Christian college of her choice. This is America. But she does not have the right to alter the curricula of academic institutions she attends just because they might not share her specific personal beliefs, especially if those beliefs directly oppose the foundation of her chosen degree, which was laid by professional medical organizations.
Rather than acknowledge this, Randy instead politicizes sexuality and blames the school’s counseling program for espousing “a liberal gay ideology.” Apparently recognizing the existence of gay people without placing moral baggage upon them is the same as espousing an “ideology.” The university is doing no such thing. They are concurring with medical science and the professional organizations based upon it.
In an excellent comment posted by “Tommy T.“, a valid question is posed:
Let’s reverse this: let’s say an Atheist intentionally attends a Christian university, and insists on replacing the approved course material with opposing secular-based sources. Would any of us support him/her suing the school for standing by its right to adhere to the pre-approved lesson plan? I doubt it.
Exactly.
Edited 8/9/2010 to correct school name.
Once again, here we have the ADF attempting to force a public school to kowtow to the religious reicht and give her the special right to bypass the same rules and regulations every other grad student as ASU follows.
They lost at Eastern Michigan, why are they under the delusion they’ll be treated differently in Georgia courts?
I got to disagree with you guys here, though I am hardly a fan of Christian counseling and lobby against its more abusive forms quite frequently. Forcing someone to choose to violate their religious beliefs, however misguided, is a poor way of supporting LGBT rights, unless what that person is doing is sacrificing children or something crazy like that. I’ve been a victim of abusive Christian counseling, but I don’t want to see that abuse used as a justification to deny someone else their civil rights. What are we going to do, ban the whole evangelical community from counseling because they have retrograde viewpoints on LGBT issues?
John, Please explain how the University’s actions support “banning” evangelical counselors from training anywhere.
It’s the same as if she were trying to become a biologist, but her “religious beliefs” prevented her from agreeing with the University that evolution is a fact and the Earth is older than 6,000 years.
That’s Augusta State University, not the University of Augusta.
I grew up in Augusta, and hightailed it to Atlanta as soon as I had the means to do so. I like to affectionately refer to it as a suppurating cesspool of conservatism and strip malls. Sadly, the ADF probably has more supporters there than the queer folks. It’s the second largest city in Georgia and 2010 was the first year it’s ever had a Pride.
John — ASU is accredited with the American Counseling Association, which has rules and regulations the program *must* follow in order to remain in the group, let alone allow the graduates membership in the association. A counselor without accredation won’t have much of a chance to be hired by a legitimate, reputable firm, let alone a public mental health facility.
If ASU caves in to the demand, then the ACA will pull their accredation ASAP, and there goes not only the program, but the students as well.
The fundamentalist is selfish, and the ADF as usual is always on the lookout for another attempt to shove theocracy down the throats of Americans.
@John Weaver
John, remember that this is a high level, accredited program which draws it’s parameters from the current state of the profession and the science behind it. Part of being an effective professional therapist means removing one’s own personal and moral beliefs from the equation. From what I have read, the university does not care so much if she maintains her own private views but only that she insists on imposing them on the client in opposition to the curriculum. The diversity training is their attempt to help her at least empathize with those whose lives do not conform to her private beliefs in an effort to help her complete her training.
Suppose a devout Jehovah’s Witness advances to the end of his medical training only to reveal that he will allow his own moral view that blood transfusions are forbidden by God to interfere with his treatment of a patient. Would you expect a competent medical college to allow a student to graduate with that sort of deviation from the curriculum? The student has the absolute right to refuse a transfusion for himself, but the college has the absolute responsibility to require adherence to the fact based training they provide.
The ADF has, as they so often do, trumped this up as a matter of religious freedom. In doing so, they denigrate actual religious freedom with their parody. They are opportunists, looking for ways to use others to advance their cause. This case is a shallow ruse, don’t be fooled by it.
For what it’s worth, I agree wholeheartedly with Emily K.
@John Weaver
I don’t understand what the problem is here. If someone had similar views about Jews, Blacks, Women, or whomever we wouldn’t be having this discussion. If someone has personal views that force them to engage in behavior that is directly injurious to clients, they do not have any business holding a license as a therapist. It really is that simple.
Marlene,
Someone can maintain professional standards and still be anti-gay rights or privately think that homosexuality is a sin. I don’t like it, I’m sure you don’t like it, but that’s the truth. Need I remind everyone that before 1973, it would probably have been against professional standards to NOT TREAT homosexuality as a mental illness. Characterizing fundamentalists as selfish is no more tolerant than them characterizing gay people as evil. I know too many fundamentalists and evangelicals who simply don’t fit into that stereotype.
Kayelle,
With all due respect, I have no problem with therapists holding those views, so long as they don’t use them in an abusive manner towards their clients. I’m sure there are quite a few successful therapists who still manage to hold some prejudices against minority groups. I don’t like that they hold those prejudices, but I support their right to practice, regardless of whether they hold them or not, so long as they are not used to abuse a client. Whole schools of professional psychotherapy, including Freudian psychoanalysis, were based on prejudice against minority groups.
David,
I agree she shouldn’t force her views on clients. However, from the way I read her statements, she was only saying she would not affirm client “lifestyle choices” if asked. You are also assuming that just because she disagrees with homosexuality, she does not empathize with LGBT people. I see no reason for this assertion. My brother is theoretically against gay rights, yet he is more empathic to his and my gay friends than most LGBT-affirming people I know. I find it troubling that Ex-Gay Watch commentators frequently assume that any disagreement with the LGBT-rights party line makes someone a bigot. Frequently, people who grow up in evangelical communities are actually quite fond of LGBT people, sometimes even more than they are of straight people, and just feel constrained by the doctrine of the evangelical church, with its idiotic emphasis on inerrancy. For every Westboro type, I know 10 or 15 who wish the issue would just go away, so they could treat their gay friends the way every other normal person does.
Emily,
Your example is a poor one, because schools are actually legally required to admit those students in, so long as they can fulfill their academic requirements. One of Stephen J. Gould’s students was actually a famous creationist, for instance. Academic freedom is an absolute. What you are suggesting would turn schools into little more than diversity gulags, which won’t make evangelicals more tolerant of the LGBT community, and will certainly allow evangelical colleges to be even more intolerant of all minority groups, LGBT individuals included, than they already are.
I’m an academic, with a PhD in English. I’ve seen academic freedom slowly enroached upon. This student has the right to believe what she wants, without fear of recrimination or remedial training to teach her how to be a more compassionate person. Frankly, I find it troubling that she’s automatically assumed to be non-compassionate simply because she is anti-gay rights. That is a moral, not an academic, assumption. When I was in Christian colleges, which did not even purport to support academic freedom, I stood up for gay rights and was promptly kicked out (with the help of a very famous ex-gay therapist). At my current school, I frequently have run the risk of expulsion for stating unpopular viewpoints (like that the most admirable person during the Holocaust may have been an SS officer who tried to prevent the whole thing from happening, and attempted to sabotage it when he could not prevent it . . . Kurt Gerstein). If you have a controversial viewpoint, you should not merely be allowed to stay in school, but encouraged to do so. Maybe the school COULD LEARN SOMETHING FROM THIS STUDENT. I have had extremely queer-friendly classes rejected by my campus (“Queer Eye for the Jesus Guy”), because they might offend Christians. Now, people want to kick out Christian students, because they might offend LGBT people. I’m sorry, but what is good for the goose is good for the gander. We should protect LGBT speech rights, but we should also protect student speech rights to support academically unpopular viewpoints, regardless of whether we agree with those viewpoints. I detest repartive therapy, and all it stands for, but I don’t think its right to kick out a student simply because they hold one scientifically incorrect viewpoint.
Lastly, I find the idea of “diversity training” to be something of a joke, a sick joke. I doubt it changes a single mind about LGBT or minority rights, but I know that the right uses it as an excuse to blast gay rights in endless diatribes. It is a form of social thought control that has absolutely no place in an academic setting. Psychology is a world of ideas, at least outside of the counseling session. If a student can make a case for homophobia, or white seperatism, black power, etc. they should be entirely free to do so, with no fear of recrimination. Otherwise, we turn America into a Mcarthyist state that reenacts the persecution of LGBT people all over again.
John
She wasn’t keeping her views private and she endorsed reparative therapy to “change” gay people. “Conversion therapy” has been rejected by the medical organizations that govern her chosen career. Being gay is not a mental illness to be cured. It’s just as ridiculous as someone diagnosing “hysteria” to a woman complaining of stress and anguish. We’re not talking about someone who opposes same sex marriage or even adoption rights, we’re talking about someone who believes being gay is inherently disordered. This opposes the medical science of her chosen field.
David’s point about a Jehovah’s Witness refusing to perform blood transfusions is a valid one, and also analogous with what this woman was doing.
John — If I knew my therapist or psychiatrist was a bigot, I’d be dumping them in a nanosecond, plus I’d be reporting them to their respective professional associations!
Jennifer Keeton’s a bigot — pure and simple!
This is the equivalent of a astronomy student who believes the sun revolves around the earth.
Question findings? Sure! Want more data and study? Always a good idea! Rejecting well established practices and findings and expecting to custom-make your own degree by only studying and accepting the things you already believe in. That’s not education.
Ok, John, let’s put this in a context closer to your own. Suppose Keeton was seeking a degree in education. After her graduation she would be bound for a teaching position in a public school. However, she makes it known that she believes black people to be inferior, citing her understanding of scripture to back it up. She may also use some theories of brain development by unpopular medical researchers to bolster this view.
Because of this, she claims that while teaching she will not be able to encourage the black students to perform to the same level as the others, and further will not be able to confirm their ability to reach the same goals if asked. No animosity, simply a believer in her constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion. To her, it would be cruel to expect the same performance from these kids and she might even find it morally reprehensible that they are forced to participate in the same classes as the others.
The same forces are at play in this example, the same libertarian arguments can be applied. Would this school be expected to put their stamp of approval on her education? This has nothing to do with whether or not she is a bigot. She seems to meet the first two qualifications but I can’t tell if she meets the third — animosity.
A degree means something only if the institution behind it can be trusted. Students are free to debate ideas all they want, but Keeton has made it clear that her view is intractable on a key issue and is impossible to reconcile with the scientific underpinnings of the profession she wishes to enter.
FWIW, I doubt the diversity training will have any influence on her views. That kind of action is effective for those who are simply unaccustomed to being around certain minority segments of the population and are therefore biased out of innocent ignorance (something less and less an issue these days).
I am oscillating between agreeing with John and agreeing with David. When I began my psychotherapy training, I was “exgay”, or so I thought at the time. I had many discussions about this issue with fellow students, but in my academic work I made the choice to respect the choices of gay-identified people to choose to live the life they wanted. While I would have debated (if given the opportunity to do so), as Keeton has done, on the side of calling it identity confusion, I knew that as a professional my role was to accept and validate what clients bring to the therapy room, and to work with them towards the goals that they set for therapy.
The same still applies – as a gay man who is also a Christian and a therapist, should a client present who has “same-sex attractions” and wishes to pursue a heterosexual lifestyle, that is his or her choice. My role might include some psycho-education on the science of sexuality (and if the client is Christian, maybe some suggested reading on the various Christian views on homosexuality). But ultimately my job is not to convince the client that choosing a heterosexual “lifestyle” is wrong, but to help my clients live the lives they want to live, to be the people they choose to be. (I fully expect that should they choose to work towards resolving the dissonance that exists between their desires, beliefs, and behaviour, they will eventually choose to love themselves, and begin the coming out journey.) If I realize that I cannot work with the client towards the goals they bring to therapy, I am honest with them about this, and suggest other therapists who may be more helpful for them.
In my mind, Keeton has clearly crossed a line by insisting on only seeing black and white. A good therapist works with the many shades of gray that exist in our lives – and this is what diversity training should be about – being sympathetic to both sides of an issue, and everything in between.
On the other hand, I do agree with John that the school could learn something from this student. The school needs it’s own diversity training on how to work with students with dissenting viewpoints. How else can it continue to function in this post-modern era? My guess is that if Keeton was a Muslim, the school probably wouldn’t have had the guts to take the stand it did. I can think of numerous other ways a remedial assignment could have been designed that would have both challenged Keeton’s thinking whilst respecting her right to express a viewpoint that diverges from that espoused by the school and by professional organizations.
Further, Keeton is to be congratulated for being honest about what she believes. It would have been far worse if she had simply “toed the line”, recieved her therapist qualifications, and then, later in her career, “came out” as a conversion therapist. Maybe we are on parallel journeys – the journey to self-acceptance for us “ex-ex-gays” began with being honest about where we are. Keeton is doing the same thing. Honesty is a great starting place. Had Keeton’s professors felt free to validate her for this, putting aside their political agenda, she have have been free to move on, eventually considering other viewpoints. Instead their response to her “truth” has only served to entrench her in that position – not a very therapeutic outcome at all, from educators who are supposed to be teaching therapy.
Emily,
There’s no reason she has to keep her views private from other clinicians. She should keep those views private from clients, unless asked to give her own view by the client. This is classic pre-judgment. If she forced her view on clients AFTER being certified by the APA, you’d have a perfectly legimitate reason for disciplining her. But there’s no reason for punishing her when she’s a student in school. And again, the question is force. She should not force her views on clients, but she should also be free to answer truthfully if asked. Also, she could direct LGBT clients to other clinicians if she or they felt there was a conflict of interests. There’s a whole slew of steps before kicking a kid out of college.
Let me make it clear, I do not believe homosexuality is a mental illness or a sin. But I also realize that both the diagnosis of homosexuality as a mental illness and its subsequent removal from the DSM had nothing to do with science. In both cases, the move was political, and the current research on the issue, from both right and left is fueled by political and moral assumptions, NOT SCIENCE. I think it’s ridiculous to think that homosexuality is a mental illness, but that is a moral assumption. The whole category of mental illness is a social construction that means little more than a simple classificatory label. I find it rather depressing that the LGBT community flees that label, rather than embraces it as a further sign of queerness. It’s as if the one community its o.k. to hate more than LGBt people is the mentally ill, and that goes by with LGBT approval (the approval of the LGBT mainstream, not the true queer community),
Marlene: With all due respect, what are you, the thought police? Say I find out from a reliable third party that my therapist sympathizes with a movement I think is anti-Semetic, but she keeps it out of therapy? Do I have a right to call the APA and give them an anonymous tip? That’s absolutely ridiculous. A therapist should be judged by their actions in a session, not by their private beliefs.
Jason: So stacking curriculum 95% to the left and 5% to the right is o.k., but the right doing the same isn’t? Have you been in academia the last five years. I have. I am a leftist (a socialist actually) and even I realize its ridiculously slanted to left-leaning viewpoints, though radically conservative or liberal ideas are rarely acknowledged. Just safe liberalism, and no conservatism. If you think students actually learn in college, I truly pity you.
David: As I pointed out to the others, the “science” in favor of LGBT rights, like the science in favor of repartive therapy, is so highly politicized that it is nearly without merit (not specifically the science questioning reparative therapy, which has good evidence on its side,
but the science that is used in favor of LGBT rights or anti-gay Paul Cameron-lite crap). I hate to break it to you, but I think most teachers are already holding black students to a different standard than whites, either consciously or unconsciously, higher or lower standard. I would not fire a teacher for your said example, especially if she was using legitimate peer-reviewed science. Also, this is a pre-firing, before the student is even a teacher. While she’s in school, her right to academic freedom should be ABSOLUTE (the only possible exception I can see to that is threating a teacher or sexually harrassing himher in your paper, which this student obviously did not do).
You should read some of the “studies” conducted about evangelical students, which say things far more prejudicial than anything this student said, yet they ARE PUBLISHED IN ACADEMIC JOURNALS.
Sorry, if I come off rude. It’s not my intention. I just think this kind of thought-policing could be easily used by a right-wing regime against LGBT people and so I am utterly oppossed to it.
John — Which “academic journals”, the ones pubbed by the religious reicht and their pervered allies who refuse to have them peer-reviewed??
Once again, John, with feeling: Ms. Keeton is demanding special rights! She’s demanding to force a state-supported school’s graduate counseling program to violate their contract with the professional counseling association to admit her when she in no way, shape, or form adheres to the groups regulations!
No John dear, I’m not the thought police. That’s the religious reicht, sweetie. *They’re* the ones who want to turn the US into a totalitarian theocracy and regulate your entire life and monitor what you read, hear and watch.
John, if your problem is that science related to queer issues is insufficient in your opinion, all I can say is, too bad. Your opinion is not what matters in this case, it is the opinion of qualified medical organizations. If you think the APA is too politicized then, okay. You think it’s too politicized. ..next?
And I hope that acknowledging the unfortunate racial prejudice of certain teachers (conscious or otherwise) is not analogous to an acceptance of it, nor an invitation to empower it by ignoring it.
Dear Emily,
Again, you’re classifying the APA as a “medical” organization. All I’m pointing out is that the medicalization of psychiatry and psychology is still disputed, as they are really fields of social control and normalization, to make “deviant” populations “straight” or “mentally healthy”. That doesn’t mean I think the APA is useless, but the APA is as much an ideological outfit as a scientific one. We still know too little about the brain to say that psychology is a science. That’s why, when it’s classified, it is typically called a social science, not a hard science (psychiatry is somewhat different in that regard). I don’t even like saying that, because I believe my mental illness (OCD) is the physical manifestation of a brain abnormality. What I’m saying is that though there is psychiatric evidence for that (science), the classification of OCD as non-normaldeviant is a sociological, not scientific decision, made because other people are uncomfortable with people who have OCD. The same is true with psychologists diagnosing both homosexuality and homophobia as potential mental illnesses. These are ideological choices, made with implicit bias, and that bias taints the science behind both Freudian psychoanalyists rejection of homosexuality and current attempts to turn homophobia into a mental illness (which I have seen done in several APA journals). Psychiatry may be justly classified a science, but Keaton was a psychologist: She is entering a field that is neither fully science, nor fully humanities, and therefore is tinged with pseudo-scientific assumptions, some which will probably be proven legitimate (like the idea that homosexuality is not a mental illness) and some that will not (for instance, the whole Satanic Ritual Abuse phenomena which prompted thousands of false abuse allegations in the eighties and nineties, or questionable pathologizations like Christophobia and homophobia).
You assume prejudice is automatically a negative. I do not make that assumption. People can be prompted by prejudice to do nicer, more compassionate things than they would do if they were not prejudiced, depending on how one defines prejudice. For instance, I know that my African-American students, statistically, are more likely to come from impoverished backgrounds, and thus I can safely conclude that they may have more jobsobligations on their hands then my rich white middle class students. Therefore, if I have an African-American student who I suspect is poor, or for that matter a white working class student, I ask them if they are pulling a job while going to school. If they are, I give them some lee-way in handing in assignments. I guess from your legalistic definition of prejudice, that would make me a racist, but I’ve been able to help out a lot of excellent working class black and white students by making those assumptions, rather than trying to live in a color-blind, class-blind world. That world does not exist.
Another example. In my home town, a certain ethnic group living in the East End of my town tends to take an inordinate amount of time crossing the street (By the way, I don’t actually see this as a byproduct of their ethnicity, but a byproduct of the city where many of this group originally hail from, NYC. I’ve noticed the same trend in white and black NYC students at my college, far away from my home town). When I travel through the East End of my city, I slow down, so that I make sure I don’t hit anyone, since people have a tendency to take extra long crossing the road there, and some of the kids aren’t used to upstate New York traffic. Again, by your definition, I am probably being racist . . . albeit “lovingly racist”. If so, I’d still rather be racist, than have a poor East End kid’s death on my conscience because I ignored a stereotype I KNEW WAS TRUE.
Marlene: Just to let you know, I didn’t want the thought police comment to come off as harsh, though I know it probably did. I fail to see, however, on what you base your claim that Ms. Keeton is demanding special rights. The APA would never discredit a school for passing Ms. Keeton. What it would do is kick out Ms. Keeton if she forced her views on a client after she became a clinician. But again, this is pre-judgment in an academic context where academic freedom is suppossedly sacrosanct. “Religious reicht?” Frankly, the only evangelicals who want a theocracy, a true theocracy, are Reconstructionists, and they are only powerful in the numerically small Reformed dominations (though there is justifiable reason to be concerned about the current growing Reconstructionist-Pentecostal alliance, which is bringing a lot of people into the Reconstructionist-lite camp). I’m sorry, but that kind of hyperbole does not really help LGBT rights, as too many people with experience with the evangelical community know that characterization to be false.
Again, guys, I don’t really like siding with this woman. I think reparative therapy is junk science and while I think one could make a case for the whole “gender confusion” idea, it would be a pretty weak case. But I think you are investing far too much power into the psychological community’s normalization of LGBT behavior, just as I invest far too much power into its medicalization of OCD as an illness. The reality is, what psychiatrypsychology gives, it can take away. The question we should ask of BOTH Keeton and the APA is not “Why are you trying to denormalize homosexuality?” but “Why do you attempt to normalize people at all?” Psychiatry has been historically used to persecute LGBT people and the mentally ill. In South Africa, it was used to torture gay citizens. In Nazi Germany it was used as a form of death sentence against schizohrenics, bipolar people, and LGBT individuals. In Soviet Russia, it was used to control political dissidents. That doesn’t mean its useless, or that we should blame modern psychiatrists for the mistakes of their predecessors. But it does mean we should be careful in automatically accepting the APA’s claim to be a scientifically rigorous organization. I’m sure that many APA studies are in fact good social science, though not good hard science, but psychology still has a long way to go before it can be a fully reliable explanatory mechanism for human behavior. Until that time, dissenting opinions, even unpopular ones like Ms. Keeton’s, should be tolerated.
really, i feel like now John’s point is along the lines of conspiracy theories and “they’re after us” mentality. The bottom line is this girl wasn’t doing what she did out of scientific interest, she did it because she personally felt being gay was a mental illness, and supported reparative therapy to “cure” it. She used her personal religious beliefs as an excuse to file a lawsuit. There is nothing at all scientific or even “socially scientific” about her refusal to accept the school’s curriculum. If she were trying to directly challenge the APA on some line, then she and John would probably be able to “join forces” somehow. But that is not the case.
Keaton is being given WAY too much credit as some kind of “righteous dissenter.” She believes gay people are inherently disordered because her religious beliefs “as a Christian” instruct this.
She should find a conservative Christian college to finish her degree. Her current institution obviously is not a good fit.
Actually, I’m merely mouthing nearly word for word Foucault’s philosophy about psychiatry. if you want to disagree with the greatest gay philosopher of all time . . . probably the greatest philosopher period . . . that’s your business. And I don’t want to join forces against the APA with anyone. You obviously aren’t intelligent enough to even understand what I’m saying, if you only resort to insult.
so now the conversation is framed by some guy I don’t really know of or care about, and unless I agree with you that he is 1) correct about psychiatry or close to it 2) great because he happens to be gay and 3) great because you say so I’m “resorting to insult” and “not intelligent enough.”
Alright! well, my end of the conversation’s over. Enjoy, rest of you!
@John Weaver
John, your comments on this subject bring up many things which concern me. There seems to be an intensely personal component to your opinions on this issue and I suspect only you can really fully appreciate that. I can only say that I disagree with you on most or all of your points here, and this:
which you said in response to my racist hypothetical above leads me to believe we share little in our understanding of what is appropriate in such a situation. And since Keeton has no peer reviewed support of her stance, I’m not sure why you added that variable.
You scoff not only at major scientific bodies but psychiatry in general. I have to agree with Emily here concerning your conspiratorial tone. If I may be candid, you sound like someone who has a bone to pick with psychiatry, almost as though you resent some perceived power it has over you. I don’t know what that is all about, but it is making it difficult for me to follow your arguments.
Lastly:
this kind of snobbery is not helping anyone. For the record, I’ve never heard of Foucault either.
@John: simple recognition of racial or cultural difference is not racism. That’s not what racialism is.
And you must know that, on some level, because you indicated you actually do not use racial difference per se to arbitrarily promote or demote an individual. However, your thoughts above are nevertheless very haphazard.
I know that my African-American students, statistically, are more likely to come from impoverished backgrounds, and thus I can safely conclude that they may have more jobsobligations on their hands then my rich white middle class students.
That is an essentially meaningless statement John. You’ve conflated such a raft of issues that it tells somebody very little of substance.
As example, you may also ‘safely’ conclude that African-American students from ‘rich middle class’ (sic) backgrounds have statistically less jobsobligations on their hands than a white student from an impoverished background.
Again, essentially meaningless because it merely begs the question: so what? What does knowing that mean for an educator?
Leading you to another essentially meaningless statement:
Therefore, if I have an African-American student who I suspect is poor, or for that matter a white working class student, I ask them if they are pulling a job while going to school. If they are, I give them some lee-way in handing in assignments. I guess from your legalistic definition of prejudice, that would make me a racist.
You do realise what you wrote, don’t you? Deconstruct it, to coin a phrase.
Deconstructed, you would have better expressed it as this; and note the jarring ‘conclusion’:
“Therefore, if I have a student who I suspect is poor, a working class student as example, I may ask them if they are pulling a job while going to school. If they are, I may give them some lee-way in handing in assignments. I guess from your legalistic definition of prejudice, that would make me a racist.”
Urh, no. Where does the ‘racism’ come in? In what way was that necessary to add? (see, Occam)
At worst someone might accuse you of classism. The fact that black students, statistically, overall, do indeed come from more deprived circumstances than white students is (strongly arguable) an indicator society wide racism. But it is also irrelevant when dealing with individual students and their individual progress.
Personally… we’d rather see it as a teacher who, in recognising the individual circumstances of students, correctly does what is required to guide, encourage and facilitate the individual’s learning. A good teacher always looks to see how best to do that, for all students. Individual students can and do have circumstances arise in the course of their studies that can severely disrupt their study — a death in the family, serious illness or an accident, a house fire, temporarily running out of money … etc etc etc. Some students have an uphill battle against their current circumstances throughout their study years.
Yes. Now what?
None of those outside circumstances, as such, indicate anything about the student’s understanding of the field or, importantly, indicate anything about where the student’s capabilities can eventually lead them.
I assume you do require every individual student to achieve the minimum requirements, do you not? That is, you hold them (and all others) to what is crucial — the subject — but can extend some leeway when it comes to displaying their understanding to you. An assignment that is a week late due to circumstances that are beyond the control of the student does not in any way compare to an failing-grade assignment that got turned in on time, and you know that.
This isn’t about foucaultian philosophy and sitting around in smokey Parisian cafes getting drunk from midday, or whether psychology is a ‘hard’ science, fascinating though all that may well be. It’s also not about deeply held personal religious, political or cultural viewpoints that are simply odds with others. The School made that very clear to her. Repeatedly.
All else aside, a student counselor who willfully refuses to recognise the outcomes of stigma, and who insists they have a ‘right’ to impose stigma on people is measurably unsuited to the profession; as determined by the broad church of the professionals themselves and expressed through their professional body. The student can think what they like in their personal life, but a line is drawn when they step into a clinic and open a professional relationship with a client. The APA doesn’t go peering through the windows of mens souls — it contains many deeply faithful religious people — but they do require members to act as professionals when acting as professionals. Shocking, I know.
This particular student was given patient and extended opportunity to show she was capable of becoming a professional counselor. Unfortunately for her this included showing that she would not, eventually, potentially, end up on an ethics charge or being dismissed from the professional body. She failed to and, worse, appears to have set her mind to deliberately refusing to do so. The School’s hand was forced by her own actions. What should they otherwise have done? Ignore their own minimum standards?
To end: let me give you another story, and you can draw the parallels.
My undergrad degree eventually led most of us into a field that is fraught with the potential to wreck havoc on a vast scale. Bopal, Chernobyl, anyone? Consequently the professional body demands not only a technical grasp of subjects, but a correct attitude to the work we undertake and a correct approach to the way we undertake it. Consequently the School not only took exam results into consideration, but carefully watched our behaviour and our attitudes during practical work etc. Willful or even idiotic violation of safety, taking short-cuts, failing to consider others, sheer thoughtlessness, gross ignorance … were all sufficient reasons to demand that a student withdraw. And they watched us like hawks.
Rightfully so. Thoughtful and knowledgeable professionals make more than enough mistakes on their own without introducing a known menace into the equation.
She should have enrolled in ‘biblical counseling’ at some cow-splat college in the Ozarks, and that way avoided the minimum passing requirements of the School in question. But no, ‘as a Christian’, she plainly saw herself as entitled.
(And I’m done too Emily. ps we’ve found Foucault to be virtually unreadable, and wholly useless. There is a FouCult out there, but we’d suggest Szasz as much more readable if you want to look at where psychiatry has come from.)
@Emily K
Emily, I’m sorry if I came off as snarky, but what you said really offended me. You don’t have to think Foucault is great because he’s gay, and I’m sorry if I implied that, but he is considered one of the most formidable critics of contemporary psychiatric practice and, for that matter, contemporary philosophy, in the Western world. Foucault isn’t saying that psychiatry is evil, just that it serves a normalizing function in society, to keep the “mad” and the “deviant” (which includes gay people, certain diseased people, deformed people, etc.) away from the so-called good, normal people. That was my point.
@David Roberts
With all due respect, Dave, neither you nor Emily understand what I’m saying. Why would I be against psychiatry, when the blog I run (Against Biblical Counseling) is basically a damning critique of the anti-psychiatry movement, a point I have brought up repeatedly on this blog. Acknowledging that psychiatry has a problematic past is not the same thing as rejecting it out of hand. What I’m arguing is just that the LGBT community relying on psychiatric science’s approval is problematic, because that science has often been based on political rather than scientific assumptions. That doesn’t mean psychiatry isn’t science (and indeed I was careful to distinguish between psychiatry, which is definitely a science, albeit a young one and psychology which clearly doesn’t fit the bill of a true science yet, though it may in the future). Early queer theorists, particularly from the 70’s were very skeptical of the approval of the psychiatric community (Foucault among them), because they realized that approval had come from political pressure and moral guilt, rather than scientific analysis, and therefore if the pressure was placed in a different direction, it might cave.
And for the record, I was reacting to Emily’s snobbishness, not being a snob myself. I’m tired of her repeated efforts to jump down people’s throats who don’t agree one hundred percent with the Ex-Gay Watch party line. I can still remember the time she bit the guy’s head off who accidently used the term Pharisee, not realizing it was offensive to people.
Frankly, I found you as illogical as Emily. Of course I loook for painful life circumstances besides class in my students. I simply bring up class because it is something other teachers don’t look for. And for the record, my school would label me a racist for said viewpoints, so it was a fair statement. I’m not part of the FouCult, I too find him unreadable at times. And that you trust the anti-psychiatric Szasz who has oppressed millions of mentally ill evangelicals, tells me all I need to know about your own viewpoints. I see no where where you are getting the idea that she is imposing stigma. SHe only does that if she tells students her views on LGBT rights without being asked. Now, I;ve heard that this program may be a specialized one for LGBT people. If that’s so I agree with you guys. But if it’s not a specialized program, the school has no right to order her compliance. I’ve made myself perfectly clear here, and all you guys have done is crufcify me on a cross of political correctness (this is obvuiously meant to be hyperbole). I’m sorry that you can’t live in the real world, but some of the rest of us have to. Your constant deliberate mischaraceterizations of my viewpoints are both offensive and untrue and I’m tired of having ot stick up for the intolerant people who now run this website. Would you try, just for once, to understand where people from other backgrunds grew up and not just mischaracetrize ther viewpoints as you have done with me? I’m to the point where I’m scared to comment o this site, because people jump on you if your statement is not immediately considered orthodox, and I know other people have that problem as well. Please, show a little of the tolerance you demand from others.
If you have personal issues with a commenter or writer, you can take those into private email exchanges if the other party wishes. I’m not sure what you mean by the “Ex-Gay Watch party line” as the only overriding rule here is that people remain civil and respectful while discussing some germane issue. Views here are as varied as the people who visit. It would be absurd to expect that passionate responses are not going to erupt from time to time, as in the case you mentioned with Emily, but they certainly don’t rule the day. To say otherwise is either to be unaware of what goes on here or to purposely misstate the facts.
If anyone else wishes to address this issue with you further, more power to them. I was already finding the debate tedious when I ran across your complaint that you are being “crucified” for your views. To describe this rather mundane exchange in such melodramatic terms tells me there is more going on here than can be addressed properly from a blog so I am withdrawing from the discussion.
I think there are a lot of words in these comments devoted to a lot of issues outside the actual relevance to the OP*. It seems to me the issue is whether Keeton (or anyone else, for that matter) can reasonably expect a university to tailor its course requirements to fit her personal worldview. Marlene has already pointed out one enormous reason why the university *can’t* do such a thing. Further, Keeton is not without alternative options to the university in question. There are any number of Christian colleges and universities in Georgia and throughout the states that can accommodate her worldview. Why she chose to file suit rather than find a school more suited to her religious beliefs makes her motivations suspect.
* (I’m familiar with Foucault and I’m left scratching my head as to why you even brought him up, Mr. Weaver.)
Fine then John. You win.
I hope she maintains both her religious beliefs and her archaic understanding of homosexuality. I hope she keeps to her opinion that she has a right to express either of these under any circumstances to anyone.
After she graduates and begins work as a school counselor I also hope she will pass these viewpoints onto a student that seeks her advice. That is what her PC-blinkered academics were concerned about, but her rights take precedence above all else.
And if she thereby appears disrespectful or causes the student to become distraught or depressed or suicidal, I guess the student will just have to learn to be more tolerant of other people’s opinions.
Yep, that’s exactly the type of school counselor I hope to see in the future.
ps: thanks — I’m glad you were here to correct both me and the American School Counselor Association. I’ll be sure to pass your wisdom onto them.
Wasn’t the APA’s choice to call homosexuality off the mental disorders list a politically charged call? Wasn’t it also the same politically charged flaw when the same organization said that it was dangerous to practice ex gay therapy?
@Jacob Woods
That certainly reflects the popular anti-gay spin — it’s almost urban legend at this point. There is no doubt that the decision came about during a time when gays and lesbians, long marginalized, were gaining a voice in society. There is an unfortunate history in the world of psychiatry being used as a tool to control the socially unpopular groups of the period, and opposition to that in the case of gays and lesbians was coming to a head at that time. But these changes also coincided with a shift in the criteria for deciding mental disorders in general.
As for “ex-gay therapy,” Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) have several strikes against them. First, they claim to be a cure for that which is not an illness. Second, they have never been shown to be effective, and third, there is mounting anecdotal evidence that they can indeed be harmful.
There is a “snake oil” quality to these methods as just about anything will suffice when labeled as “reparative” or “reorientation” therapy. I don’t believe the APA made a definitive statement concerning harm since peer reviewed studies have not been done to my knowledge, but their lack of efficacy is well documented.
I suspect the entire area of SOCE has peaked and it is unlikely serious resources will be diverted to such endeavors in the future. To the degree that any change has occurred, it appears to happen outside of any act of will or focused efforts to accomplish such. Sexual orientation appears to be quite durable. There will continue to be some people who feel they must live contrary to that orientation in order to align with their understanding of their faith, but this comes more under the heading of celibacy.
I don’t see how any of this has any bearing on the case in the original post, however. The curriculum is based on the overwhelming view of all significant medical and therapeutic organizations that homosexuality is not a mental disorder but a normal variation of human sexuality. Since she obviously knew this going in, the only political statement here would seem to be that of Keeton and the ADF.
Jacob — An excellent resource of stories of lesbian and gay activists is Eric Marcus’ landmark book, Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights 1945-1990 An Oral History.
He has the stories of those who set up booths at the APA conventions as well as psychiatrist John Fryer (in a mask and voice-altering microphone as Dr. H. Anonymous) to show that homosexuals are NOT automatically mentally ill, and verifying Dr. Hooker’s landmark 1958(!) study.
You need to remember the times, Jacob — you had women at one time being institutionalized if they said they didn’t want to have kids or even demanding the right to vote! Why do you think the operation to remove a woman’s uterus and ovaries is called a “hysterectomy” — because the male doctors thought doing so would calm them down, and thus their “hysteria” over being oppressed!!
So find a copy of the book, and read what it took to force the APA into modern times and grow, rather than stagnate by relying on the past.
Well, you can put it that way if you like. You could, of course, say exactly the same about the abolition of slavery or giving women the right to vote. Coming nearer our own day, you could say that the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s choice to stop quietly moving sexually abusive clergy from one parish to another and to co-operate with the civil authorities in the investigation of clerical sexual abuse was a politically charged call motivated by journalistic pressure. It is always difficult, if not impossible, to know what would have happened if things had been different, but I personally have no doubt that, without journalists’ exposure of cases of clerical sexual abuse, the Roman Catholic Church would just have gone on the same old way, just like it always went.
It is a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless, that things that should have been done long before, without any political pressure at all, are eventually done only as the result of such pressure.
It was, no doubt, political pressure that caused the APA to reconsider its classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder, but it was that reconsideration itself – irrespective of what it was that had brought about that reconsideration – that led to the realization that homosexuality should be removed from the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, since there was no scientific justification for its having been included in the first place. As Dr John C. Gonsiorek expressed it, “the political pressure placed on the American Psychiatric Association in the early 1970s was a necessary but not sufficient condition for the depathologizing of homosexuality.”
As for ex-gay therapy being dangerous, I don’t think that there is much doubt that it is potentially so. Shidlo & Schroeder’s Sexual Conversion Therapy: Ethical, Clinical, and Research Perspectives (2002) provides evidence of this. That is not to say that it always does harm; in many cases it may do no direct harm at all. That it is very seldom, if ever, positively beneficial and that it encourages people to waste part of their lives in a futile attempt to change their natural sexual orientation instead of coming to terms with it – these are, in my view, sufficient grounds for condemnation.
@David Roberts
From what I read in My Genes Made Me Do It ex gay therapy has been shown to be effective. And the book also shows that ex gays out number the entire GLBT community. Many people changing over without even consciously wanting to. Those who do want and have show that there have been very few if any consequences to the therapy.
@Marlene
I will keep that book in mind. But for the moment I am finishing up reading a book called My Genes Made Me Do It which really has changed my perspective on those who are ex gay and how the ex gay therapy programs are working. I feel as if I really have given ex gay therapy a bad reputation. Now I am willing to believe it can be done. So in a sense I have grown.
“I feel as if I really have given ex gay therapy a bad reputation. Now I am willing to believe it can be done. So in a sense I have grown.”
No, i think more likely you have uncritically bought a line of reasoning not consonant with the facts. Let’s backtrack to the APA in 1973 in Honolulu. There is a great book on the whole fiasco called “Homosexcuaility and American Psychiatry” by Ronald Bayer. It’s a great read.
The reason the APA dropped homosexuality from its list of mental disorders was that there was absolutely no evidence that being gay is a mental disorder, though there was plenty of evidence that a lot of people didn’t like it, or had “issues”, and confused their dislike (or issues) with sincere medical belief.They had a definition of mental disorder, but to make it stick for gay people they had to ignore their own definition, and say that “Of course. Gay people are mentally disordered BY definition. Just not the definition we apply to everyone else.” It could not hold up to any kind of scientific scrutiny, not that much of psychiatry can. The really homophobic psychiatrists, like Bieber and Soccarides (father of a gay son!!!), the ones who earned their living “curing” gay people, tried to force a referendum on the APA, but it also failed. The whole procedure underlined that prejudice was really the defining issue, not homosexuality, as is often the case on issues around sexuality in our deeply puritanical culture. Two votes on something that ought to be fairly obviously “true”, except that it clearly isn’t.
Not surprisingly, religious reactions to gay people are very similar. First, a whole category of people is defined as mentally ill (or particularly sinful) with no scientific or experiential (or biblical) reason to do so, only a cultural and religious prejudice. They they have a vote, and presto-change-o, a whole category of people are “cured” overnight, or declared non-sinners. Then, the people who whose livelihood depend on the the “mental illness” or “particularly sinful” issues try to make another vote to make all of those people “sick” again. Sounds just like the Episcopal Church. Clearly, not a matter of good science or good medicine– or good theology– just prejudice. You might call it the politics– or theology– of diagnosis.
A lot of what passes for claiming paraphilia as a sexual disorder is just the mere fact that some people don’t share that particular taste. Forr example, Diaper Dave was engaging in a form of paraphilia AND with a person not his wife that I don’t find particularly attractive. Actually, I don’t find it attractive at all. I also find his brand of conservative hypocrisy unattractive. Hiowever, neither is an illness or even worthy of psychiatric attention. but of course, psychiatrists have to defend their livelihoods.
(On a side note, I used to have a boyfriend who didn’t want to shave his stuff because he thought that it put too much attention there. People might think he was gay and thought ‘too much’ about sex, and you shouldn’t– well, you know. When I pointed out that he is gay, he DID think a lot about it, and liked lots of attention there, he got over himself. but I digress. It’s just an illustration of the twisty ways of sex). Anyway…)
The perfect example, especially for this thread, is :”Drs.” Jones and Yarhouse. There are more distortions and half-truths around these two than can be counted. They trumpet that their study says “CHANGE IS POSSIBLE”. It then appears that change is possible for only 15%, and that the exact nature of the change is AT BEST complicated and ambiguous– just like you being ex-gay. Exgay doesn’t mean “not gay.” As far as I cantell, it means a lifetime of self-delusionment and self struggle with no discernable results,.
The exgay ministries then trumpet totally bogus figures based on this totally bogus “research”. If i recall, they came up with a 67% figure Tens of thousands of people have changed, they say, but J&Y could only come up with 100 who were willing even to be studied, and only 15 who had changed.
Excuse me. “Changed”. Ambiguously, complicatedly, difficultily.
Why would you trust someone whose ability to tell the truth, let alone distinguish what the truth may be, is so severely compromised?
As i wrtoe to J&Y: “Why, when it was clear from the results of your study that actual, “uncomplicated” change from hetero to homo does not occur, at least by your methods, why do you advocate change, especially by your methods? My homosexuality, like the heterosexuality of my many straight friends, is very unequivocal and very uncomplicated. If the best that you can come up with are celibates and the “complicateds”, then I put it to you that you are leaving something not changed.”
Jacob — Your stats in regards to there being more “ex-gays” than the entire LGBT population are 100% wrong! No doubt you’re getting them from NARTH or Exodus or some other bogus “study”.
As far as I’ve seen throughout my years, there are *far* more ex-EX-gays than there are “ex-gays”. This is due to the fact of the abysmal “success” rate, even claimed by these fraudulent shysters. Even the two men who *began* Exodus left the group, exposed it for the fraud that it is, and began living together as a couple!!
I wouldn’t believe anything anyone from NARTH or teh Peters’ AFTAH or any other anti-LGBT group says, even if they say the sun rises in the east and sets in the west!!
These group lie, cheat, steal, and distort everything they get their hands on in order to justify their perverted position on sexuality.
My advice john is to find an affirming therapist and spiritual adviser and stop listening and reading those bilious books. All they’re good for is tossing in the recycling bin, or starting a warm fire on a cold winter’s night in a fireplace.
Oh my, more ex-gays than gays — I’ve never heard that one before. I suspect the claims will become more absurd as the fringes become even more shrill. The book you mention is from Neil Whitehead and is free to download if anyone really wants to see. It’s been rattling around for years (so has he, actually). If you are serious about understanding these issues, you will need to look beyond stale pundits like Neil and he NARTH/Cohen crowd.
To be candid, though, it’s hard to take you seriously at all after reading your “Rules of Sexual Change.”
I’m not sure what you are up to, but your sexual orientation would seem to be the least of your issues. Perhaps this is just part of a joke or some sort of attempt to get attention?
I just briefly glanced at Jacob Woods’ blog, and would have to agree that it is hard to take him seriously. I honestly hope that it is a joke.
On the other hand, he says that he has given himself a year to turn straight. If he is serious, setting a firm deadline isn’t a bad idea. If he quits after just one year of failing to become straight, he will have wasted far less time on the venture than so many others that have walked the ex-gay path.
I tend to agree, John. It appears he is just out of high school and, whatever his reason for delving into this subject, it isn’t a serious endeavor. Take for instance this from his Youtube profile:
And then there is this video about this attempts to change his orientation. It’s hard to take this seriously, which in some ways is good I guess.
If you are serious and really want some history and perspective on these issues, why not take a look through our archives and perhaps avoid repeating other’s mistakes. You have enough to deal with starting college.
Jacob – So you really believe the Whiteheads’ assertion that ex-gays out number the entire GLBT community? If so, then you might like to consider the following.
Professor Robert Spitzer, after searching for nearly two years in a country the size of America, with the full co-operation of ex-gay ministries and reparative therapists, could find only two hundred people whose claim to be ex-gay was even worth serious consideration. Spitzer’s results have been the subject of severe sceptical criticism, of course, but even if we take them at their face value, they are hardly consistent with the suggestion that “ex-gays outnumber the entire GLBT community”. Spitzer himself has commented, “I think change is probably extremely rare, otherwise it would not have taken so long to find the participants.” He has also recently said that he believes that some of the apparently “successful” cases were probably deceiving themselves and him.
There is good evidence that spontaneous change of sexual orientation does sometimes occur – in both directions. This is more likely in women; in men it occurs far more seldom. The evidence that change of this kind can actually be engineered is extremely poor. If you’re putting your life on hold waiting for it to happen to you, you might as well wait for all your numbers to come up in the lottery.
One reviewer described My Genes Made Me Do It as a religious tract dressed up as a scientific treatise. He was right, I think.
William — I had a brainwave when I was reading your post, and I’ll bet you bedknobs to broomsticks Whitehead includes bisexuals in his numbers of “ex-gays”, especially those who move from dalliances with the opposite sex to exclusive heterosexuality (ie Anne Heiche).
Marlene – You may be right, but I really can’t say. I couldn’t bring myself to wade through the whole of the Whiteheads’ book; I just read certain chapters of it, and hastily perused the rest.
I noted the following points:
(1) The title “My Genes Made Me Do It” is inappropriate to start with. Those who believe that homosexuality is genetically caused – whether they are right or wrong – maintain that it is the orientation that is so caused, not the behaviour. The orientation tends, of course, to lead to the behaviour, but it is not inevitably so. People may, for one reason or another, refrain from any sexual behaviour at all, or they may choose to engage in sexual behaviour which is not in line with their sexual orientation in order to conform to some concept of “sexual normality”. They may even believe that repeatedly engaging in this behaviour will actually change their orientation.
(2) Although the book purports to be a dispassionate, scientific inquiry into what determines sexual orientation, it is not. It has clearly been written to give a plug to the ex-gay movement.
(3) Their “strongest evidence”, that monozygotic twins frequently have differing sexual orientations, which they say would not be the case if sexual orientation were determined by genetic or prenatal factors, is nullified by the finding that monozygotic twins are not in fact identical.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080215121214.htm
I didn’t know that William. thanks for the heads up about twins.
The fact that even identical twins have different fingerprints even tho they have the same DNA proves that. It’s a nice piece of evidence to throw at the fundies when they bring it up… 😉
@Marlene
They are not coming from NARTH or Exodus. In the comments you can see further citations and the claim is in chapter twelve of My Genes Made Me Do It. Whitehead has no political ambitions. He does not live in the U.S. and he has a ph.d. in biochemistry. Though NARTH loves him for putting that book together, I have found no such affiliation between NARTH Exodus or any other religiously driven ex gay reparative therapy and Whitehead.
@Jacob Woods
I don’t know precisely what official affiliation Whitehead has with NARTH, but numerous papers and reviews by him appear on the NARTH website, and he was the keynote speaker at the 2008 NARTH Convention. The website also informs me that he was a NARTH fellow (whatever that is when it’s at home) in 2002 and that he contributes regularly to their bulletin.
I see also that a 2007 NARTH paper entitled “Study Seeks To Discover Genetic Origin Of Homosexuality” describes Dr Neil Whitehead as a NARTH Scientific Advisory Committee member.
Thought so!!
Jacob
Neil and Briar Whitehead are notoriously known in New Zealand. They have been conservative anti-gay activists for over 20 years, including shilling for Noel Mosen and his ex-gay Lion of Judah Ministries (now defunct). They have produced a steady stream of vile ‘research’ about gay people, keep making anti-gay submissions to government panels, and have been actively involved with NARTH (and Exodus) for years.
‘Dr’ Neil Whitehead is indeed (by qualification) a biochemist, but his career was as a soil scientist — counting radioactive decay with the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, that type of thing. He has no research background in genetics, let alone sexuality, let alone homosexuality. Briar is even less qualified, having no scientific training or experience whatsoever. She’s a writer.
To understand what Neil Whitehead does with tripe such as ‘My Genes Made Me Do It’ you will need to first understand what he doesn’t do. And what he doesn’t do is accurately report on the entire body of sexuality research. He fishes for snippets of data, or a quote, that he can use to support his preconceived ideas. That’s not research, it’s data mining. For propaganda.
To give you one further clue to what he’s about — he claims to have ‘studied’ 10,000 scientific papers on homosexuality*. How many do you think he chooses to report on? How does he select what he will report on?
Sorry if you have been impressed by Whitehead’s swill, but anyone who makes a statement like this is either an outright fraud, or outright ignorant. Or both.
——————
* the 10,000 claim is absurd of itself. Does he seriously expect anyone to believe that he has properly studied 3 or 4 papers every day of his life for an entire decade? While holding down a job???
@Jacob Woods
I’m not sure I follow that to have political ambitions one must live in the US, but that’s another discussion I guess. As has been noted, Whitehead is most definitely involved with NARTH, but even if he was not, he uses the same method of data mining through confirmation bias for which they are known. That said, even NARTH will no longer use the discredited “statistics” from Paul Cameron. Cameron is the bottom of the barrel for the intellectually bankrupt and anti-gay.
I think before this discussion progresses further Jacob, you need to explain the nature of your endeavor. Your blog appears to be recent and the introductory text says:
A few odd things strike me right a way. You are approx 19 yet you claim (in the third person) to be experiencing a “mid life crisis.” Then you twice refer to yourself as “it” (later “he”).
On your Youtube profile (also quite new), you write:
And of one of the videos on your blog you write:
On your MySpace blog you wrote last month:
And on your Facebook profile you list:
Frankly, Jacob, this is such a mass of contradictory misinformation that I’m having trouble understanding your purpose. In the unlikely event that you are serious about what you say you intend to do, I strongly suggest you seek out competent, professional counseling. If this is all some sort of joke or writing experiment, then I would ask you to consider how making light of what has been for many a very painful, even near-death experience will only serve to cause needless anger and frustration — and possibly more pain.
You comments about traffic and your listing of “Google Adsense” as your affiliation on Facebook may indicate that this is designed to make you money. In that case, such a contradictory mess could cause a flash of attention for you as some highlight this or that bit and others follow to argue obvious fallacy. If so, you should probably be ashamed of yourself.
None of these scenarios is very promising, and all of them tend to frame your participation here as some sort of “mental masturbation” which is not our purpose. But again, perhaps you need to candidly explain what you are up to before continuing here.