The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is once again attacking the veracity of noted geneticist Dr. Francis S. Collins. For a review of the history of this issue, please see the summary and links in our previous post. The original NARTH article that started this is “Homosexuality Is Not Hardwired,” Concludes Dr. Francis S. Collins, Head Of The Human Genome Project” from 2007.
This latest effort comes in the form of an article identified as submitted to the NARTH website by David C. Pruden, NARTH’s Vice-President of Operations. We will assume from here on out that Pruden is the author unless or until we receive information to the contrary (see below). In it, this writer is painted as having wooed Dr. Collins into making statements favorable to a pro-gay position by “misinforming” him about NARTH. Supposedly, by not telling him what a good and wholesome organization it is (cough), we hoodwinked Dr. Collins into perverting the science in our favor.
In the US, all correspondence to and from government agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where Dr. Collins worked (and is now Director), is archived and can be obtained by making a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Apparently, four years after the fact, someone at NARTH got the idea to request copies of my email exchange with Dr. Collins. While they did not quote from them, they did strategically paraphrase and then claim that I had misinformed Dr. Collins.
While all very cloak and dagger, they could have saved some effort and a stamp by simply reading the three year old post here. We made that exchange public in its entirety, email headers and all, back in 2008. As noted then, the original emails were not written with public consumption in mind, so they are a bit personal but nonetheless sincere and honest.
So what about the latest article?
NARTH provides no evidence, or clear argument to support that I “misinformed” Dr. Collins. Dr. Collins is a smart man and can clearly draw his own conclusions. The latest article is defensive and divisive, providing nothing new. Furthermore, their claims are not relevant because XGW is not responsible for “representing” NARTH in a way that fits their own PR. I simply asked Dr. Collins questions and he answered after reading the original NARTH article himself.
The people at NARTH are splitting hairs and have not added anything productive to the conversation. Furthermore, the issues around this topic are dated. If there were anything currently newsworthy, it should have been reported in his recent article, but that clearly was not the case.
Dr. Francis S. Collins, NIH Director
The real question is, why are they making all this fuss about a settled issue? Dr. Collins stated that the words used in that NARTH piece were “juxtaposed in a way that suggest[ed] a somewhat different conclusion than [he] intended.” If NARTH had a beef with that, then why point fingers at me, rather than just go to the source?
Instead, they said he had the article “examined by external peer reviewers again and no evidence was found to support the aforementioned observation”. That means nothing. We went to the source, they did not. If NARTH wants to do a story, they should not have to dig up old material and try to reinvent it.
It should be noted that NARTH’s claim of “peer review” should be taken with a large grain of salt. No one outside NARTH knows who serves on this alleged review board and it could easily be a group from NARTH itself. One wonders what legitimate journal would bother.
Dr. Collins has confirmed and escalated his displeasure with this type of misuse of his work, twice to us and then once more forcefully from the NIH website itself:
It is disturbing for me to see special interest groups distort my scientific observations to make a point against homosexuality. The American College of Pediatricians pulled language out of context from a book I wrote in 2006 to support an ideology that can cause unnecessary anguish and encourage prejudice. The information they present is misleading and incorrect, and it is particularly troubling that they are distributing it in a way that will confuse school children and their parents.
This was in response to a letter (PDF) sent out to all school superintendents in the country by a rogue activist organization called the “American College of Pediatricians” (ACPED). This group was created when a handful of members of the genuine American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) split off because the AAP was not anti-gay enough for them. They maintain an appearance of validity only by virtue of name confusion with the reputable AAP. The letter, with heavy contributions from NARTH, made essentially the same claims about Dr. Collins’ statements that the NARTH article had:
Dr. Francis Collins, former Director of the Genome Project, has stated that while homosexuality may be genetically influenced, it is “… not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.” He also states [that] “…the prominent role[s] of individual free will choices [has] a profound effect on us.”
This was then used to back up their further claim from the included flyer (PDF):
“Homosexuality is not genetically-determined, unchangeable trait.” And further, “Homosexual attraction is determined by a combination of familial, environmental, social and biological influences. Inheritance of predisposing personality traits may play a role for some. Consequently, homosexual attraction is changeable.”
So Dr. Collins’ rejection of this is essentially a third and even more forcefully stated rejection of NARTH’s similar mangling of his words. What more evidence does one need?
For some reason, this particular point is very important to NARTH. Even four years later they appear desperate to obfuscate this simple bit of information from a celebrated geneticist. Then again, that is basically what NARTH does isn’t it, manipulate and weave legitimate science in with their own desperate message? This is then used by various groups who need to be able to claim there is a genuine, scientific basis for their anti-gay efforts.
Groups like NARTH are fast becoming marginalized by a world that will no longer accept such a twisted message. In turn, NARTH becomes more desperate to hold on to whatever semblance of relevancy they may have left — truth be damned.
Edited 3:38 PM EDT – changed references from David C. Pruden to NARTH as author. Response from Pruden informed us that he did not write the article, but that it came from NARTH’s Executive Committee.
I think that we can sum it up by saying: NARTH misrepresents the facts again, by wrongly accusing Ex-Gay Watch of misrepresenting NARTH’s misrepresentation.
You have to wonder what is behind this deliberate obfuscation and misrepresentation of what Dr. collins had to say.
Oh, wait. wasn’t Georgie Rekers on the board of NARTH.? now it all makes sense. I wrote this recently, and i think it applies.
“So I claimed there was also a lesser issue in this, though as I said, I also think it is really the same issue. What do all of these people have in common? Ted Haggard. Larry Craig. Lonnie Latham. George Rekers. Grant Storms. Jimmy Swaggart. Any number of congressmen who have resigned their positions for attempting– or wanting to– put their junk where it shouldn’t oughta be. A good portion of the RC priesthood. The list of ex-gay Paulky boys and Hechy girls, some of whom are earning a nice living. Diaper Dave. John Ensign. Richard Curtis. Roy Ashburn, now reformed. A list of people that have been featured here, JoeMyGod, ExGW, all the usual places.
They’re not all gay. What they have in common is that they all have something inside of them, something as desperate to get out as an alien in John Hurt’s colon. And they are just as desperate to keep it hidden, preferably IN John Hurt’s colon. To control it, in short. Only some are like The Haggard One or Richard Curtis, desperate to control in others what they cannot control in themselves. (It’s so much easier). All of them want to deflect attention from themselves onto more vulnerable others, people who deserve their punishment and whose schedules are far more available.
Maybe I’ve just been swimming with the boxturtles for too long, but on observing the virulence and the passion with which these homobigots divorce themselves from reality, if not basic good manners, and pursue their obsession with Teh Gay and attacking gay people…
…the more I am convinced that they do so precisely because the desire to control one’s own behavior and thoughts, or at least deflect attention from the lack of control, makes it very much their business. It very much affects them. Whenever the homobigots go through these long, detailed descriptions of why gay/lesbian sex must be and must be about, you know they have been thinking about it. And thinking about it.
Yeah, I’m basically saying that just about every homobigot is probably a big ‘ol homo, or afraid he/she might be. (Not all. for example, a man who was molested by his uncle might blame all gay people for it, forgetting that his uncle had a wife and kids). At some point, you have to conclude that This Is Too Crazy Even for Crazy. That, and for the smarter or luckier ones, at least, the possibility of accruing power, money, and accolades by working what used to be considered an extreme disadvantage.
I think people like Haggard, Rekers, and Curtis also represent a special case: the moral homo-hatin’-homo. The reason people like these three live the lives they do– dirty, deceitful, disconnected, dangerous, dissonant (I do so love alliteration in the cause of rhetoric) — is precisely because of people who think and act like them.
My take on them is this. I don’t see this as some sort of monumental hypocrisy– though it certainly is that– where they work against ending prejudice against gay people while having a secret gay life of their own. I would take their word for it that they are not gay, if, in the case of these three jokers that were a fact in dispute. No gay person I know leads a life like that, though perhaps some do.
Hypocrisy is too simple. It requires a degree of consciousness that they clearly do not have. As Rochefoucauld said, hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. You cannot pay that homage without knowing what it is that you do.
Curtis’s and Haggard’s lives were definitely about vice. But being gay is neither virtuous nor vicious. Paraphrasing Tevye: “It’s no shame to be gay, but it is no great honor, either.”
Nor do I see this as merely some sort of Freudian reaction formation, where they battle the private part of themselves that they don’t like in the public arena. That is probably true, but way too pat of an answer.
This is what I see here, and I hope that I am making a subtle, but real, distinction. They work against ending the prejudice against gay people because they are moral men. They know exactly how dirty and disgusting gay people are, because each had his very own life as evidence, and who would want to inflict that bit of disgusting, unclean perversity on society. Who would want that for his children? Certainly not a moral man.
Note: I said moral, not conscious, not intelligent, not compassionate, and not responsible– a bit like that moralizing Old Testament God who thinks nothing about sending a flood and wiping out little children who couldn’t sin even if they wanted to, all to prove his point that he is moral and they are not. Mark Twain’s Letters From the Earth is a great exposition of this mind-boggling intellectual and ethical vacuity and vanity on the part of Our Lord and Father, or at least those who justify the harm they inflict on others in his name.
Unlike this OT God, who had at least the grace to recognize the need to atone eventually for his own mistakes, they certainly will not accept any responsibility for the gay world that their attitudes, beliefs, and actions have created– a world a sleazy, anonymous and furtive sexual encounters, punctuated or adorned (depending on your POV) by lying, cheating, adultery, disease, and dirt, where relationships are transitory at best, destructive at worst.
All the old stereotypes, all products of the closet. and all of them true for only a certain class of ‘mo.
Nor will they easily allow us to have the gay world that we wish to have and have created for ourselves where those stereotypes have no place, because that would again require intelligence, compassion, consciousness, and responsibility, which are the moral opposites of moralizing”
With NARTH, the problem isn’t simply that their message is “twisted” or “anti-gay” — there’s also the issue that some of NARTH’s founders and leaders, like Nicolosi, have a deep personal investment in defending a Freudian origin for male homosexuality.
Thus, when science finds evidence for sexual orientation being significantly shaped by genes or prenatal hormones, a group like Exodus can still fall back on the argument “well, alcoholism may also have a genetic basis, but no one discourages alcoholics from trying to change.”
But for someone like Nicolosi, any “biological etiology” for homosexuality is going to be more threatening, because he’s spent his career arguing for a non-biological etiology, namely the “distant father, smothering mother” idea. (I think you can compare Nicolosi to someone like Trofim Lysenko, who also had a deep personal and ideological investment in a badly outdated theory.)
Indeed. They even invented their own journal so they could tout their monumental literature review as a “peer-reviewed study.”
Obviously the NARTH Executive Committee is severely deluded. One would wonder if they should be themselves acting as psychologists.
@Dave Rattigan “peer” review just begs the question, who are NARTH’s peers. They certainly don’t mean peer reviewed in the standard sense.