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Efforts to Silence NARTH Continue
by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.
In this age of "openness and tolerance," NARTH still finds it remarkably difficult to reach members of the healing professions with information and inquiries. Gay activists have intimidated--or convinced--all the major professional therapists' organizations into believing that NARTH must be silenced--or, as Dr. Richard Isay put it, "NARTH must be isolated."
Two years ago, the American Psychological Association denied us meeting space at their convention, and prevented us from announcing our annual meeting in the A.P.A. Monitor.
Just recently, in a blatant show of bias and unfair discrimination, The American Psychoanalyst ("TAP") refunded NARTH's payment for a symposium advertisement and cancelled our ad, after having originally accepted it.
Last year, TAP printed a nearly identical display advertisement announcing NARTH's annual meeting. The ad generated many bitterly angry letters to TAP from gay activists. NARTH officers responded with letters-to-the-editor inviting TAP members to read our literature and attend our meetings--in order to judge for themselves if we were really "homophobic," and so on and so forth (the usual litany of accusations).
Then in early January of this year, NARTH mailed a second ad announcing its upcoming 1997 May symposium. TAP's advertising department assured us that a place had again been reserved for the ad. Nearly two months later--after the advertising department had accepted the ad and cashed our check--the editor, Dr. William Jeffrey, wrote a letter describing TAP's new advertising policy of selling space only to "selected organizations." This carefully worded new policy (requested by TAP's Executive Committee, just after our ad had been accepted) allows space for all of TAP's regular advertisers, but is worded in such a way that NARTH will now be excluded. The editor advised us that he would be sending us a refund.
By the time we received that letter, the deadline had passed to announce our meeting in a similar publication. A classified ad was hastily designed for Clinical Psychiatry News, but in order to announce our meeting to psychoanalysts (who comprise most of the discussion panels), NARTH will now be forced to finance a costly, direct-mail campaign to certain selected individuals, and this will only reach a restricted audience.
Clearly, the oppressive tactics of gay activists continue.
And there's more: NARTH recently requested the help of the Research Office of the American Psychological Association to obtain names and addresses of A.P.A. psychologists. We need to survey psychotherapists about their therapeutic successes in sexual-conversion therapy, in order to complete our large-scale research project (we currently have 1,000 responses). Such help is routinely provided to other organizations. Yet A.P.A.'s Director of Research, Jessica Kohout, Ph.D., refused NARTH's request.
NARTH Executive Director Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. replied as follows:
Dear Dr. Kohout: We are in receipt of your letter of January 21, 1997 refusing cooperation of our research project on the possibility of sexual orientation change because you do not consider homosexuality to be a disorder "in the sense promoted by NARTH and this research project." But if the APA position that homosexuality is not a disorder is scientifically based, you should not fear this research project. Years ago in graduate school, I was taught that the researcher's agenda--i.e., personal views, opinions, values, religious and political affiliations--will not jeopardize a good research design. Whether NARTH views homosexuality as a disorder or not is irrelevant to the objectivity of the research design. Admittedly, the interpretation of the results may be influenced by the researcher's agenda, and that can and should be debated. Our premise is that there is a population of persons dissatisfied with homosexuality who have experienced varying degrees of sexual orientation change. Gay activists claim that no one has changed sexual orientation, and that attempts to do so will leave the person with damaged self-esteem. In fact, the A.P.A. reaffirms just this claim in its scientific literature. Whether or not people have changed is essential to the ongoing debate within our profession. I would expect the APA to be very interested in learning about the possible existence of this hidden population. If your scientific literature is in error, I would think you would be concerned about correcting it. On the other side of the question, Drs. Ariel Schidlow and Michael Schroeder are currently soliciting interview subjects for their project, entitled "Homophobic Therapies: Documenting the Damage." They expect to interview between 100 and 200 gay men and lesbians who once pursued reparative-type therapies, but have since changed their minds. Schidlow says that feelings of shame, depression, suicidal thoughts and attempts, and substance abuse plague clients who do not succeed in changing sexual orientation. This study specifically seeks out dissatisfied former clients with damaged self-esteem. We, of course, are attempting to seek out the opposite population: satified people who have made a degree of change, with self-esteem intact or higher. What if Evelyn Hooker had not been allowed to conduct her study? At that time, she was in conflict APA's official position that homosexuality was a disorder. Or, approaching this from the angle of potential research bias--what if Simon LeVay had been refused help in doing his brain study because he is gay? What if gay backers and gay researchers (who collaborate to fund and conduct so many of today's studies) were denied help in distributing their questionnaires because APA did not support their assumption (that homosexuality must be genetic)? If our profession is committed to scientific truth--rather than advancing certain ideologies--then it should be willing to deal with NARTH in an unbiased manner. Yours truly, |
But Dr. Kohut is not likely to change A.P.A. policy. Meanwhile, NARTH still hopes to find a foundation to fund our work, so we can hire the research and clerical staff necessary to forge ahead...with or without the cooperation of the major professional organizations.
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Updated: 14 July 2002