What’s Wrong with the World

I want to see a real study about this with more exact statistics before any conclusions are made, especially conclusions that contradict the official APA stance right now.

Odd though that if a man goes to a plastic surgeon and permits the physician to carve him up and inject him with hormones so that he may look like a girl, even though he is in fact not a girl, we have to all pretend that he is a girl, or face severe punishment. On the other hand, if that same man were a homosexual, sought treatment to change his condition, and then claims to have succeeded after many years of arduous discipline, this is supposed to be an assault upon reason itself. In fact, we have to publicly deny what he and he alone can know, that he has in fact changed. In the case of the transgender, we have to all affirm what all of us can plainly know do know is false: you can no more make a girl out of boy than you can make a dolphin out a thalidomide baby.

This is sick beyond understanding.

MarcAnthony, while I agree with you that it would be nice to see some really solid, independent studies done, I am puzzled as to why it would matter which position is the current, official APA position. The APA position was determined in a deeply political (and morally bankrupt) manner, not a result of any sort of "pristine" science. It is no longer possible (if it ever was) to have pristine a-political science occur at the level of a national professional association for mental health people.

I agree with Tony here. And I think it especially important that this not be a matter of _banning_ the therapy in question. That's just nuts. Quite literally, parents in California can have their children injected, as minors, with steroids to prevent them from going through puberty as "treatment" because the child "identifies" as the opposite sex. _That's_ not illegal, though in my opinion it obviously should be. Yet California, as I recall, has banned therapy that attempts to help a homosexual person change his orientation. So those same parents can't take a child whose sexuality they are concerned about to a therapist that will help him in that way. I have read quite literally of attempted "sting" operations against Christian counselors to see if people who are pretending to be homosexual and who claim to _want_ this sort of therapy can "catch" the Christian counselors offering it and get them in trouble. How crazy is that???

Well, the reason I look to the APA position is simply because they're the largest psychological body in America. They can do the most comprehensive studies. I have, to be honest, seen no evidence that they're prejudiced except that they have come to different conclusions than I thought they would. My only eyebrow-raiser is that they seem awfully concerned about prejudice and discrimination against homosexuals for an organization that is supposed to conduct purely psychological studies, but that in itself proves nothing

This contradicts a LOT of the current psychological research out there, so before we make some sort of conservative rallying point I'd like to look at some more solid research. I'm perfectly willing to overlook the APA research if another major, statistically sound study is conducted that gives different conclusions. But there isn't any yet.

And no, I am NOT, and never was, in favor of banning the treatment. That's just silly.

My recollection, MA, from my brief research into the APA's removal of homosexuality from the diagnostic manual of psychological disorders in the 1970's was that it was a heavily politicized decision, not a scientific one. So I have grave doubts about their scientific objectivity on this issue.

"Well, the reason I look to the APA position is simply because they're the largest psychological body in America. They can do the most comprehensive studies."

I wasn't aware that that organization took positions based on studies.

Also, keep in mind that whatever studies the organization might carry out (if they even do that sort of thing) would be open to anyone to analyze, so I don't see how its positions in particular would hold any weight. I don't go to the AMA to figure out what I should think about medicine.

Well, the reason I look to the APA position is simply because they're the largest psychological body in America. They can do the most comprehensive studies.

Unless psychology is run differently from most other professional organizations, the association itself doesn't actually "do" studies, at least not usually. Usually, in medicine a study is done by a professional at a research institution (often a university or hospital), or it is proposed by such a professional and he uses a national body like the National Institutes of Health to organize getting other entities like hospitals or clinics to feed in to the study. Then he may publish the results in the journal of his professional association.

Alternatively, if the study is really a matter of polling, it is undertaken by a researcher at a research institution which provides the funding to hire a proper polling organization, working with them to design the surveys and letting the pollster collect the data from surveys and collate it. If the researcher can't afford to hire professional pollsters, they can use volunteer lab / survey workers to collect survey info, but then both the design and the execution tend to be more suspect, more open to accusations of bias.

The APA could survey their own members, but such a survey would be really poor evidence of anything in the general population of course.

With Thomas Aquinas above, can anyone explain to me why it is that folks are allowed to "change" their sex while changing one's sexual orientation comes under such fire? Forget the studies for a second. If it's purely a matter of self-determination, why is one allowed and not the other? Compared to the switch in sexual orientation, sex-change procedures are FAR more invasive physiologically and psychologically. LGBT advocates routinely ignore any and all research (even that from secular/non-religious sources)that highlights the deleterious impact of the gay lifestyle and gay relationships. So why all the (contrived) concern about studies and statistics when it comes to the change in orientation? Who cares? If it's all about doing what you want and being happy and all that jazz, why not just let folks do what they want? There's a stunning contradiction here. Heads they (LGBT advocates) win, tails (traditionalists) lose.

Since I'm reasonably certain nobody bothered to look at the SPLC site, here are a few highlights:

Customers of JONAH’s services typically pay a minimum of $100 for weekly individual counseling sessions and another $60 for group therapy sessions. The lawsuit describes sessions that involved clients undressing in front of a mirror and even a group session where young men were instructed to remove their clothing and stand naked in a circle with the counselor, Downing, who was also undressed. Another session involved a subject attempting to wrest away two oranges, which were used to represent testicles, from another individual.

Downing and other counselors at JONAH also use techniques that leave clients alienated from their families. These techniques encourage clients to blame their parents for being gay. Clients even participate in violent role play exercises where they beat effigies of their mothers.

JONAH, formerly known as Jews Offering New Alternatives for Homosexuality, was founded by Goldberg, a former Wall Street executive and attorney. Before founding JONAH, Goldberg was convicted of three counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the federal government. He was ultimately disbarred from being an attorney.

Further info on bankster fraud Goldberg can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_A._Goldberg

While I don't have a problem with highly trained psychiatrists helping patients make changes if they are depressed about their sexual orientation, I don't think JONAH fits that description.

With Thomas Aquinas above, can anyone explain to me why it is that folks are allowed to "change" their sex while changing one's sexual orientation comes under such fire?

The SPLC, which has always been about opposing prejudice, mainly against minorities, justifies the lawsuit by saying that by supposing sexual orientation has no biological component, ex-gay conversion is furthering the idea that orientation is nothing but a choice which encourages the prejudicial view that they chose to be abnormal/perverts/defective.

For transgender people, it is mostly about suicide prevention. It can be viewed as similar to a Body Dysmorphic Disorder (a body image disorder sometimes associated with anorexia cases), which has a completed suicide rate equivalent to or higher than clinical depression. There are no stats on completed suicide rates, but transgendered as a group have an attempted suicide rate of 41% which is 15 times higher than BDD even though their suicide ideation rate is approximately the same. I would suggest it is reasonable to suppose that nearly all of the higher attempted rate can be attributed to social hostility and abandonment, which is small for BDD and extremely high for transgendered.

I would suggest it is reasonable to suppose that nearly all of the higher attempted rate can be attributed to social hostility and abandonment, which is small for BDD and extremely high for transgendered.

I don't think that follows, Step2, not at all. I think that at least a portion of it flows from the residual inability (regardless of what physical and/or psychological treatments have been rendered) the transgendered person will never be able to have a normal, enjoyable, fruitful sexual life and family. It's normal for people to want to have babies born of their very own reproductive capacity. It is normal for people to want to raise their own babies conceived and born normally.

"Social hostility" cannot be unraveled if society makes a judgment that this condition you have is a disorder and you insist on demanding of society instead that they call it "different" but not disordered. But of course the hostility comes at least partly from your choice not to be socially adapted.

Step 2,

You said, "The SPLC, which has always been about opposing prejudice, mainly against minorities," but I think you meant to say "The SPLC, which has always been about scaring old liberal Jews into giving Morris Dees lots of money..."

I'm always happy to help!

First it was an illness, then a physical disability, then a mental disorder, now it is a choice to be socially maladaptive. Forget about gender flexibility, let's try to pin down what this condition is because I'm tired of this.

First it was an illness, then a physical disability, then a mental disorder, now it is a choice to be socially maladaptive.

Oh, come on Step2, you're not THAT bad a reader. Or thinker. You're much better than that.

An illness can be the basis of a physical disability, easily: macular degeneration.

Secondly, a physical condition can cause, lead to, or be implicated in a mental disorder - otherwise lithium or other chemicals would be useless for treatment of mental illness. Here, the disorder is in the mental state not being coordinated with the physical state. This can be caused by an illness (either by a physical one (lack of hormones), a mental one, or a combination of the two), and can be a disability so long as the condition remains whatever the cause.

Finally, the social maladaption isn't in having the condition, it is in insisting on naming the condition to be a version of normal, rather than an illness, a disability, a defective disjuncture between body and mind, which choice fails to comport with social standards and causes social disruptions - as would a blind person claiming blindness is normal and demanding we treat him as capable of driving a car.

Tony,
If there was a way for a blind person to drive a car with sonar and computer assistance, would you insist it would be too disruptive for a blind person to drive? If blind people are driving, sighted people might start driving with their eyes closed (because of stupidity?) which would be a disaster, etc.

Step2 is senseless on the subject of transgender-ism. Really nuts. Yeah, guys in drag taking drugs to give them breasts are just like blind people being given the capacity to drive cars. Just like that. And calling them by female names is just like having handicapped parking spots in the lot. Sheesh.

Btw, I was pleasantly surprised to see a psychiatrist of all people actually talking sense on a related issue. (Of course I realize that transgender and homosexuality aren't always coextensive disorders.)

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/psychiatry-expert-scientifically-there-is-no-such-thing-as-transgender

If there was a way for a blind person to drive a car with sonar and computer assistance, would you insist it would be too disruptive for a blind person to drive?

Of course not. And Google cars are going to make self-driving cars (so the blind person doesn't have to do it) a reality within 5 years - they are already doing on-road pilot programs.

But that won't make me call a blind person "normal" in terms of sensation, either. Nor will being turned inside out in a sex change operation enable a former male able to bear a child as a woman.

Lydia,
Bless your heart.

Tony,
The point I'm making is that if we are going to categorize them as disabled, that designation isn't a blank check to exclude them from normal society. For most disabilities it is a good reason to include them in some limited fashion, especially when medicine and technology can mitigate the impairment.

that designation isn't a blank check to exclude them from normal society.

Ok. I agree. That someone has a disability is not good reason to exclude them from society.

Unless the disability is also a mental illness that makes them dangerous to society, like a psychotic who wants to kill red-headed people. That would be a reason to exclude them from society, as I am sure you would agree. It would be irrational to re-organize general society so that no red headed people crossed his path, as an accommodation to his illness.

especially when medicine and technology can mitigate the impairment.

Ah, but can it? If a person is mentally ill, and convinced that his head is not really a part of him, is a foreign body that is invading his real body, we could "help" him by accommodating his feelings by cutting off his head. But no doctor would do so, of course, because it isn't a cure for his real problem, and it doesn't do him any real good. Likewise, some doctors have been saying that "accommodating" a person's failure to feel like a woman when they are a man by cutting off his male organs isn't really curing the illness and doesn't really do the patient good in the long run.

I haven't the time right now to check, and I have never explored this, but I wonder: are there any efforts out there to resolve these errant feelings of being a woman in a man's body by using medicine and technology to change the feelings into those of feeling like a _man_ in a man's body? Hormone treatment, for example? Psychiatric treatment? Why wouldn't that be the reasonable response to someone whose gender feelings are out of whack?

In any case, my point wasn't about "excluding" someone who has a disorder on account of their disorder, but about "not accommodating" someone's morally disordered actions and choices. There's a difference. You can talk about "excluding" until you are blue in the face, but it isn't exclusionary to expect that all people who use a woman's locker room have female organs and not male organs.

Unless the disability is also a mental illness that makes them dangerous to society, like a psychotic who wants to kill red-headed people.

South Park exposed the terrible secret of red-heads way back in 2005. Btw, the episode is strangely relevant to the topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_Kids

In any case, my point wasn't about "excluding" someone who has a disorder on account of their disorder, but about "not accommodating" someone's morally disordered actions and choices. There's a difference. You can talk about "excluding" until you are blue in the face, but it isn't exclusionary to expect that all people who use a woman's locker room have female organs and not male organs.

Yes, and it is obvious that by constraining a person to act within the bounds of normal society, he is not being excluded at all. It is the abnormal individual's demand that normal society be abolished for his sake that is actually exclusive, and radically so. For he demands that everyone be excluded from normal society, for his own personal sake. He demands that no one be able to live in the sort of society that most any normal person would choose. And n the absence of any convincing alternative standard for normalcy that he is able to articulate and defend, such demands are tyrannical and arbitrary, and are most assuredly not egalitarian.

Yeah, I am sure that something that South Park had in an episode about red hair that was worthwhile in identifying important themes of homosexuality or gender identity, because South Park has such good, umm, good...wait,... Ok, I have it: because South Park is written by jerkwads on drugs?

I can't stand the show. Step2, if there is a point, go ahead and make it, otherwise it's just lost in neverland.

I know your modesty prevents it, Tony, but Step2 is simply evading your point because he knows he can't refute it. Hence, the desperation with the lame South Park episode.

"such demands are tyrannical and arbitrary, and are most assuredly not egalitarian."

As I heard someone put it once, it's like standing on your head and insisting that everyone else is upside-down.

Sadly timely post in view of the shutting down of Exodus International.

Noted: It is shutting down with this apology:

I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents.

This is from Alan Chambers, the President of Exodus International.

I'm sorry, I'm still skeptical that offering counseling for change is the right thing to do in the vast majority of cases.

I'm also not convinced that the apology they gave for attending a conference discussing Uganda's infamous "Kill the Gays" bill was anything but backtracking under public scrutiny. Frankly, I've never really liked this organization.

MarcAnthony, Chambers's apology was something anyone who is not on-board with the homosexual agenda should be unhappy about. Viz. (emphasis added)

I am sorry that I, knowing some of you so well, failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know.

[snip]

I am sorry I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine.

This is as far as I'm concerned an unequivocal endorsement of a central plank of the homosexual political platform--namely, the right to homosexual adoption and the idea that homosexual "families" are perfectly normal. It borders on an endorsement of homosexual "marriage" and is at a minimum an endorsement of homosexual adoption and/or parentage by artificial insemination and of civil unions.

And then there's this:

I am sorry that when I celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him, I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart.

Now, that's a weird one. If Bobby and Billy are living together as homosexual lovers, it is, yeah, a good thing if Bobby's conversion means the end of their relationship. If people don't like that, sorry. Billy likely ain't gonna accept, "We can't live together anymore, but I still care about you, I'll pray for you, and we can be chaste friends, but we have to live in such a way as to avoid all temptation to sin."

Coming out of the homosexual lifestyle _does_ almost certainly mean the end of relationships. Yes, it will be hard, but there is an important sense in which it is right to "celebrate" the end of those relationships, because they are intrinsically sinful, unhealthy relationships which are harming the people involved.

This utterly weird sentence of Chambers's apology is extremely vague and leaves one with the impression that it's just fine for homosexuals to continue being just as close to the entire "community" and to their former lovers, even when a more complete break is actually necessary to their own sanctification. At a minimum, it implies that we should blunt or fuzzify this aspect of the message, perhaps even endorsing former lovers continuing to live together and "trying to be chaste." At the most, it may indicate a complete abandonment of Chambers's affirmation of the biblical view of homosexual behavior.

This is not a good statement. Oh, one other thing. Exodus's decision to shut down is blatantly ideologically rather than scientifically motivated:

“We’re not negating the ways God used Exodus to positively affect thousands of people, but a new generation of Christians is looking for change -- and they want to be heard,” Exodus board member Tony Moore said in a statement.

In other words, we're changing our approach because the "new generation" doesn't agree with it.

I would be _extremely_ surprised if Chambers or the other people involved in this decision actually hold a biblical or traditional view of homosexuality and the social and policy issues surrounding it. Astonished, in fact.

It's a very odd reversal. This organization was one of the more outspoken and, for lack of a better word, "extreme" out there. For the President to put his tail between his legs and go totally in the opposite direction strikes me as very odd.

I find it interesting that the president of EI doesn't seem to be claiming that he is changing his opinion of "reversal" based on a scientific conclusion that reversal is impossible. He merely says that he is sorry that he and EI ever promoted orientation change therapy, without ever saying why. He also makes very determined efforts in his apology to obscure, to intentionally obfuscate the distinction between having same-sex attractions and embracing them as normative, such as here:

Today, however, I accept these feelings as parts of my life that will likely always be there. The days of feeling shame over being human in that way are long over,...

Exodus International is the prodigal’s older brother, trying to impose its will on God’s promises, and make judgments on who’s worthy of His Kingdom. God is calling us to be the Father – to welcome everyone, to love unhindered.

At every point where he could have been clear, he chose to not be clear, and he intentionally uses ambiguous language to insinuate that the Bible is not clear on the issue. It is not making judgments to simply reiterate God's own judgments: Nobody who is unclean shall enter the kingdom of God. That goes for heterosexuals who engage in sex outside of marriage just as much as homosexuals who do so. Chambers is doing Christianity as a whole a grave disservice in his apology.

The website has a story of a teen who fought with same sex attraction for 6 years and then gave up, in terms as if 6 years was somehow long enough, darn it. Compare that, for example, to Mother Teresa's spiritual darkness suffered almost continuously for nigh on 50 years. Compare it to the life-long addictive attraction to alcohol that some people suffer, people who know that they will never overcome the disorder and that they will go to their graves having to resist the temptation every day. God doesn't put a cap on how long people are asked to suffer, except to tell us that he will never push it past the limits of endurance as long as we respond to his grace.

At another place there is a claim that 99% of homosexuals who undergo treatment don't reverse their attractions. Aside from poor explanation (how many reduce their same sex attraction? How many manage to live chastely even with un-reversed attractions) the number seems to be an irrelevancy. AA admits up front that 95% of the alcoholics who start the program won't last, they will relapse - but they still think it is worth trying, for the other 5%, and would be even if it is just 1%. Christ explicitly says the good shepherd leaves the 99 to run down the 1 lost sheep and recover him.

I wasn't a big fan of Exodus' organization, and Chambers' "closing statement" was rotten, for reasons already stated. What a simpering, hyper-apologetic, obfuscating end. I'd like to know what actually went on in this case.