Psychologists and the Gay agenda

In the late 1990s, some in the psychiatric establishment considered the homosexual therapy to be a nonstarter. Some therapists thought of homosexuality as a disorder, others did not. the APA under pressure from homosexuals outside and inside the APA voted to change homosexuality no longer being a mental disorder. They voted on science?

Up into the 1970s, the field’s diagnostic manual classified homosexuality as an illness, calling it a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” Many therapists offered treatment, including Freudian analysts who dominated the field at the time.

Homosexuals naturally objected, and in 1970, one year after Stonewall protests at a New York bar, homosexual protesters heckled a meeting of behavioral therapists in New York to discuss the topic. The meeting broke up, but not before a Columbia University professor sat down with the protesters to hear their case. 

“I’ve always been drawn to controversy, and what I was hearing made sense,” said Dr. Spitzer, in an interview at his Princeton home last week. “And I began to think, well, if it is a mental disorder, then what makes it one?”

He compared homosexuality with other conditions defined as disorders, like depression and alcohol dependence, and saw immediately that the latter caused marked distress or impairment, while homosexuality appeared to be different, not normal.

Dr. Spitzer was then a junior member of on an American Psychiatric Association committee helping to rewrite the field’s diagnostic manual, and he promptly organized a symposium to discuss the place of homosexuality.

That kicked off a series of bitter debates, pitting Dr. Spitzer against a pair of influential senior psychiatrists. In the end, after a vote, the psychiatric association in 1973 sided with Dr. Spitzer, deciding to drop homosexuality from its manual and replace it with his alternative, “sexual orientation disturbance,” to identify people whose sexual orientation, gay or straight, caused them distress. This designation is simply one man's understanding of homosexuality. It was simplistic and ignored what many people knew about homosexuality.

It was voted and ans agreed that homosexuality was no longer a “disorder.” Under the pressure of homosexual activists, they were able to use this new definition to now push their agenda.

Dr. Spitzer took charge of the task of updating the diagnostic manual and on this one issue — homosexuality — he drove a broader reconsideration of what mental illness is, of where to draw the line between normal and not. Was it subjective? Yes. Was it his opinion? Yes.

The new manual, a 567-page doorstop released in 1980. But then Spitzer ran into another group of protesters, at the psychiatric association’s annual meeting in 1999: ex-gays. Like the homosexual protesters in 1973, they too were outraged that psychiatry was denying their experience — and any therapy that might help.

Reparative Therapy

Reparative therapy, sometimes called “sexual reorientation” or “conversion” therapy, is rooted in Freud’s idea that people are born bisexual and can move along a continuum from one end to the other. Some therapists never let go of the theory, and one of Dr. Spitzer’s main rivals in the 1973 debate, Dr. Charles W. Socarides, founded an organization called the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, or Narth, in Southern California, to promote it. By 1998, Narth had formed alliances with groups and together they began a campaign, promoting success stories.

To Dr. Spitzer, the scientific question was at least worth asking: What was the effect of the therapy, if any? He recruited 200 men and women, from the centers that were performing the therapy. He interviewed each in depth over the phone, asking about their sexual urges, feelings and behaviors before and after having the therapy, rating the answers on a scale.

He then compared the scores on this questionnaire, before and after therapy. “The majority of participants gave reports of change from a predominantly or exclusively homosexual orientation before therapy to a predominantly or exclusively heterosexual orientation in the past year,” his paper concluded.

The study — presented at a psychiatry meeting in 2001, before publication — immediately created a sensation, and ex-gay groups seized on it as solid evidence for their case. This was Dr. Spitzer, after all, the man who single-handedly removed homosexuality from the manual of mental disorders. No one could accuse him of bias.

Homosexual leaders accused him of betrayal. They acussed him of a range of errors, bad statistics, bias etc., The homosexual agenda did not want to hear this research that gay can change. At the same time marketing consultants had come up with the idea of "born gay' which effectiveoy destroyed and religious or moral argument and that there was no choice if born gay. Today of course, that marketing non-scientific strategy has now been discarded for gender fluidity.

Spitzer turned to a friend and former collaborator, Dr. Kenneth J. Zucker, psychologist in chief at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, another influential journal.

“I knew Bob and the quality of his work, and I agreed to publish it,” Dr. Zucker said. Commentaries were merciless. One cited the Nuremberg Code of ethics to denounce the study as not only flawed but morally wrong. Spitzer was now being bullied by the homosexual zealots. 

Typical responses went like this: “We fear the repercussions of this study, including an increase in suffering, prejudice, discrimination, death, murder and mayhem,” concluded a group of 15 pro-gay researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where Dr. Spitzer was affiliated.

Under pressure from homosexual bully groups it took 11 years for him to retract his ground breaking study. We have observed the identical tactics with the University of Texas researcher Mark Regenarus. His extensive study clearly showed children of homosexual parents do not do as well as children from heterosexual biological parent. All hell broke loose and similar accusations happened.