Therapists who treat homosexuality ‘terrorized’ by Brazil’s psychology council says expert
Translated from the Portuguese original by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
July 5, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Marisa Lobo, a Brazilian psychologist who identifies publicly as a Christian, answers questions from pro-family activist Julio Severo about her struggle against Brazil’s leftist Federal Council of Psychology (CFP), which has forbidden her to publicly associate her Christianity with her identity as a psychologist, a ruling that has recently been condemned by the Religious Right and Liberty Committee of the Order of Attorneys of Brazil as unconstitutional.
Marisa Lobo
Lobo says that she was threatened with the loss of her license by the CFP in response to complaints from homosexual activists over her blog and Twitter posts condemning the “gay kit” that the Brazilian government tried to distribute to public school students in 2011, with the stated purpose of fighting “homophobia.” The kit’s explicit contents and positive portrayal of homosexual behavior provoked outrage among Brazilians and the program was suspended by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff as a result.
Some of the questions of the original interview were eliminated for the sake of brevity, and paragraph breaks have been added for the sake of readability.
Julio Severo: Why is the Federal Council of Psychology threatening you?
Marisa Lobo: For revealing myself on the Internet as a Christian psychologist, for defending my faith and principally for questioning the gay kit, which for me is not a form of preventing prejudice, and is an incentive for homosexual practices. The gay kit is very explicit, and from what I understand about public policy, its applicability is not justified in such a personal way. The gay kit is a way of giving privileges and creating an even greater form of prejudice.
With children things should happen at the appropriate time, in a natural and general way. We should have kits that speak of prejudice as a whole, about bullying suffered by overweight people, nerds, short people, Evangelicals, homosexuals, ugly people, blacks, blind people, etc. In sum: if we give a privileged attention only to one category, we are discriminating against the others. That doesn’t eliminate prejudice; it is just a Machiavellian tactic for privileging and instituting a dictatorship and a superior group, and I am principally in favor of equality.
Julio Severo: If someone involved in homosexuality asks you for help to abandon the lifestyle, what do you do?
Marisa Lobo: I treat them. My oath, my code of ethics, tells me that I have to treat, to listen to psychic suffering, and if the fact of being homosexual is causing any kind of suffering, I do treat them. It’s my obligation, even if it is to change their orientation, condition, or choice, if that is their absolute desire. I could not deny it to them. I would be violating the code of ethics, would I not? But it’s evident that, as a psychologist, I must respect resolution 01/1999 (the CFP resolution which does not permit treatment of homosexuality as an illness – ed.). The World Health Organization says that homosexuality is not an illness, however at the same time I don’t understand why there is so much pressure from gay militants who fear psychologists who do not refuse such help. Gay militants distort what we do and continue to monitor us.
What happens in the therapeutic setting should be determined by the patient. The neurosis is such that psychologists are fearful and are induced to make clear to the patient that it isn’t an illness, whether it is or not. But if he’s going to therapy it’s because he’s suffering. And if, I repeat, it is his will, I have to be a channel, without imposing, something I have never done. What they say about me is a lie and another strategy for condemning people who are Christian.
Julio Severo: Are the threats of the CFP impeding you from helping homosexuals?
Marisa Lobo: The decision of the person should always be respected. We must always keep in mind the demands of the patient. We should respect his will without pressure. A reversion (of his condition) can happen in many cases. The terrorism of the CFP does not permit homosexuals to believe this. The CFP thinks that when someone says they want to change, it is because of an imposition of religion, and, since they don’t believe in God—because God for many of them is a myth—they always are going to treat this topic with religious prejudice. I now let my patient decide. If it’s what he wants, we go there, and in the process, he will determine and even confirm if that is what he wants.
Julio Severo: Why is the CFP, which doesn’t impede Spiritist psychologists from applying Spiritist techniques in their treatment, so involved in what you do as a Christian that they busy themselves with your clients?
Marisa Lobo: Why? Look, I don’t know. It’s impossible that they still don’t know that a Brazilian Association of Spiritist Psychologists exists, or Buddhist psychology, or Jewish, or esoteric, or parapsychoology, etc. There exists a grand number [of such things]. You only need to go to Google to prove it. The Federal Council of Psychology is the most persecutory, unethical autocracy in history. They have no moral standing to persecute me. They are activists for ideologies, policies, sexual orientation, atheism, and they vent their hatred and prejudice against Christians, principally Evangelicals.
But the response is clear: Christianity speaks openly about homosexuality. So they want to destroy us for being Christians. They combat the Bible punishing those who follow it, because of religious prejudice. It is necessary to put an end to the activism of the CFP, which should be investigated by public prosecutors, since it committs various crimes, it violates its policies, it’s hypocritical, unethical. It clearly persecutes those who oppose it. That’s why I have been persecuted. There is a war [against me] because today I question that Council and its director.
Julio Severo: If the CFP revokes your license, what will you do?
Marisa Lobo: I am not going to abandon my profession over that, nor anything else that is legal and moral. The CFP has no morals, because it has gagged us, and no one dares to contest its decisions. We are obligated to accept them as the truth, even if they are lies.
They are social surfers, adopting themselves to the evolution of society, even if that evolution is bad, because they have lost the sense of what is right and wrong for the individual, of the family, of the necessity of rules, ethics, morality, principles. They are just surfing. As a result, family crises and inhumanity are on the increase, and now the legalization of abortion is coming, a record-breaking number of divorces, condoms in the schools, the legalization of drugs—and psychology adapts. Soon, we’re going to see sex on the beaches, and the whole world applauding because psychology is going to determine that it is a right to express one’s sexuality. That’s the direction humanity is going in.
Julio Severo: What caused the complaint against you in the CFP?
Marisa Lobo: The fact of my speaking of God in my social networks and of having asked the deputies to pay attention to the content of the gay kit, which was an aberration, with extremely inappropriate and sexualized content that in a sense eliminates prejudice, but creates even more. They didn’t like it. When they learned that it was a Christian talking, they began to persecute me, as a psychologist who categorizes herself as a Christian, and later in the process as a homophobe, because I said on Twitter that I love gays, but I prefer for my child to be heterosexual. And I still don’t understand why having an opinion instigates violence. Now I’m going to lose my right to say that I’m happy being a heterosexual, and that I prefer my children to be heterosexual?
They want society to think that I persecute gays, that I offer treatment for gays because I’m a fundamentalist, prejudiced. They decided that, and that’s that. I don’t accept it. The truth is that they are contradictory. They are trying to use everything to qualify me as a “homophobe.” And in 15 years of work, never did any patient complain that I imposed my religious convictions in my practice. The case against me is religious persecution, religious prejudice. The CFP thought that I would shut up, because many people deify psychology. Well I, Marisa Lobo, only have one God, and I don’t serve the insanity of these members of the Council. If they revoke my license, they are going to dig their moral grave.
Julio Severo: True Christianity is “lose for the purpose of winning.” Do you fear losing your psychology career because of Christian testimony?
Marisa: The only fear I have is that God might turn his face from me. God gave me the opportunity to be persecuted for the love of him, and I accepted. God wants to change something, and here I speak as a pastor. I am only an instrument. If my license is removed, I am going to fight in all venues. My greatest fear is that Jesus would deny me before the Father, and that will not happen, because I am not denying him before men.
Complete interview in Portuguese
Related LifeSiteNews coverage:
