I’m ok..you’re gay

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality. ~James Baldwin

NEW YORK (AP) — The American Psychological Association is embarking on the first review of its 10-year-old policy on counseling gays and lesbians, a step that gay-rights activists hope will end with a denunciation of any attempt by therapists to change sexual orientation.

Such efforts — often called reparative therapy or conversion therapy — are considered futile and harmful by many gay-rights activists. Conservative groups defend the right to offer such treatment, and say people with their viewpoint have been excluded from the review panel.

A six-member task force set up by the APA has its first meeting beginning next Tuesday.

Already, scores of conservative religious leaders and counselors, representing such groups as the Southern Baptist Convention and Focus on the Family, have written a joint letter to the APA, expressing concern that the task force’s proposals would not properly accommodate gays and lesbians whose religious beliefs condemn gay sex.

“We believe that psychologists should assist clients to develop lives that they value, even if that means they decline to identify as homosexual,” said the letter, which requested a meeting between APA leaders and some of the signatories.

It is incredible to think that in 2007 there is anyone who still believes that homosexuality is a disease or an abomination. Sadder still that such people rather than keeping to dark dank diseased corners of bigotry feel quite safe spewing their prejudice like toxic rain upon anyone who will listen.

From LifeSite;

While homosexuals suffer from much higher than average rates of psychological and social disorders, the mainstream medical organizations have remained in lockstep with the gay movement’s explanation. The establishment position is that high rates of suicide, substance abuse and depression are exclusively the result of “discrimination” and lack of acceptance by the greater society. Critics strongly dispute that conclusion and state that it is the nature of the unnatural, often promiscuous lifestyle itself that leads to these problems.

Yes I can’t image how being told from a young age that you are diseased and corrupt and not worthy would have any affect on your mental or emotional well being.

Satinover writes, “The APA and others have so often repeated the same falsehoods that the public and even the Supreme Court now take for granted that science has demonstrated that homosexuality is a perfectly normal variant of human sexuality if it is fixed early in life and does not change.”

“This presumption is false,” he wrote, “yet the recent Supreme Court decisions pertaining to same-sex marriage have taken it for granted.”

Somehow I find it hard to accept any version of reality or normalcy that comes from people so absorbed in others sex lives that they feel the need to constantly think about it, write about it, legislate against it and find ways to further marginalize and condemn those who don’t follow the dictum of man-woman..man on top..take two minutes think of God and Country and procreate your little wombs out.

Here’s a little taste of one kind of Reparative Therapy;

Practitioners who view same-sex orientations as resulting from learned behavior may adopt behavioral modification techniques.[28] These may include masturbatory reconditioning, visualization, and social skills training.[28] The most radical involve aversion therapy such as electroconvulsive therapy.[29] Documented cases include electric shocks being administered to patients’ genitalia, “sometimes paired with disturbing images, including a bowl of feces and pictures of Kaposi’s Sarcoma lesions.”

In 1966, psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman reported that using aversion therapy to change sexual orientation “worked surprisingly well,” with up to 50% of men subjected to such therapy not acting on their homosexual urges.[30] These results produced what Seligman described as “a great burst of enthusiasm about changing homosexuality [that] swept over the therapeutic community” after the results were reported in 1966.[30] However, Seligman notes that the findings were later demonstrated to be flawed: most of the men treated with aversion therapy who did in fact stop homosexual behaviour were actually bisexual. Among men with an exclusive or near-exclusive homosexual orientation, aversion therapy was far less successful.[30]

In another case therapists used plethysmography, which uses electric sensors attached to a person’s genitals to measure sexual arousal, was used, in conjunction with shock therapy, to electrically shock the patient’s penis when he became sexually aroused by same-sex images. One residential adolescents treatment center used sedation, isolation, physical restraints, hypnosis, and “hold therapy,” in which a girl was held down while staff members screamed at her until she admitted that she was hurting her family by being a lesbian.[31]

Governments have used these methods as well. In 1952, the British government subjected Alan Turing to these techniques after he was arrested for homosexual conduct. In the 1970s and 1980s, the South African Defense Force administered it to suspected homosexuals. As recently as 1992, the Phoenix Memorial Hospital was using these methods on children as young as 10.[32] In 1994, the American Psychological Association declared aversion therapy to be a dangerous practice that doesn’t work.[citation needed] In India, where homosexuality is illegal, these methods are still used.[33]

Paul Newman sums up my feelings on the issue beautifully’

“I’m a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being… by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.”