WP: Vowing to Set the World Straight ("reparative therapy" campaign)

[DeepModem Mom]

Vowing to Set the World Straight
Proponents of Reparative Therapy Say They Can Help Gay Patients Become Heterosexual. Experts Call That a Prescription for Harm

By Sandra G. Boodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 16, 2005; HE01


....While its supporters cite success stories from their clinical practices as well as a recent and much debated study showing that conversion therapy can work, the treatment is opposed by virtually every medical and mental health organization, including the American Medical Association, the U.S. Surgeon General and the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973.

Until the early 1990s the treatment, also known as reorientation therapy, was largely relegated to religious groups or to the fringes of mental health. Mainstream therapists have been taught to help patients distressed about their homosexuality work toward self-acceptance, to overcome the internalized homophobia thought to be the cause of much emotional turmoil.

Reparative therapists reject the views held by an overwhelming majority of mental health practitioners. They regard homosexuality as a pathological preference forged in the crucible of a troubled childhood and not, as most scientists believe, an inborn orientation significantly influenced by biological factors such as genetics and exposure to hormones in the womb....

***

In the past decade, the growing influence of religious conservatives and the national debate over gay rights, especially gay marriage, has revived interest in the therapy, significantly raising its public profile, spawning new practitioners and igniting debate about a matter that had been considered settled, supporters and critics agree....

***

Web sites with names like "inqueery" and "freetobeme" have sprung up, directing confused teenagers and frantic parents to reparative counselors. Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), a national group headquartered in Fairfax County, has sponsored highway billboards in Rockville and Richmond that state "Ex-Gays Prove That Change Is Possible."...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/15/AR2005081501022_pf.html

[msongs]

1. its all about the $$$$$$$$$$$ - fleecing people of their cash ->

like so many supposedly religious things, the whole point of it all is to generate loads of income for the advocates and practitioners.

it is no longer legal or fashionabale to gas jews of lynch black people but it is still open season on gays and lesbians thanks to our friends the christians who do not have a clue what the fairy tale jesus character said or did.

so it is mostly about the $$$.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[tanyev]

2. Shades of the lobotomy craze a few decades ago.

The procedure was popularised in the United States when Walter Freeman invented the "ice pick lobotomy" procedure, which literally used an ice pick and rubber mallet instead of the standard surgical leucotome. Leaving no visible scars, the ice pick lobotomy was heralded as a great advance in "minimally invasive" surgery, and was eventually done under only local anaesthesia.

In a minimally invasive procedure, Freeman would hammer the ice pick into the skull just above the tear duct and wiggle it around. Between 1936 through the 1950s, he advocated lobotomies throughout the United States. Such was Freeman's zeal that he began to travel around the nation in his own personal van, which he called his "lobotomobile", demonstrating the procedure in many medical centres. He reputedly even performed a few lobotomies in hotel rooms.

Freeman's advocacy led to great popularity for lobotomy as a general cure for all perceived ills, including misbehaviour in children. Ultimately between 40,000 and 50,000 patients were lobotomised. A follow-up study of almost 10,000 patients claimed 41% were "recovered" or "greatly improved", 28% were "minimally improved", 25% showed "no change", 4% had died, while only 2% were made worse off (Tooth, et al. 1961). Lobotomies gradually became unfashionable with the development of antipsychotics and are no longer performed. The era of lobotomy is now generally regarded as a barbaric episode in psychiatric history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy

[short bus president]

3. closely related

in fact, I think these "reparative" folks may actually BE the unfortunate lobotomized...

[Southpaw Bookworm]

5. Not far off

In many respects.

A few months ago, I read a book about the history of infertility in this country. Several chapters dealt with the forcible sterilization of the "mentally ill" (I forget the actual term used). Germane to lobotomies and ex-gays, one of the behaviors that got you diagnosed as mentally unstable was inappropriate sexual behavior. So, if you were a teenage girl who got caught in the hayloft with either a girl or a boy, you could be institutionalized for life, sterilized against your will, lobotomized, and drugged into oblivion. Same could happen if you showed interest in a person of another race, or pretty much anyone your parents or society in general did not approve of. Even masturbating was considered a sign of deviance.

[MountainLaurel]

4. You're braver than I

I could even read that article because I knew I'd be screaming at my desk, and I don't want to scare the new coworkers so soon.

[bushisanidiot]

6. Where's the therapy to make straight people gay? Where's all the

research into that, dammit?

these idiots need to get over their homophobia, stop peeking into people's bedrooms and get a life.

[anotherdrew]

7. Therapy to deprogram xtian conservatives? They could be helped...

It wouldn't hurt to put up a website at least...

[undergroundpanther]

8. You will be assimilated

By Normalicy(tm) Covert live as normal or DIE..





Fuck all these control freak true believer asshole theocrats.