Op-ed: NPR Should Apologize for Parroting “Ex-Gay” Propaganda

[William769]

In a recent television show discussing “ex-gay” therapy, renowned author and psychiatrist Jack Drescher put the discredited practice in its proper perspective: “This is so far outside the mainstream it's practically on Mars.”

Unfortunately, the media keeps putting on its space suit and blasting off with “ex-gay” propaganda that places its debunked theories on par with legitimate therapy backed by the American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Medical Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics.

We’ve come to expect such farce from the Fox “News” Channel, run by the reprobate Rupert Murdoch. However, the elevation of “ex-gay” junk science all too often occurs in the allegedly “liberal media.” (Or is it Lazy Media?)

For example, NPR aired a segment this week that inexplicably claimed, “The debate about the value of conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, has been raging in psychological circles for more than a decade.”

http://www.advocate.com/Politics/Commentary/Op-ed__NPR_Should_Apologize_for_Parroting_Ex-Gay_Propaganda/

UPDATE FROM THIS THREAD.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=221x183204

[Cool Logic]

1. "...has been raging in psychological circles for more than a decade.”

Is that true...?

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. No. Not as far as I know. nt

[saras]

3. Yes, basically - it depends on your exact definition of "raging"

The practice, and hence the debate, goes back much farther than that - in the fifties and sixties the mainstream world of psychology considered homosexuality a disease (it was listed in the DSM until relatively recently), and similar techniques were practiced, but because they came from mainstream psychology they weren't "controversial". As science has moved on and the fundamentalists haven't, the conflict between the two views (gay as disease vs. gay as civil right) has been gradually getting worse.

Remember, "controversy" doesn't mean "debate". It doesn't take any science, or facts, to create a controversy, just a disagreement. The anti-gay position is so far from science that they simply can't use the scientific method to debate at all. Ultimately it's an argument about accepting authority versus accepting experience as an arbiter of reality.