Talk:Homosexuality and psychology

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[edit] Negative Slant

This article seems to focus on homosexuality as a mental illness and "reparitive therapy" not psychology of homosexuality, which many modern psychotherapist discuss at length (and not at all in the context of it being an "illness" and needing "cured"). Psychologist no longer see homosexuality as an illness, but that doesn't mean they stopped studying it's origins or effects on behavior. As it stands, this article has a decidedly negitive slant. For instance, the paragraph on Freud focuses solely on his view of homosexuality as an illness, and doesn't mention any of his other views or theories concerning it. Some classic and modern views on actual accepted theories concerning homosexuality deserve mention, otherwise this article should be renamed "Homosexuality Myths and Psychology"--Vesperal 05:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. As it stands now, the article is basically historical. Contemporary accounts would greatly benefit it - if you've got the time and resources, by all means make the necessary additions (but please add sources)! -Smahoney 16:52, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Heres an idea, lets give this article a positive slant and tell everyone how normal and rewarding it is to be a homosexual. Infact everyone nation-wide should be subjected to manditory diversity sensitivity training and political re-education like they do at Ohio State University http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49877

For those that resist and try to hold onto their natural mammalian instincts, I suggest we subject them electro-shock therapy while forcing them to watch homo-erotic pornography until their independant thought process has been so thoroughly repressed and destroyed that they will surrender their biased, ugly, vulgar, prejudiced homo-phobic pre-conceived ideas about sex among mentally sound people normally taking place between a man and a women, and all that nasty business about marriage. Who needs marriage? We should be using science to research ways to turn ourselves into Parthenogen's so everyone can become a homosexual. /sarcasm --Nazrac 23:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Gays and Lesbians the world over are fighting FOR marriage, not against it. Wandering Star 00:50, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I meant that the article had a negitive slant towards PSYCHOLOGISTS. The current article makes it sound like psychologist either still believe all the old rubbish or have stopped studying it all together, neither of which is true. The research that needs to be added (I'm afraid I don't have even close to enough knowledge about it) needs to be from contemporary psychologists using real science. It doesn't matter to me in the least if this gives a positive or negitive view of the homosexual lifestyle. (In fact it may not, I've read a few things about alchohol abuse for example.) But if you would rather believe that the whole universe is trying to turn you gay, go right ahead. Whatever makes you feel like a victim.Vesperal 02:34, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Naz, It's a pity that you haven't taken any college courses in psychology or psychiatry.. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is currently the body responsible for speaking on behalf of the psychiatric profession as a whole. And the APA has maintained that homosexuality is within the normal range of variation for sexuality. The official position is also that attempts at changing a person's sexual orientation are all damaging to the client. That's not a few gay rights activists speaking that's the APA, get it? You who have never studied psychiatry and know next to nothing about it are not going to convince me that the APA, which is composed of the most eminent psychiatrists in the country, doesn't know what it's talking about. Wandering Star 14:24, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Firstly let me ask you the following questions: When did I say anything about the APA? Have you studied psychology or psychiatry? If so, where? Ohio State University? (see link above) What makes you think I am advocating trying to 'change' homosexuals? What put you under the mistaken impression that I am trying to convince you personally of anything, or by extension care the slightest what you think?

Apparently sarcasm is lost on you as well, as you seem to have completely missed the point of the above statement, it was a satirical jab. I even went to the length of affixing a '/sarcasm' note at the bottom, in consideration for those who are of such feeble mindedness that they might misinterpret the statement. --Nazrac 20:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

"But if you would rather believe that the whole universe is trying to turn you gay, go right ahead. Whatever makes you feel like a victim.Vesperal 02:34, 2 August 2006 (UTC)"

Its not me who is playing the victim card. We see time and again those who have some inclination to force their opinions on others (or force others to accept them) will play the victim card. Homophobia this, prejudiced biggot that. I'm not the one playing the victim card as I dont need to convince anyone of anything, I'm not the one with an 'alternative lifestyle" issue. --Nazrac 17:09, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Declassified in the UK

Does anyone know any details regarding how and when homosexuality was declassified in the UK? --Axon Mon Jul 28 15:30:14 PST 2003

It seems to have been as late as 1993, in the UK.

There's some stuff here, so perhaps better source material could be found from that?

http://www.lgcm.org.uk/bible/chap6.htm

"In Britain however the situation had not progressed as far and in 1975 the British Medical journal was still publishing articles on possible treatments including hormonal therapy, aversion therapy and most bizarrely therapy `to mobilise the heterosexual elements' whatever that might mean! Finally in 1992 the WHO deleted homosexuality from its list of mental disorders and the UK government followed suit in 1993. The Royal College of Psychiatrists supported an equal age of consent for gay men when this was debated in the U.K. Parliament in 1995 and continued to do so until this was finally passed by Parliament this year. "

--Amortize

In fact, it seems to have been April 1994. The intention to do so was announced in January 1993, and was implemented in new guidelines that came into force in April 1994.

http://www.lesbianinformationservice.org/etpap.htm

--Amortize

Wow, they actually have a lesbian information service? On their site it uses terms like "Homophobia Awareness from a Multi-Oppression Perspective." Homosexuality used to be considered abnormal and a form of mental illness or inbalance. Today it seems like anyone who doesn't march in gay parades on a regular basis now has some kind of phsychiatric label. These Pro-gay websites talk about "hidden biases" in our psyche, and use the term "phobias" to describe anyone who believes men engaging in lewd acts with one another to be abnormal or offensive. With enough time and brain-washing (also known as sensitivity or diversity training) just about anything can be impressioned into the minds of young people as being normal, perfectly acceptable and even fasionable. Anyone that resists these ideas being crammed down their throat is accused of harbouring some sort of "hidden bias, prejudice or phobia." It is this "hidden bias" or rather natural instinct that is almost certainly responsibility for the survival and continued survival of our species and every other since the beginning of sexual reproduction in the earliest life forms of our planet.

--Nazrac 23:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] APA's removal

I learn from a book that the removal of homosexuality from American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was because the pressure from the gay-rights group. Should we mention that in the context? --Yacht (Talk)Q 01:54, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

That is true, and I would mention it. Regardless of whether homosexuality is really a mental disorder, lobbying is essentially the reason it was removed. There aren't many practicing psychologists who believe it is a mental disorder anymore... you may want to include that. I don't have any real numbers regarding how many clinical vs research vs applied psychologists think it is or isn't, but most recent literature assumes it is not a problem (well, most literature that I've read at any rate). There are some studies suggesting that homosexuality can't be "cured" anyway, although I don't have reference information handy. You could dig into psychinfo or ebscohost databases if you're interested in following up on that for the article; this particular focus of sexuality is outside of my area of expertise.--nameless 02:20, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure in the "lobbying theory" of declassification is actually true: when I originally wrote this article my research indicated that the results of Hooker and Kinsey opened up the possibility that homosexuality was not a disorder. What evidence is there to support the view that lobbying caused declassification? --Axon 15:06, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't think Hooker and Kinsey were widely accepted until much later. As late as the mid-1960s, it was standard orthodoxy that homosexuality was unquestionably a mental illness, and that the only people who thought otherwise were a bunch of pseudoscientific kooks and political pressure groups. For example:

  • The eminent Karl Menninger wrote: "homosexuality ... constitutes evidence of immature sexuality and either arrested psychological development or regression" (Introduction, The Wolfden Report: Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offenses and Prostitution, pages 5-7. Stein & Day, New York, 1964).
  • A 1965 collection of papers summarizing opinions on the subject begins with the preface: "most of the psychoanalysts in this volume, except Szasz, are of the opinion that homosexuality is definitely an illness to be treated and corrected". That is, the only person not part of the otherwise unanimous agreement was an antipsychiatry activist and the author of The Myth of Mental Illness. (Marmor, J., editor. Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. Basic Books, New York, 1965.)

--Delirium 09:17, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

From my understanding, 'lobbying' isn't quite the term for what happened. There were several gay rights groups involved, but the story looks to me more like activisim than lobbying proper, and these groups were partially motivated by some then-recent studies which suggested that homosexuality was incurable, and that most gay men (to my knowledge, lesbians weren't studied) were, in fact, otherwise quite normal, well-adjusted people. Their pressure did not, however, cause the APA to change its diagnosis. Several psychologists within the APA began to exert internal pressure due to their research, which was conducted in response to gay rights groups' demands, and which tended to back up the assertion that, other than their sexuality, these people were by and large perfectly well adjusted individuals. There are, of course, other factors, such as closeted gay members of the APA (which, as Roy Cohn shows, does not mean that they supported gay rights), etc. So, you know, neither the "gay activists pressured the APA into declassifying homosexuality" story nor the "scientists came across unrefutable evidence and saw the light" story really paint a clear picture of what happened. -Smahoney 17:03, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Tell me, what is the point of "gay activism" other than to pressure, lobby and if need be harass and slander anyone who dismisses the notion that homosexuality is some mainstream alternative to normal sexuality? The whole idea of this "activism" is to challenge the idea of what is normal to begin with. Anyone who tries to resist this idea being pounded into their head, such as in campus 'diversity seminars' and insists they know what they consider to be normal is than accused of harbouring some kind of hidden bias or preconception about homosexuality. I've heard of elementary school children as young as 11 years old being subjected to classroom siminars and discussions about the issue of sexuality, where they are asked things like "can you tell if a person is married or has kids just by looking at them?" The person asking the question is almost always a homosexual. They are further subjected to questions like "how do you know you are not gay unless you have tried it?" That is some question to be asking 11 year olds. Most children at that age dont know how to respond to such a question, let alone recognize the intentions behind the question. You might ask children "how do you know drugs are bad for you unless you try it?" I think we all know what the reaction from parents would be. Parents used to complain about their children being exposed to these seminars and guest speakers when the subject was contraception and sexually transmitted diseases. Today it seems all sorts of gay activist guest speakers are being put infront of children who try to indoctrinate them in the years before they reach sexual maturity. If that is not an outright malicious attempt to stear the impressionable minds of young people down a cetain path I dont know what is. --Nazrac 17:26, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I doubt the accuracy of your testimony. Nonetheless, I would encourage anyone considering a full reply to User:Nazrac to first think about whether or not this discussion will improve the article, and if the answer is no, to take the discussion elsewhere. -Smahoney 20:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NARTH

Cross post from User talk:Axon:

Hi Axon: You deleted the statement "The overtly secular National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality is the only professional body to endorse reparative therapy." from Homosexuality and psychology with the summary "deleted POV: NARTH is not considered a "professional body" by all". Please explain why you consider the whole sentence to be POV. I can see that the adjective 'overtly' may tend towards POV (I sought a succinct way to acknowledge that NARTH claims to be secular and ecumenical but has critics who consider it to be dominated by conservative Judaeo-Christian interests) but I do not understand why the whole thing is POV. As I understand matters NARTH purports to be an organization for mental health professionals with a class of membership (Friends) for lay people. I am not a member of NARTH, its opponents or its allies. I hit this page through Special:Randompage and felt that the statement in this section about reparative therapies gave the erroneous impression of a single religious movement promoting these approaches. Hence my changes. Would it be better to restore the NARTH sentence and add the sentence "Some opponents of NARTH argue that its claim to be a professional body is misleading." or some variation thereof? --Theo (Talk) 00:23, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It rather depends on how you define a "professional body" - it can mean one of two things. It can simply be any body of professionals or it can be some superivising body that accredits professionals. In the former instance, NARTH may well self-describe itself as a professional body . However, it is less likely to belong the later definition. It is also worth pointing out that a Google for the term "professional body" and NARTH comes up with only 9 hits[1], and most of those use the term "professional body" with regard to the ACA, APA, etc. In other words, they use the term in it's second meaning and not in regard to NARTH at all.

Given the ambiguity of the term I think it's POV to describe NARTH as a professional body. Your suggestion that "opponents" do not describe NARTH as a professional body would seem to negate this, but I don't feel this it is appropriate to start discussing the controversy on the page: discussion of whether or not NARTH is a professional body more properly belongs on the NARTH page.

Similarly, the "overtly" secular would seem to place the emphasis of NARTH's claimed secularism and fails to mention the fact that NARTH is widely regarded to be funded by fundamentalist Christian concerns and be far from a secular organisation. We could similarly mention he dispute, but I would strongly argue that any such discussion of controversy of NARTH belongs on the NARTH page.

The simplest solution would me to mention that NARTH offers reparative therapies and link to the pages where more full and neutral discussion can take place. --Axon 13:13, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Addundum: A quick visit to the NARTH home page indicates that NARTH does not actually describe itself as a professional body. --Axon 13:15, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all the explanations. I had understood NARTH to offer full membership only to professionals and to make considerable play of the religious diversity of its membership whilst receiving significant funding from conservative Christian and conservative Jewish groups. If NARTH is not a professional body then the whole point is redundant, since I only mentioned it because I did not want to make an absolute claim about the opinions of professional bodies if even one dissented. --Theo (Talk) 14:00, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reference to the organization PATH

On 31 May 05, Richman9 inserted the name of the coalition of 15 Christian organizations who support an individual's right to change from homosexuality (PATH), and gave a link to it's Web site. Axon reverted that insertion, stating that "Wikipedia is not a soapbox." I (Richman9) guess I don't understand how this is a soapbox. If the article felt that this coalition was worthy of mentioning, does it not serve Wikipedia's audience to allow them to find out more information about it? If not, then Wikipedia should eliminate references to any and all URLs. This is a legitimate coalition of 15 major organizations with a purpose that is relevant to this article. Why not provide Wikipedia's users with a link to it's Web site?

Please sign all your posts, Richman9, with four tilda characters.
If you can demonstrate that PATH is a notable organisation by creating a valid article on the subject, for example (rather than the copyright infringing content you copy-and-pasted from the PATH web site), then I see no reason you cannot reference them in this article. However, the page you created for PATH SSA was speedily deleted by the Wikipedia editors. I also notice that, according to your user page, you are yourself involved in the ex-gay group Evergreen International[2] - a group you have attempted to create a page for and link to in other articles[3] - and you may be involved in PATH yourself. Wikipedia is not a soap box for promoting organisations you yourself may be involved with or that you wish to advertise. Please read Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_soapbox and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not for more information.
Also, posting links to web-sites in the middle of an article is not appropriate: links in articles are supposed to be references to supporting sources, not for linking to web sites. This is what the External References section of an article is for. Axon 15:13, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Homosexuality as curable psychological disorder

I'm not sure if the section on the Washington Post article and the detail on who funded this is relevant for this section, which is merely an introduction to reparative therapy and the ex-gay movement. This section should be brief and point readers to those pages? Axon 15:05, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sources?

Let's put some serious sources on this. Also, The homophobia section reads like a blog- can we be a little more scientific, please?Intellectualprop2002 4 July 2005 17:53 (UTC)

I'm all for more sources in every article. But, how does the homophobia section read like a blog? I think it could be expanded so that what exactly the "ironic twist of fate" is is clearer, and some mention of what sorts of research is being done on homophobia, and what the findings have been would be nice, but it doesn't seem bloggish to me, and it doesn't seem any more unscientific than most of the rest of Wikipedia, not that Wikipedia is a scientific endevor. -Seth Mahoney July 4, 2005 19:01 (UTC)
I wrote the section and, though I agree the "irony" wording is probably a bit POV, I think the source summarises the existing knowledge quite well. I think it could be carefully reworded and maybe a few links to papers in which studies into homophobia had been carried out, but otherwise should stand as is. Axon 4 July 2005 19:09 (UTC)
For the record, I'm actually more or less fine with the "irony" wording. I just think it could be made more clear what exactly is ironic. -Seth Mahoney July 5, 2005 05:38 (UTC)
I'm not happy with the "ironic twist of fate" and it stuck out in my reading of the article. It sounds almost vindictive and not at all appropriate for an encylopedia. I'm just going to remove that part and leave the rest as it stands.Vesperal 05:04, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Intellectualprop2002 slapped a POV on four articles within 26 minutes

He also wrote two articles that are now up on VfD that have received very strong delete votes on the grounds that they are POV forks and original research: Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Either_Or_Argument and Reduced Gene Pool Argument. Those articles purported that there was no genetic basis for homosexuality. The emerging concensus of the community on those articles is that their content is non-encyclopedic. It is interesting to note that the NPOV tagging of the homosexuality-related articles happened in such close proximity to the strong negative reaction to the author's articles.

For what it is worth, I have read this article and do not believe that the POV tag is appropriate. I recommend removing it. Tobycat 5 July 2005 00:57 (UTC)

I'm also fine with removing it. -Seth Mahoney July 5, 2005 05:39 (UTC)
I am removing the POV tag. I believe it was posted inappropriately and nobody has objected to my suggestion above to remove it.Tobycat 8 July 2005 23:11 (UTC)
Why is the first reference in this article a link to religioustolerance.org? A liberally biased religious website should not be considered an authority on the psychology of homosexuality OR on the history of psychoanalysis. Clicking on the link takes you to a page that accentuates the conflict between conservative Christianity and mainstream psychology. Furthermore, skimming the essay leads one to believe that prejudiced, uneducated evangelicals are the sole advocates of reparative therapy. It's quite clear the site holds a fallacious view of Christianity and interprets psychology as a victor over conservatism. For these reasons I respectfully suggest this link be replaced by one to a more credible, less opinionated, source. Thank you. (Baker)
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