Sex & The City Conference – letters to the Church Times
Unpublished letter from Phelim McIntyre to the Church Times in response to earlier published letters here.
Sir
Having read the letters concerning the event with Dr Joseph Nicolosi in the edition of May 8th, I will respond as follows. To the first correspondent – would you like me to introduce you to hundreds of people on both sides of the Atlantic who were gay and are now ‘straight’? Yes, they exist – and I am one of them. Some, like Revd David Kyle Foster, were male prostitutes who starred in pornographic movies, and are now straight. A friend who works in this area in London questioned why people like Professor Michael King, who has set up a treatment of homosexuality website to do ‘research’, do not approach us for our stories. As someone who has been involved as a counsellor in this field for the last eight years, I have found the family issue, especially the father factor, to be the most significant, followed by that of other male family members, and then that of peer relationships – findings borne out by nearly 100 years of qualified research.
Contrary to the claims by your correspondent, such groups like Courage, LGCM, Quest, Changing Attitude, Inclusive Church and others do not support people struggling with homosexuality from a positive perspective. Rather, like Stonewall, they present as fact unproven science about homosexuality being innate, despite significant evidence to the contrary, coupled with a dubious rereading of Scripture. If your correspondent and the groups mentioned read the research by LeVay, Hamer and even Professor Michael King’s twin study, they would find that all of these scientists say that environment (psychological and sociological) have more of an influence on a child’s future sexual orientation than biology. It may surprise people to know that Dean Hamer has been involved in further research in the same area of the human genome, and found no evidence of a gay gene. As with the research by LeVay into the hypothalamus, Dean Hamer’s original research into the gay gene has never been replicated – while Dean Hamer was charged with falsifying his original research.
Moving on to the charges of lack of scientific evidence for change following reparative therapy by the American Psychological Association and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, these charges are false, driven by political correctness rather than scientific findings. The Royal College’s comments are not representative of the full membership, having in fact been written by the Gay and Lesbian Special Interest group, which is made up mainly of practicing homosexuals and lesbians. This group was founded by Professor King, who is himself a practising homosexual and mental health advisor to Stonewall. Can we rely upon this group to weigh the science properly and produce impartial conclusions? Similarly the statement from the APA, including their recent booklets on sexual orientation, was written for them by the APA Committee on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Concerns ( the majority of whom identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bi-seuxal or transgender – and we judge either the impartiality of this group or their co-workers in the APA divison 44 – theSociety for the Psychological Study of Lesbian Gay and Bi-Sexual Issues).
To claim there is no proper scientific evidence for change is to ignore nearly a century of evidence from top psychiatrists and psychologists, including officers for the Royal College of Psychiatrists and American Associations. One such piece of evidence, dismissed as poor research, is that by Robert Spitzer. Yet this is the same Robert Spitzer who was behind the removal of homosexuality as a mental illness from the American Psychiatric Association’s list in the 1970’s, and has produced around 8000 pieces of research that contributed to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) used by psychiatrists worldwide. To dismiss Spitzer and his work on homosexuality is to call into question the basis of much psychiatric research and diagnoses in other fields carried out daily. The APA goes further and quotes the research carried out by NARTH and Dr Nicolosi concerning possible damage to clients, but dismisses the vast majority of the research from that same report concerning positive change. Surely this is hypocritical of the APA and smacks of unprofession alism? Yet these groups promote gay-affirmative therapy when there has been no research into its effectiveness or safety.
Why is this happening? It can only be that the groups like the Gay and Lesbian Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, their equivalents in the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations and such groups as Stonewall, LGCM, Inclusive Church etc do not want proper debate about the science and psychological evidence, or what Scripture really says about the issue of homosexuality and other forms of sexual activity outside of the bounds set by the Bible, and are deliberately suppressing clinical evidence which does not support their case.
Yours faithfully
Phelim McIntyre
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