Why Would Spitzer Support PFOX?

I'd like to lay something on the table here for discussion. PFOX -- Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays -- have prettied up their web site. Now when you load it, there is a video of psychiatrist Robert Spitzer talking.

Spitzer, you might remember, is the author of the one and only piece of peer-reviewed literature suggesting that gay people might become straight through therapy. His research is widely criticized, but he got it through the review system and into the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2003.

On the video he says:

The DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it's a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, and it's kind of the Bible of psychiatry. I came up with a definition in 1973 that made it possible to argue that homosexuality was not a mental disorder. I mean, the gay activists have taken the viewpoint that from a political/strategic point of view they do better if they can convince society at large that once you're homosexual you can never change. Now, I can appreciate that that helps them politically, and I'm sympathetic towards their political goals, but I think it's just not true.

I've been told that this video came from Warren Throckmorton's video, "I Do Exist," but you can see that interview HERE, on YouTube. It's a different jacket, different background. I haven't seen the whole movie, but it doesn't appear that PFOX's video comes from there. Did he tape this just for them?

I admit I am surprised that Spitzer has decided to throw his weight behind PFOX, of all groups. It may be that when all the research is in, some small proportion of gay people are actually shown, beyond Spitzer's more-or-less andecdotal evidence, to have changed their sexual orientation. I don't know, and in itself it's not really such an important question. There are two-headed snakes, but that doesn't say anything about ordinary snakes; there may or may not be people who have become straight, but if there are there aren't very many, and it does not, as PFOX alleges, imply that all or most gay people could change if they wanted.

The question is not whether sexual orientation is immutable, the question is why someone of Spitzer's status as a researcher would become involved with a lowbrow group of religious anti-gay agitators. If there is an academic question regarding the dimensionality and/or fluidity of sexual orientation, it is definitely not best investigated by a partisan, shrill group like PFOX, whose mission in life is to complain that "ex-gays" are discriminated against.

Let me point out the obvious: nobody would bother to discriminate against a person who "used to be gay." People might be skeptical, oh well, price you pay -- it is a little unusual, you might say. Most of us would probably not want our daughters to marry a guy who used to be gay, but that's hardly discrimination. I would prefer that my daughter not marry a guy without a job, either, or a guy with no education.

PFOX does not exist to illuminate the facts of a controversy, it exists to advocate an alternative to homosexuality that doesn't exist for most people. PFOX exists to promote a fiction -- a cruel hoax -- that causes a lot of pain by giving unfounded hope to people who need facts and support.

Spitzer has said that he was "disturbed" that his study results were being "misused by those who are against antidiscrimination laws and civil unions for gays and lesbians." But PFOX's Executive Director actively opposes gay marriage. And here he is, appearing on their web site.

Why would somebody like Spitzer support such a group?