BTB on NARTH Nonsense
Anti-gay "researchers" have a hard time getting published in real scientific journals. Well, their research doesn't meet a standard, for one thing. Editors and reviewers don't tend to approve when you start with a conclusion and then twist some data around to give the appearance of supporting it.
The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, known as NARTH, is a bizarre entity, an organization that exists to argue that gay people are sick and need to be healed, and that therapy can make gay people straight. It is a dangerous kind of hate group, they don't parade around in robes and hoods but instead veil their hatred in academic-sounding terms.
No repectable journal will publish their research because it's no good. They have an opinion and occasionally think of a clever way to argue their assertion, they may come up with the occasional phrase that has a ring to it, but once you collect data, once you do an experiment, you find that the assertion fails the test.
But they are not a bunch of losers who let something like respectability and validity stand in their way, no siree. They started their own journal.
I hate to copy and paste somebody else's work, but Box Turtle Bulletin tells this story better than I ever could. If you don't follow that blog, I strongly recommend it. Having said that, I will now steal their work:
We have seen BTB take down fake research before, and I expect that this will be an informative and entertaining series.
The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, known as NARTH, is a bizarre entity, an organization that exists to argue that gay people are sick and need to be healed, and that therapy can make gay people straight. It is a dangerous kind of hate group, they don't parade around in robes and hoods but instead veil their hatred in academic-sounding terms.
No repectable journal will publish their research because it's no good. They have an opinion and occasionally think of a clever way to argue their assertion, they may come up with the occasional phrase that has a ring to it, but once you collect data, once you do an experiment, you find that the assertion fails the test.
But they are not a bunch of losers who let something like respectability and validity stand in their way, no siree. They started their own journal.
I hate to copy and paste somebody else's work, but Box Turtle Bulletin tells this story better than I ever could. If you don't follow that blog, I strongly recommend it. Having said that, I will now steal their work:
Focus On the Family has issued a breathless article claiming that a “new study” has proven that sexual orientation can be changed:A new report in this month’s issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Human Sexuality finds that sexual orientation can be changed — and that psychological care for individuals with unwanted same-sex attractions is generally beneficial and that research has not found significant risk of harm.
The study, conducted by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), examined more than 100 years of professional and scientific literature from 600-plus studies and reports from clinicians, researchers and former clients principally published in professional and peer-reviewed journals.
The problem with all that? Well first of all, this isn’t a study at all. It doesn’t consist of an experiment with study participants, methodology, measurements, analysis or results. Instead, according to this so-called journal — which I have a copy of — NARTH mined nearly 100 years of research on attempts to change sexual orientation. Of course, the vast majority of those studies were done when aversion therapy was commonly practiced, when many people sought therapy because they were convicted of homosexual offenses before Lawrence v. Texas to avoid jail, when few clinicians bothered to do any kind of follow-up, and when the APA still considered homosexuality a mental illness. Much of this paper is an updated regurgitation of several other articles already posted on NARTH’s web site.
Also, the so-called “peer reviewed” journal is not actually a journal. The Journal of Human Sexuality is actually a booklet published by NARTH themselves. In fact, it’s structured more like a book than a journal, with only one article whose title matches the title on the front cover. This journal is billed as “volume 1,” and was, according to its acknowledgment, conceived back when Joseph Nicolosi was still president at NARTH. At this rate, I would expect volume 2 to show up sometime in 2011.
This is very similar to another stunt pulled by George A. Rekers in 1996. He too created a one-off journal, also called The Journal of Human Sexuality which seems never to have made it to a second volume. It looks like NARTH decided to recycle Rekers old idea.
And as for this new journal’s “peer reviewed” status? Well, I guess when you have a paper written by an anti-gay activist posing as a therapist, and you send that paper off to other anti-gay activists posing as therapists, all of whom are members of your tight little NARTH club with no possibility of an actual independent review taking place, then maybe I would have to concede that the effort was “peer reviewed.” Unfortunately, that’s not the definition accepted by the scientific community.
This publication is not a dispassionate study of changes in sexual orientation. It is a cannon-blast of anti-gay animus in a long 94-page screed, a veritable anti-gay propaganda omnibus touching on all sorts of unrelated subjects including HIV/AIDS, alcohol and drug abuse, violence, psychiatric disorders, and “promiscuity as the new social norm.” As far as anti-gay propaganda goes, there’s little that’s missing here.
Anyone can write a “journal” and select the studies to prove their point as I illustrated in my satire, “The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing the Myths.” (Hey, I had my partner read it before I published it; that must mean it’s peer-reviewed!) A quick look at NARTH’s “journal” shows that they pulled the same tactics as I did when I wrote my satire. Unfortunately, they didn’t intend for their publication to be read for satirical purposes. They are pushing it as legitimate science, and others are likely to be taken in by it.
Over the next several months — it is, after all, 94 pages of text — we will be going into greater detail to show just what a fraud this so-called journal really is. Stay tuned. NARTH Publishes Fake “Study” In A Fake “Journal”
We have seen BTB take down fake research before, and I expect that this will be an informative and entertaining series.
posted by JimK at 10:00 AM
105 Comments:
"Editors and reviewers don't tend to approve when you start with a conclusion and then twist some data around to give the appearance of supporting it."
And yet, that's the problem with all research in this field: everyone comes in with a bias.
It's just as true for the articles supporting the gay agenda.
"No repectable journal will publish their research because it's no good."
Of course not, because TTF starts with the conclusion that any journal which prints an article contrary to the gay agenda is not respectable.
"Of course, the vast majority of those studies were done when aversion therapy was commonly practiced,"
And studies done now are done at a time when everyone knows that anyone who prints anything contradicting the gay agenda will be viciously attacked.
Look at Spitzer. A leader in having homosexuality removed from the mental illness list and yet when he had the temerity to suggest that some homosexuals could be cured, you'd think he was the second coming of John Wilkes Booth.
"Well, I guess when you have a paper written by an anti-gay activist posing as a therapist, and you send that paper off to other anti-gay activists posing as therapists, all of whom are members of your tight little NARTH club with no possibility of an actual independent review taking place, then maybe I would have to concede that the effort was “peer reviewed.”"
That is the whole problem with exalting peer review. It will be biased by the current mainstream view which history has shown is often wrong.
Andrea- not anon
Sorry, MAnon- You cannot make up what is and what is not a peer-reviewed journal. In my business, it would be considered fraud and subjects one to all sorts of academic and loss of funding issues.
Look at Spitzer. A leader in having homosexuality removed from the mental illness list and yet when he had the temerity to suggest that some homosexuals could be cured, you'd think he was the second coming of John Wilkes Booth.
There's no lie like a grand lie, huh Anon? On the contrary, it's the folks pushing the heterosexual-only agenda over at NARTH, PFOX, CitizenLink, etc, who have used Spitzer's study incorrectly.
Here's what Dr. Spitzer himself has said about his study and how it has been misused:
"Dr. Spitzer reported his findings at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association on 2001-MAY-9.
In later interviews, Dr. Spitzer said:
CNN 05/09/01
"Our sample was self-selected from people who already claimed they had made some change. We don't know how common that kind of change is. . . . I'm not saying that this can be easily done, or that most homosexuals who want to change can make this kind of change. I suspect it's quite unusual."
WSJ 05/23/01
"I suspect the vast majority of gay people would be unable to alter by much a firmly established homosexual orientation."
The Advocate 07/17/01 (You may need to sign on at Montgomery County Public Libaries and use your own MoCo library card number to locate this 07/17/01 issue of The Advocate to find the interview reported in "Why are we Gay?" by Dahir Mubarak.)
"...the kinds of changes my subjects reported are highly unlikely to be available to the vast majority [of gays and lesbians]"... "[only] a small minority -- perhaps 3% -- might have a "malleable" sexual orientation." He expressed a concern that his study results were being "twisted by the Christian right."
Washington Post in 2005
"He told the Washington Post in 2005 that supporters of reparative therapy have misrepresented the results of his study. He said:
"It bothers me to be their knight in shining armor because on every social issue I totally disagree with the Christian right...What they don't mention is that change is pretty rare."
He noting that the subjects of his study were not representative of the general population because they were considerably more religious. He calls as "totally absurd" the beliefs that everyone is born straight and that homosexuality is a choice.
There's a reason the quacks at NARTH have their own FOF/CitizenLink touted "Journal" -- it's to avoid peer review for their opinion pieces they try to pass off as science. None of their propaganda can survive reputable scientific scrutiny.
So then why is it a problem for groups like NARTH and PFOX to exist to help the 3 percent, by Spitzer's right or wrong estimation, that want to change? If you're going to dismiss that ex-gay population simply because it's small, then it seems that the same logic should apply to the small population of transgenders. For some reason, though, the small ex-gay group that tries to reach out to people is derided while the small transgender group that tries to reach out to people is glorified.
The logic seems inconsistent at best....
NARTH activists are not honest with gays. As Spitzer pointed out, "What they [reparative "therapists"] don't mention is that change is pretty rare." They also don't tell their clients that there's a potential for harm to the 97% who will most likely fail.
Many of the clients are young gay teens forced to attend "therapy" or "exorcisms" by their parents. Being forced to undergo "therapy" means they are not "highly motivated," which Spitzer said his successful subjects were. He said, "I'm not saying that this can be easily done, or that most homosexuals who want to change can make this kind of change. I suspect it's quite unusual."
And if you think NARTH "therapists" only want to "help" 3% of gays, you are mistaken. They want all gays to live in the closet. Transgenders don't attempt to change everyone, but NARTH's therapists would be happy to take everyone's or their parents' money. They don't mind if you fail and will encourage you to try to change, over and over again.
It's about the money.
Here's something that might interest the Anons. The CRC's expert, Dr. Warren Thockmorton has published a new blog today titled, NARTH’s new journal is not a new study. Check it out.
"You cannot make up what is and what is not a peer-reviewed journal."
No one did that. Editors of all peer reviewed journals choose the reviewer. That's one of the reasons why the whole glorification of the peer review process has always been inappropriate. It reinforces whatever the current common wisdom is. Historically, that wisdom is usually flawed.
The rabidity of the "politically correct" gay advocacy movement has eliminated all objectivity from these type of studies. Anyone who contradicts the gay advocacy will be hounded and demonized.
Gay advocacy is a cult.
Anon-B's blather above is characteristically disingenuous.
NARTH accurately claimed the article was based on review of past studies.
My reference to Spitzer was to show the typical gay advocacy tactic not to cite his research.
Spitzer concluded that religiously motivated individuals may succeed in changing their deviant desires.
Individuals should be free to seek this path and attempts by gay advocates to eliminate this choice are evil.
Get on the right side.
One criticism Throckmorton had, in the link provided by Anon-B, was that NARTH cited no study proving that homosexuality is not innate. He had no problem with the other conclusions in the article.
There is no evidence for this random gem by Anon-B:
"there's a potential for harm to the 97% who will most likely fail"
There is no more potential for harm than attempts to overcome any other nasty habit like smoking or chewing with your mouth open.
Every life has some stress.
Succeed or fail, the patients will survive.
Of course, those who fail will be in danger from their homosexual lifestyle but that would be true if they didn't try too.
Those who suffer from same sex attraction should have a right to seek help.
Heavens knows, Anon-B should seek help for her problems.
Lying can be pathological.
I don’t get it.
You believe people can change their sexual orientation as long it is from heterosexual to homosexual but you believe people can change their skin color to white and still be a black person and people can change their sexual identity by cosmetic means and declare they are the opposite sex but they are still their birth sex.
You should be happy that some homosexuals change their sexual orientation to heterosexuals. Think about it, you are getting rid of all those fake homosexuals!
it's a cult
To the Anon who said "I don't get it" -- No, no NO! Tsk, tsk, TSK! You have it ALL wrong! According to this crowd no one ever changes their sexual orientation from heterosexual to homosexual. They all just come out of the closet. HOWEVER, they are ALLOWED to come out of the closet. They are welcomed with open arms, in fact!
BUT, if a homosexual tries to come out of the closet and become heterosexual....well, that's completely unthinkable and out of the question. Can't be done. No way, no sirrreeee....they're chased back into that closet so fast they don't know what hit 'em.
Anon, nobody has ever been "chased back into the closet." If somebody stopped being gay, nobody would care. They'd just be a straight person, and what's the problem there?
Merle -- Oh yeah, I forgot. He or she would actually be a MUZZLED straight person who's not allow to tell his or her story publicly without being completely harassed.
"Anonymous"
I a curious to know why any of this argument about homosexuality/heterosexuality disturbs you so much. What other people do with their lives, how they live it, has absolutely no bearing on you and your choice of lifestyle. I do not tell you how to live your life; you have no right to tell other people how to live their lives. I think, given the fervor with which you express your distaste for those who are different from you, that you have some pretty deep-seated self-loathing and homophobia to deal with.
Deal with it.
Anon, you cannot give me a single example of an "ex-gay" person being harassed or ostracized, except for those who give speeches and try to get other gay people to stop being gay. Somebody who "used to be gay" would be kind of interesting to talk to, nobody would object to that unless they made it their mission to convert other gay people.
When ex-gay groups are harassed....that constitutes the harassment of ex-gay people. Just like...if you harass someone who is giving a speech to an association of accountants, then you are effectively harassing accountants.
Clarification: If someone belongs to an association of accountants, and he or she is giving a speech about an accounting issue, and that person is harassed...then it's an isolated incident. When it happens over and over and over again...then we can conclude that accountants are being harassed. Same thing with the ex-gay community.
A guy stops being gay, nobody cares. Give me ONE example of a private citizen being harassed or anything else simply for being straight when they used to be gay.
One.
There isn't one. There is nothing to what you say. Nobody cares if a person becomes straight, assuming that happens.
It is not harassment to point out the flaws in researchers experimental designs or statistical analyses. That's what happens "over and over again" to NARTH because they repeatedly draw invalid and unsupported conclusions by twisting unreliable data and then they get called on it. No reputable medical journals will publish their academically lacking papers so they have the "temerity" to publish their own faulty work in a fake but prestigious sounding journal.
There is no more potential for harm than attempts to overcome any other nasty habit like smoking or chewing with your mouth open.
Numerous studies have documented harm to gay individuals who have submitted to reparative therapy. The work of Shidlo and Schroeder has documented 88% failure rates of reparative therapy attempts as well as "significant harm" to many of their research subjects, including suicide.
I am unaware of anyone learning to chew with his mouth shut or quit smoking suffering such "significant harm." So unless you can provide documentation of your claims, we'll know you are just spinning like a dog chasing its tail.
BTW, how long have you considering having a sexual orientation to be an"other nasty habit" like smoking or drinking Jack Daniels?
"Numerous studies have documented harm to gay individuals who have submitted to reparative therapy."
No, they haven't.
What are you a child throwing a temper tantrum? Got some evidence to support your claim? I do.
You didn't answer the question, how long have you considering having a sexual orientation to be an"other nasty habit" like smoking or drinking Jack Daniels?
"Got some evidence to support your claim? I do."
No, you don't.
No one made a claim other than to say your unsubstantiated claim is untrue.
That's a fact.
We've had people comment here who went through therapy and weren't harmed.
A little squirming never hurt anyone.
Using people comment here who went through therapy and weren't harmed for your sample is a sampling error based on self-selection.
It's problems with the proper use of the scientific method like this sampling error Anon advocates, that keeps NARTH's stuff-'em-in-the-closet activists from having their "research" published in reputable peer reviewed journals. That's why NARTH had to create its own fake journal.
Andrea- not anon
Hey, Is Richard Cohen still "converting" guys by cuddling with them? I guess he is straight now- because straight guys like to cuddle with gay guys because that makes gay guys straight. Yeah, I think I get it now.
Reparative therapy is my favorite fake therapy after psychic surgery where they remove your disease/cancer/gallbladder by sleight of hand using animal parts. I'm also pretty fond of Ernest Ansley(in fact, whenever I don't feel well and am up in the middle of the night- I hope to see him "curing" people because I laugh so much- I start to feel better)
you haven't referenced any study showing harm from reparative therapy
you said this:
"Numerous studies have documented harm to gay individuals who have submitted to reparative therapy."
and haven't substantiated it
nice way to divert from that simple truth
From: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-4795.html
My favorite excerpt is this:
“Darlene Bogle, recent author of A Christian Lesbian Journey, was another prominent member of the movement who directed an ex-gay ministry for over ten years.
She says that for a time her sexual feelings towards women disappeared because, "I was so busy trying to help other people I just shut down my emotions inside myself."
Then in 1990 she saw a woman sat in the front row of a weekend workshop she was running.
"As soon as our eyes met, I knew I was gay."
"She was everything that God would have given me. I knew everything I was teaching at Exodus was a lie and that I needed to reassess my own sexual orientation."
"Just because I wasn't acting on my attraction, which I didn't seem to have at that point, didn't mean that I was ex-gay."
Her book charts what happened after leaving the organization up until her partner died of breast cancer in 2005, and outlines her belief that being religious and gay are not mutually exclusive.
"Every scripture substantiated that I was in fact born homosexual and was something God wanted me to embrace."
"Being gay is not something you're cursed with or need to change. It's something you can celebrate along with your spirituality."
It's a view shared by Londoner, Jeremy Marks, who in 1988 was running an ex-gay ministry.
"Whatever group we mix with, we trend inevitably to adopt the views of that group," says Marks who was brought up an evangelical Christian.
Believing his attraction to men to be wrong, he became an ex-gay hoping for a cure and also took the step of getting married, "as a step of change towards that change."
"But if anything, getting married confirmed how much my orientation had not changed."
In 2000 he changed his ministry to a gay-affirming one.
"It took me a long time to realize that mainline, well-established Churches can be wrong, as they were over slavery and with women."
"The current issue in today's world is homosexuality. But it's changing at roots level, and in 20 or 30 years time I believe it will be very different."
Some thoughts about reparative therapy from ex-leaders of an ex-gay ministry:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDiYeJ_bsQo&feature=related
I find their candor refreshing.
Peace,
Cynthia
"Reparative therapy is my favorite fake therapy after psychic surgery where they remove your disease/cancer/gallbladder by sleight of hand using animal parts."
RT is a treatment for a psychological illness.
It's as effective as any other psychiatric treatment but you don't see anyone complaining about other ineffective psychoanalysis.
As Spitzer pointed out, it can help motivated people. TTF is, obviously, the enemy of those people.
At a time when such Republican primitives as Buchanan and Scarborough are bemoaning the state of the GOP, when such fallen saviors as Ensign and Sanford seem intent on making horses' asses of themselves in public, when polls imply that the so-called Reagan Democrats are skittish about identifying with Republicans and when the people paid to do so are scratching their head about who the Republicans can run in 2012- at a time such as this, let's not make the mistake of writing a premature finis to the career of Sarah Louise Heath Palin, governor of Alaska, mother of improbably named children, former beauty queen, wife of Todd, and prima ballerina assoluta of the New Media.
Sarah, whom the camera loves;
Sarah, whose greatest performance of the campaign season was on a stoner-inspired late-night show;
Sarah, who looked those Eastern Establishment meanies Katie and Charlie in the eye and brazenly flubbed answers to their junior-high-school Constitution test questions;
Sarah, whose "you-won't-have-Nixon-to-kick-around-anymore" news conference stole the spotlight from the stomach-turning coverage of Michael Jackson.
SARAH!
Never has a political figure so polarized the television-watching, voting, blog-following public.
And I do mean never, since no other candidate for national office was ever so equipped to offer a tabloid-ready persona to a decadent and depraved news media willing to swallow it.
Dan Quayle, his Sam Goldwynesque bloopers notwithstanding, was Lloyd Bentsen in comparison with her.
The Clinton administration, for all their "Beverly Hillbillies" ratings potential, never got the traction that even one of Palin's televised winks got.
But an interesting dynamic was at work: while one segment of the population, long identified with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, was laughing hysterically, another segment, long identified with Middle America had found a national sweetheart.
More surprising and disturbing: Neither group knew what the hell the other was talking about.
She was either "one of us," someone we'd like to see standing up to the Congress and the Supreme Court, or she was the worst choice John McCain could have made, an early indication of his nascent senility.
She was either being savaged by a left-wing, misogynist press, or she was a pig in lipstick, blithely ignorant of geography, history, and pretty well everything else. Moose hunting and fly fishing either made her like us, or made her definitely, indisputably not like us.
She seemed for all the world a driven, successful representative of the last class about whom, bafflingly, it seems OK to tell demeaning jokes, the lower middle.
And no member of that demonized class had ever risen so high.
McCain lost for reasons that had nothing to do with Sarah Palin. He was not a compelling candidate, and he was beaten by a candidate more charismatic and photogenic, if not more qualified. America was in bad shape at home and overseas, and the same stubborn old white guys who turned against Jimmy Carter in 1980 turned again, toward an epoch-making African American.
But history tells us this: They'll turn again.
In 1968, they hoisted their middle fingers at the Great Society and elected a law-and-order political survivor who had all the charisma of your creepy unmarried uncle who lived with his parents.
Who's to say that after four or eight years of Camelot Revisited they won't get mad as hell and resurrect a good-humored, youthful pol who may have had it right all along?
Pawlenty? Who's ever heard of him?
Newt? Gross.
Jindal? Oh, please.
Sarah Palin will leave politics and host a cable talk show, you say; but are voters who elected the Gipper, the Terminator, Al Franken, and Jesse Ventura to high office incapable of electing an Oprah?
She's facing possible ethics violations, you say; but aren't we the most forgiving people imaginable?
She's let down the people of Alaska, but does anyone in the Lower 48 really care?
To the Left: the Culture Wars are merely on hiatus due to conflicting priorities.
To the Right: Stand By Your Woman.
The flurry of assessments from the professional opinion class about whether Palin's political career is over demonstrates again the threat she poses to the establishment status quo. No other resignation would bring this reaction from Washington insiders.
Fortunately, Presidential elections are won outside the Beltway:
"WASHINGTON (July 8) — Four days after Sarah Palin announced that she will step down later this month as governor of Alaska, a new national poll by USA Today/Gallup indicates that seven in 10 Americans say Palin's decision had no affect on their opinion of her.
The survey also suggests a split over whether respondents would likely vote for Palin if she decides to run for the White House in 2012.
More than seven in 10 Republicans said they would be likely to vote for Palin for the presidency.
That number drops to 17 percent among Democrats.
"Many Americans have deeply-held opinions about Palin as a result of the national campaign in 2008," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Assuming Palin decides to run for the White House in 2012, public opinion is less likely to be affected by her resignation, and more likely to be swayed by what she does once she leaves office.""
Obviously, with 70% support among Republicans, Palin could win the nomination.
How she fares in the general election is dependent on whether Sir BO can successfully claim that the disaster the economy is in in
2012 is George W's fault.
Remember, during the entire 2008 campaign, the only one who successfully made a direct hit on Barry's magic aura was Palin in her speech at the Republican convention.
It'll be fun. Too bad we have to wait so long.
“It's problems with the proper use of the scientific method like this sampling error Anon advocates, that keeps NARTH's stuff-'em-in-the-closet activists from having their "research" published in reputable peer reviewed journals.”
Aunt Bea
Then explain GLSEN’s statistics they like to give out as the truth. Nothing about peer review there.
"Numerous studies have documented harm to gay individuals who have submitted to reparative therapy."
and haven't substantiated it
I provided two links, one comparing the media's dissemination of Spitzer's study and Shidlo and Schroeder's study ("significant harm'), and another to more than 60,000 hits for the terms **reparative therapy, harm, studies** (I do.). You, on the other, keep making baseless blustering claims but you never "substantiate" them. Nobody's surprised though, you act just like your favorite party spokesperson, Rush Limbaugh.
Aunt Bea
Then explain GLSEN’s statistics they like to give out as the truth. Nothing about peer review there.
Since when have you considered any statistic from GLSEN "as the truth?" I am not a member of GLSEN and certainly do not speak for them but if there's "nothing about peer review there" then at least they're being honest. Compare GLSEN's honesty to NARTH's bogus attempt to create the illusion their research has been published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal.
It's like the difference between conservative and liberal politicians engaging in extra marital activities. An affair is not such a big deal unless you have a record of crowing about the sanctity of marriage and your own family values. I'd also add, if a politician is gay it's no big deal if he's not known as an advocate against gay rights.
Anon-B, the google trick is an old discredited one.
First of all, I copied and pasted your phrase "reparative therapy, harm, studies" into Google and tried it myself. It got 12,000 hits. Everyone should try it for themselves.
Secondly, when I replaced "harm" with 'benefit", I got twice as many.
If you've got a study that shows some real harm, other than stress or some other subjective concept, provide a quote and a link for the elaboration.
As we all know, there is no harm to attempting to change any kind of irrational desore and, if there were, it would need to balanced with the potential benefit.
The NARTH study examined over a century of research and found no harm.
The benefits of overcoming same sex attraction are apparent to all.
"An affair is not such a big deal unless you have a record of crowing about the sanctity of marriage and your own family values."
This a absurd statement made by lunatics all the time. They usually refer to opposition to destroying any term for marriage as a heterosexual institution. An affair is irrelevant.
"I'd also add, if a politician is gay it's no big deal if he's not known as an advocate against gay rights."
Homosexuality is not a cult and gays are not required to or answerable to lunatics if they don't want special rights.
I have brown eyes. I still oppose laws banning discrimination based on eye color.
Think about it.
When you're not drunk.
The latest global averaged satellite temperature data for June 2009 reveals yet another drop in the Earth's temperature. This latest drop in global temperatures means despite his dire warnings, the Earth has cooled .74°F since former Vice President Al Gore released "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006.
According to the latest data courtesy of algorelied.com: "For the record, this month's Al Gore / 'An Inconvenient Truth' Index indicates that global temperatures have plunged approximately .74°F (.39°C) since 'An Inconvenient Truth' was released." (see satellite temperature chart here with key dates noted, courtesy of www.Algorelied.com - The global satellite temperature data comes from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Also see: 8 Year Downtrend Continues in Global Temps)
I copied and pasted your phrase "reparative therapy, harm, studies" into Google and tried it myself. It got 12,000 hits. Everyone should try it for themselves.
There's a reason I didn't use quotation marks in the text of my comment above. It's because I didn't use them in my Google search. Get rid of the quotation marks and try again.
I'm sure Vigilance readers are curious to know how long you have considered having a sexual orientation to be an"other nasty habit" or "irrational desire."
If you've got a study that shows some real harm, other than stress or some other subjective concept, provide a quote and a link for the elaboration.
Maybe you should ask that whiner, Iquitarod Palin about "stress or some other subjective concept."
Here's a link to the abstract of:
"Changing sexual orientation: A consumers' report" by Shidlo, Ariel; Schroeder, Michael,
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. Vol 33(3), Jun 2002, 249-259.
You can either cough up the $11.95 to purchase the rest of it or get it free from a library right here in Montgomery County, the National Library of Medicine, just like everybody else.
The abstract states:
The results indicated that a majority failed to change sexual orientation, and many reported that they associated harm with conversion interventions. A minority reported feeling helped, although not necessarily with their original goal of changing sexual orientation.
According to the latest data courtesy of algorelied.com...
Golly Anon, AlGoreLied.com, huh? Do any Vigilance readers think maybe that sounds like a website with a message they're trying to get everyone to believe?
NOAA.gov has a clear picture showing 2008 average world temperatures and a concise graph of average world temperatures from 1880 through 2008 here.
Look at the years before the last eight years, Anon, and tell us how much cooler Earth has gotten. It looks to me like the last eight years have not come close to making up for the prior century-plus of warming.
For those readers interested in unspun facts about global average temperatures, here's how NOAA interprets the data:
Calendar year 2008 was the coolest year since 2000, according to the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis of worldwide temperature measurements, but it was still in the top ten warmest years since the start of record-keeping in 1880. Given the range of uncertainty in the measurements, the GISS team concluded that 2008 was somewhere between the seventh and the tenth warmest year on record. (The 10 warmest years have all occurred within the 12-year period from 1997-2008.)
The map above shows global temperature anomalies in 2008 compared to the 1950-1980 baseline period. Below-average temperatures are shown in blue, average temperatures are white, and above-average temperatures are red. (Gray indicates no data.) Most of the world was either near normal or warmer than normal. Eastern Europe, Russia, the Arctic, and the Antarctic Peninsula were exceptionally warm (1.5 to 3.5 degrees Celsius above average). The temperature in the United States in 2008 was not much different than the 1951-1980 mean, which makes 2008 cooler than all of the previous years this decade. Large areas of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean were cooler than the long-term average, linked to a La Niña episode that began in 2007.
The graph shows the long-term trend in surface temperatures since 1880. The annual average temperatures are shown in light orange, and the jaggedness of the line indicates how much the average global surface temperature varies from year to year. Because climate is so variable form year to year, it can be easier to spot long-term trends through multi-year averages. The dark red line shows the five-year running average, which is an average of five years of annual temperatures centered on a given year. Even this five-year average shows that climate has ups and downs, but the long-term increase in global average surface temperatures is obvious. The gray “barbells” indicate the range of uncertainty. Not surprisingly, the uncertainty is larger for older measurements than for more recent ones.
In their report on 2008 temperature trends, the scientists at NASA GISS, led by James Hansen, attribute the relative coolness of 2008 to the persistent La Niña, which continued as of late 2008/early 2009. The summary also describes how the delay in the start of the next solar sunspot cycle, volcanic activity from Aleutian Island volcanoes (both Okmok and Kasatochi erupted in August), and emission rates of greenhouse gases could influence average global temperatures in the next few years.
My bad!
That's NASA, not NOAA.
"Look at the years before the last eight years, Anon, and tell us how much cooler Earth has gotten."
So, in other words, algorelied was right about the last eight years.
Sarah Palin's rambling abdication speech was hard to follow, let alone acclaim, but in her abrupt announcement that she is withdrawing from public office, the Republican governor of Alaska was hardly the only player in a 10-month drama who demonstrated a lack of self-awareness. Democrats scoffed at her "politics of personal destruction" line, but it's a maxim they originally popularized, and one they will undoubtedly trot out again the next time it happens to one of their own. But the true villains in this political morality play may have been the press.
The mainstream media is undergoing its demise, drip by drip, day by day, and its practitioners, which include most of my friends in life, are under considerable pressure. In my opinion, however, these pressures do not excuse the treatment accorded Sarah Palin. On the contrary, to me the entire Sarah saga revealed that it wasn't only the traditional media's business model that is broken. Our journalism model is busted, too.
In the 2008 election, we took sides, straight and simple, particularly with regard to the vice presidential race. I don't know that we played a decisive role in that campaign, and I'm not saying the better side lost. What I am saying is that we simply didn't hold Joe Biden to the same standard as Sarah Palin, and for me, the real loser in this sordid tale is my chosen profession.
From the beginning, and for the ensuing 10 months, the coverage of this governor consisted of a steamy stew of cultural elitism and partisanship. The overt sexism of some male commentators wasn't countered, as one might have expected, by their female counterparts. Women columnists turned on Sarah Palin rather quickly. A plain-speaking, moose-hunting, Bible-thumping, pro-life, self-described "hockey mom" with five children and movie star looks with only a passing interest in foreign policy -- that wasn't the woman journalism's reigning feminists had envisioned for the glass ceiling-breaking role of First Female President (or Vice President). Hillary Rodham Clinton was more like what they had in mind – and Sarah, well, she was the un-Hillary.
"The fact of the matter is, the comparison between her and Hillary Clinton is the comparison between an igloo and the Empire State Building," Chris Matthews said on MSNBC's "Hardball" last October. (Note to Chris: That's not a "fact;" it's closer to a simile, and an ad hominem one at that.) But Matthews was hardly alone.
"This is not a serious choice," said Eleanor Clift, a regular on "The McLaughlin Group."
"It looks like a made-for-TV movie. If the media reaction is anything, it's been literally laughter in very, very many newsrooms."
Howard Fineman, Clift's Newsweek colleague, in an appearance on MSNBC, said that McCain's choice of Palin undermined the planned story line of the GOP convention, which was going to be that Obama lacked the readiness to lead the country. "Well, Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama look like John Adams."
The first thing reporters and commentators seemed to have noticed about Gov. Palin was her physical beauty. The second was that she had a bunch of kids, the last one born with Down's syndrome in spring 2008. For some reason, these two facts infuriated many Democratic activists and bloggers – and some liberal journalists.
The most egregious example was posted on Daily Kos on Sept. 12, 2008 by Paul Lewis Hackett III, a trial lawyer and U.S. Marine Corps veteran of Iraq, who ran in 2005 for a vacant seat in the House from Ohio's second congressional district, losing narrowly in a district President Bush had carried easily just a year earlier.
Fretting that the Obama campaign was going to lose Ohio to McCain, Hackett proposed his own solution: A series of savage attacks on the GOP ticket focusing on Sarah Palin and her family. Here is what he wrote:
The message (would be) simple and the professionals can refine it but essentially it should contain these elements: Sarah Palin? Can't keep her solemn oath of devotion to her husband and had sex with his employee. Sarah Palin? Accidentally got pregnant at age 43 and the tax payers of Alaska have to pay for the care of her disabled child. Sarah Palin? Unable to teach her 16 year old daughter right from wrong and now another teenager is pregnant. Sarah Palin? Can you trust Sarah Palin and her values with America's future?
Apparently, Hackett took the rumors of an affair from the National Enquirer, which offered no proof, or even evidence. He then segued into an even uglier line of attack, arguing that it's irresponsible to bring a handicapped baby into the world. This is not "pro-choice," it's pro-eugenics. It's also creepy and illiberal, and reinforces conservatives' worst fears about Democrats and the issue of abortion. And, oh yes, Bristol Palin's age was wrong. She was nearly 18 when Hackett wrote this screed, not 16. This proved a harbinger, too, as misinformation slipped easily from the left blogosphere into mainstream coverage.
This New Journalism, if you can call it that, exhibited in 2008 was epitomized by an eradication of the lines between fact and opinion – and, even more troubling, between reporting and propaganda. Some journalists were content to repeat Democratic Party talking points or bloggers' rumors as though they were established fact, interspersing them with ideological commentary in a kind of toxic stew.
"She is a far-right conservative who supported Pat Buchanan over Bush in 2000. She thinks global warming is a hoax and backs the teaching of creationism in public schools," wrote Jonathan Alter in Newsweek on Aug. 29, 2008. Actually, she did not support Buchanan, she questioned whether climate change is man-made (not whether it's occurring) and gave creationists the most minor of rhetorical nods – and never questioned the teaching of evolution in schools.
But so it went.
She was a book burner, you know. How do I know this? Like many Americans, I received numerous emails telling me so, and found a hundred liberal Web sites that mentioned it. They even listed the books Palin wanted to ban from the public library in Wasilla, Alaska, classics and best sellers, ranging from "Huck Finn" to "Catch-22." The list was a hoax, of course, a deliberate smear, and none too clever, either: It included books published a decade after Palin served as mayor. When questioned by their own audiences, these bloggers would point to stories in the mainstream media, including one in Time magazine quoting a man named John Stein, the bitter ex-mayor whom Palin defeated when she ran for office. This is from Time:
"Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. 'She asked the library how she could go about banning books,' he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them.'"
This turned out to be about half-true, as what Palin really did was ask the librarian "if she would object to censorship even if people were circling the library to protest about a book," according to a contemporary account in the local newspaper. Yet this symbiosis between the mainstream media and the blogosphere raged throughout 2008, almost always to Palin's detriment.
Remember her callous decision as governor to cut Alaska's special education budget by 62 percent? After receiving emails to that effect, CNN's Soledad O'Brien cited the figure on-air. Oops. Palin actually tripled the state's spending on special needs kids.
Did you hear the one about her membership in the Alaska Independence Party, which favors secession from the union? That made The New York Times, and it was wrong, too.
But it was in the area of her family life where the press really lost its bearings.
"A day of stunning Palin disclosures," was how the Associated Press greeted the news that Bristol Palin was pregnant. "A political stunner!" echoed CNN's Campbell Brown. In one 30-minute stretch, CNN reporters and anchors referred to the teen's pregnancy as "a bombshell" four separate times.
Personally, I had always stood with the late, great Molly Ivins when it came to kids of politicians. The legendary Texas newspaper columnist was as liberal as they come, but her view about such matters was straightforward and unambiguous. "I don't do children," Molly said. (Barack Obama, by the way, agreed. Campaigning in Michigan when the Bristol Palin "bombshell" broke, he said, "People's families are off-limits and people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor or potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories.")
His admirers in the press didn't heed their hero's warning. The Times, for example, which found the alleged transgressions of an actual presidential candidate (John Edwards) unworthy of investigation, managed to find room for three Page One stories touching on the sex life of a vice presidential candidate's daughter.
Also, it's important to remember why the Palin family even acknowledged Bristol's pregnancy: Because a thousand "liberal" Web sites, led by Daily Kos, the favored site of leftist Democrats, filled cyberspace with off-the-wall theories that Trig Palin was really Bristol's daughter and that Sarah had faked her own pregnancy. This was truly ugly territory, and nutty besides.
In some quarters of the evolving new media – The Huffington Post and Bill Maher's HBO program, to name two – the Palin pregnancy hoax was repeated. Some traditional outlets, including Vanity Fair and, most inexplicably, The Atlantic blog written by Andrew Sullivan, kept hammering away at it after it was proven false by photographic evidence and by Bristol's own pregnancy.
* * * * *
How much did this matter, in the end, to the outcome in 2008?
I really don't know. I do know this, however: The story line recited by my media brethren, naturally, absolves us of any wrongdoing. The narrative goes like this: Bristol's pregnancy notwithstanding, Sarah Palin and her family galvanized the Republican faithful in St. Paul, where the candidate showed great poise in her first national address, while attracting 32.7 million TV viewers – only 1.1 million fewer than had watched Obama a week earlier in Denver. By the end of the GOP convention, Palin had pulled ahead of Joe Biden by nine points in a poll asking who Americans would support if they could vote for the vice presidential nominees separately. She was doing fine, until....
...The Interviews.
it's important to remember that those weirdly personal attacks on Palin began before the Gibson and Couric interviews. "I'm not convinced that's her baby," Bill Maher had said on HBO. That was Sept. 5. The following day Mort Kondracke called Palin "this wacko right-winger." Then movie star Matt Damon gave a television interview, saying he thinks the possibility of Palin becoming president is "a really scary thing." He went on in this vein, using words like "terrifying" and "totally absurd" and saying the possibility of a "hockey mom ... facing down President Putin is like a really bad Disney movie." Then, and only then, did the interviews take place. In other words, Palin's detractors had already made up their minds before she'd flopped in two interviews. Were her tormentors prescient? Or were they close-minded?
We were about to find out. As the truncated 2008 general election campaign raced by, Palin's critics in the Fourth Estate maintained that they were simply doing their job in ferreting out the qualifications, experience, temperament, and knowledge base that Sarah Palin would bring to national office. I'm not a Republican or a conservative; I'm a lifelong journalist who was born and raised in this profession and normally I'd defend the media in this argument. In this instance I cannot.
The reason is what happened when the battle over Sarah Palin came to a head on Oct. 2, 2008, in St. Louis, Mo. That night, the press showed its colors – and they were Democratic blue. That was the night that Palin cleaned Joe Biden's clock in their only debate, and nobody in the media could even see it, let alone report it. That was the night that the dual blinders of ideology and elitism prevented us being honest brokers.
algorelied.com lied
algorelied.com only told a few facts to fool people into believing global warming doesn't exist
the historical data depicted in the graph makes it clear, just like al gores graphs in 'an inconvenient truth' made it clear
global warming is real
remember on the Titanic, how the captain knew long before everyone else that the ship would sink and the passengers just slept on in bliss
Sir BO hit an iceberg when the economic numbers came out last week, far in detriment to what he had predicted
we don't know it yet, but we need to get on the lifeboats
there won't be a recovery this year or next and the Republicans will control Congress after 2010
yep, Democrats are the unsinkable ship not long for their control of Congress
they'll sink back into minority status
what a shame
Sir BO hit an iceberg when the economic numbers came out last week, far in detriment to what he had predicted
we don't know it yet, but we need to get on the lifeboats
Duh Anon, for the third time in a week, as your beloved Wall Street Journal got it right when it reported
...The president has made clear that the stimulus package is just the first step toward economic recovery. On Wednesday, he plans to announce a $50 billion housing plan aimed at curbing foreclosures. "We must stem the spread of foreclosures and falling home values for all Americans, and do everything we can to help responsible homeowners stay in their homes, something I'll talk more about tomorrow," Mr. Obama said.
The administration also is pushing for legislation to overhaul the financial regulatory system that many believe failed to prevent many of the problems underlying the economic collapse. And the Treasury Department has put forward an outline of its plan to rescue the financial sector, using $350 billion already approved by Congress.
In addition, the administration is not ruling out a second stimulus package, though there are no plans to request one now [in February], said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
"I think the president is going to do what's necessary to grow this economy. But there are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package at the moment. I wouldn't foreclose it, but I wouldn't say… we're readily making plans to do so."
At least President Obama is willing and wise enough do whatever's necessary for the long term. Of course he has no choice, given the mess he inherited from the shortsighted Bush/Cheney Administration. President Obama needs to do what Bush/Cheney failed to do, to right the ship they left sinking.
they'll sink back into minority status
what a shame
Yes, it is shameful for the GOP to have fallen so far so fast, from total control of the government a few years ago to complete minority status today, with a Super Majority of Democrats in the Senate, no less.
Glub glub glub
"Duh Anon, for the third time in a week,"
We all know that Obama is going to try again.
Try the same thing.
Again.
The definition of insanity?
Try the same thing twice and expect to get a different result.
The iceberg Obama hit was economic results that are nowhere near what he projected.
A second stimulus might be called for if there was any sign the first had any effect.
Instead, the economy has deteriorated since Obama was elected and since he took office.
It's clear now that instead of throwing those astronomical dollars at the Federal sponge to be soaked at by wasteful government agencies, the economy would have been lifted by returning the money to taxpayers to directly and quickly resuscitate activity.
Obama should listen to his buddy, Colin Powell.
I don't what you think is so remarkable about the WSJ reporting from February.
The overhaul of financial regulation? We can only imagine what that means but it definitely won't spur any economic growth.
Face it.
There was a lot of euphoria when Obama was elected but it's now clear that he doesn't know what he's doing.
There's a lot of drama to come but the bottom line is:
we have a fabulous one-term wonder on our hands.
Like the captain on the Titanic, he now knows what the passengers don't:
the ship's going down.
They'll know soon enough.
That's your glub-glub, the sound of Davy Jones' locker.
The definition of insanity?
Try the same thing twice and expect to get a different result.
This is precisely why the country overwhelming approved Obama's plans for change from the disastrous policies of created by absolute GOP power, and swept Democrats into office in large numbers last fall.
Obama said from the start that Bush's stimulus package was too small and he'd sign another. Then, if that stimulus package turned out to be too small to stem the free-falling Bush/Cheney left us in and another stimulus plan was necessary, he'd help create another targeted stimulus package and sign it into law.
That's called making a plan, noting and assessing the feedback results, and making improvements where necessary.
This is a great improvement over "my way or the highway" IMHO.
we have a fabulous one-term wonder on our hands
Wishful-thinking Anon and I-want-Obama-to-Fail Boss Limbaugh, two dittoheads following each other round and round, down the drain.
"Obama said from the start that Bush's stimulus package was too small and he'd sign another. Then, if that stimulus package turned out to be too small to stem the free-falling Bush/Cheney left us in and another stimulus plan was necessary, he'd help create another targeted stimulus package and sign it into law.
That's called making a plan"
Technically, that's not a plan, it's an experiment.
As Hillary famously said during the campaign about Sir BO, the Presidency is no place for on-the-job training.
Republicans were right is February when they said the "stimulus" bill was not properly focused.
Government agencies don't spend money efficiently, they are subject to the viscitudes of politics. Additionally, the amounts were so vast that there wasn't a structure capable of digesting it.
What you wind up with is a million diversions with Democrats improperly funneling money to companies they own (Danile Inouye).
Americans in the heartland are catching on:
"July 7 (Bloomberg) -- A new poll found that President Barack Obama’s approval rating has dropped by 13 percentage points from two months ago in Ohio, traditionally a critical swing state in presidential elections.
The survey by Quinnipiac University released today showed 49 percent of Ohio voters approved of Obama’s job performance, down from 62 percent in a May 6 poll. The disapproval figure for Obama in the new poll was 44 percent, up from 31 percent in the May survey.
The pollsters termed Obama’s ratings “lackluster” in a release, and said the numbers were his lowest marks “in any national or statewide Quinnipiac University poll since he was inaugurated.”
The White House announced late today that Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Cincinnati on July 9, where he will tout progress being made by the $787 billion economic stimulus Measure passed in February.
“The economy in Ohio is as bad as anywhere in America,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
The poll numbers “indicate that for the first time voters have decided that President Barack Obama bears some responsibility for their problems.”
In the poll, 48 percent said they disapproved of Obama’s handling of the economy, while 46 percent approved. In the May survey, 57 percent approved of the president’s efforts on the economic front, while 36 percent disapproved.
The independent survey of 1,259 Ohio voters was conducted between June 26 and July 1 and has an error margin of plus-or- minus 2.8 percentage points.
Brown said the new poll suggests Ohio voters “might be taking out their frustration on President Obama, possibly deciding that the change he promised has not come as quickly as they expected.”
The poll found that 66 percent of Ohio voters are “very dissatisfied” or “somewhat dissatisfied” with the way things are going in the state, while 31 percent are “somewhat satisfied” and 2 percent are “very satisfied.”
Brown said Ohio “historically has been the prototypical swing state” in presidential elections."
In the words of the immortal Karen Carpenter:
we've only just begun.
As Sir BO said to Mary Pelosi, the crazy queen of Congress:
See ya in Davy Jones' locker!
glub, glub, Anon-B
On closer inspection, the economic news, which seemed bad, is even worse. Not only did unemployment rise to 9.5 percent but wages fell, undermining the consumption needed to revive a consumption-driven economy. Unemployment increased among "breadwinners" -- married men and women who head households -- also making major family purchases more difficult. Recent increases in unemployment benefits and food stamps have helped many Americans pay for food and rent. Jobs, however, are what lead to the purchase of furniture, cars and homes. Paired with a decline in business investment, these trends make a second-half recovery less likely.
Joining in the off-topic topic for a moment, Sarah Palin will lose any presidential bid for the same reason Ross Perot did in ’92 and ’96: No one is going to trust the office of president with a known quitter, no matter how much buzz they can generate before-hand.
As for the whining about how Sarah has been treated by the media, how soon we forget that Obama was pilloried for being a socialist, “palling around with terrorists,” and not even being a Christian because his middle name is “Hussein.” Somehow though he managed to rise above all the hype. Sarah was rejected by women because as one of my coworkers (a middle-class white woman in her mid-fifties) put it: “What the HELL was McCain thinking?!?! That woman has put the women’s rights movement back 30 years! NO ONE is going to take a woman in politics seriously for another decade!)
The Republican party will remain lost in the wilderness until decent middle-of-the-road leaders like Colin Powell come to the fore and develop a compelling platform that will appeal to the majority of Americans rather than just those who are still waiting for the second coming. Maybe then this sideshow with Palin, Limbaugh, etc. will finally be put to rest and we can get on with the business of running the country.
Have a nice day,
Cynthia
"Sarah Palin will lose ...No one is going to trust the office of president with a known quitter, no matter how much buzz they can generate before-hand."
Actually, you're wrong about that. What Palin did was in the best interests of her constituents.
She was very effective before the national attention and she is right that her party will accomplish more in Alaska without her. Not because her innate abilities but because of the involvement of national groups determined to prevent her success.
If only all politicians would act on objective analysis instead of self-interest.
Hopefully, in the future, it will become traditional for someone nominated to a national ticket to resign at that point because the whole thing deters from effectiveness.
Hopefully, this will be another example of trailblazing by Palin.
As for me, I say O'Malley can resign whenever he wants.
I won't hold it against him.
"As for the whining about how Sarah has been treated by the media, how soon we forget that Obama was pilloried for being a socialist, “palling around with terrorists,” and not even being a Christian because his middle name is “Hussein.” Somehow though he managed to rise above all the hype."
That's because the mainstream media not only didn't say those things, they defended Obama.
In Palin's case, it was the mainstream media attacking her.
See the difference?
"Sarah was rejected by women because: “What the HELL was McCain thinking?!?! That woman has put the women’s rights movement back 30 years! NO ONE is going to take a woman in politics seriously for another decade!)"
This just confirms the idea that Palin was a threat to the liberal movement's vision. That's the reason for the over-the-top reaction from the establishment. She represents a threat to their agenda.
Being herself was a threat to the "women's rights" movement?
Sounds like the "women's rights" movement is a threat to women's rights.
"The Republican party will remain lost in the wilderness until decent middle-of-the-road leaders like Colin Powell come to the fore and develop a compelling platform that will appeal to the majority of Americans rather than just those who are still waiting for the second coming."
You forget that the only time the Republicans were leading in the 2008 election was when McCain selected Palin and it seemed, momentarily, that he might not be a moderate after all.
btw, Powell is now raising the same concerns about Obama's handling of the economy that Palin is. Obama should heed their advice and thank them both.
"Maybe then this sideshow with Palin, Limbaugh, etc. will finally be put to rest and we can get on with the business of running the country."
What "sideshow" with Palin has prevented anyone from running the country?
Hmmmm...now that Obama is running out of steam blaming Bush for all our trouble maybe he can screw things around and somehow blame Palin.
All the svelte people are doing it.
In a potentially alarming trend for the White House, independent voters are deserting President Barack Obama nationally and especially in key swing states, recent polls suggest.
Obama’s job approval rating hit a low of 56 percent in the Gallup Poll on Wednesday.
And pollsters are debating whether Obama’s expansive and expensive policy proposals or the ground-level realities of a still-faltering economy are driving the falling numbers.
But a source of the shift appears to be independent voters, who seem to be responding to Republican complaints of excessive spending and government control.
“This is a huge sea change that is playing itself out in American politics,” said Democratic pollster Doug Schoen.
“Independents who had become effectively operational Democrats in 2006 and 2008 are now up for grabs and are trending Republican.
“They’re saying, ‘Costing too much, no results, see the downside, not sure of the upside,’” he said.
The financial system collapsed. Housing prices cratered. Unemployment is at a record high for the last quarter-century. The Democratic president has a solidly positive job rating.
And yet we Americans have not suddenly become collectivists.
The economic distress of the 1930s led Americans to favor less reliance on markets and more on government.
The economic distress of the 1970s led Americans to favor less reliance on government and more on markets.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect, as many political liberals have been predicting, that the economic distress of the late 2000s will produce a shift in the 1930s direction.
But it doesn't seem to have happened yet.
Or so the polling evidence tells us.
Last month's Washington Post-ABC poll reported that Americans favor smaller government with fewer services to larger government with more services by a 54 percent to 41 percent margin -- a slight uptick since 2004.
The percentage of independents favoring small government rose to 61 percent from 52 percent in 2008.
The June NBC-Wall Street Journal poll reported that, even amid recession, 58 percent worry more about keeping the budget deficit down versus 35 percent worried more about boosting the economy.
A similar question in the June CBS-New York Times poll showed a 52 percent to 41 percent split.
Other polls show a resistance to specific Democratic proposals.
Pollster Whit Ayres reports that 58 percent of voters agree that reforming health care, while important, should be done without raising taxes or increasing the deficit.
Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that 56 percent of Americans are unwilling to pay more in taxes or utility rates to generate cleaner energy and fight global warming.
It's interesting that on these issues and many others independents are responding more like Republicans than Democrats.
That's the opposite of what we saw up through 2008, when independents were almost as critical of the Bush administration and Republican policies as Democrats.
This apparent recoil against big-government policies has not gone unnoticed by Americans.
Gallup reported earlier this week that 39 percent of Americans say their views on political issues have grown more conservative, while only 18 say they have grown more liberal. Moderates agreed by a 33 percent to 18 percent margin.
In February, President Barack Obama signed a $787 billion stimulus bill while making lavish promises about the results. He pledged that "a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed all across America."
He also said the stimulus would "save or create up to four million jobs."
Vice President Joe Biden said the massive federal spending plan would "drop-kick" the economy out of the recession.
But the unemployment rate today is 9.5% -- nearly 20% higher than the Obama White House said it would be with the stimulus in place.
Keith Hennessey, who worked at the Bush White House on economic policy, has noted that unemployment is now higher than the administration said it would be if nothing was done to revive the economy.
There are 2.6 million fewer Americans working than Mr. Obama promised.
The economy takes unexpected turns on every president.
But what is striking about this president is how quickly he turns away from his promises.
He rushed the stimulus through Congress saying we couldn't afford to wait.
Now his administration is waiting to spend the money.
Of the $279 billion allocated to federal agencies, only $56 billion has been paid out.
Mr. Biden has admitted that the administration "misread" the economy.
But he explained that away on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday by saying the administration had used "the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there" to draw up its stimulus plan.
That's not true.
The Blue Chip consensus is an average of some four dozen economic forecasts.
In January, the consensus estimated that GDP for 2009 would shrink by 1.6% and that unemployment would top out at 8.3%.
Team Obama assumed both higher GDP growth (it counted on a contraction of 1.2%) and lower peak unemployment (8.1%) than the consensus.
Instead of relying on the Blue Chip consensus, Mr. Obama outsourced writing the stimulus to House appropriators who stuffed it with every bad spending idea they weren't previously able to push through Congress.
Little of it aimed to quickly revive the economy.
More stimulus money will be spent in fiscal years 2011 through 2019 than will be spent this fiscal year, which ends in September.
On Sunday, Mr. Biden, backpedaling from his drop-kick comments, said that "no one anticipated, no one expected that the recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of the money."
This fits a pattern.
The administration consistently pledges unrealistic results that it later distances itself from.
It has gotten away with it because the media haven't asked many pointed questions.
That may not last as the debate shifts to health care.
The Obama administration wants a government takeover of health care. To get it, it is promising to wring massive savings out of the health-care industry. And it has already started to make cost-savings promises.
For example, the administration strong-armed health-care providers into promising $2 trillion in health savings.
It got pharmaceutical companies to promise to lower drug prices for seniors by $80 billion over 10 years.
The administration also trotted out hospital executives to say that they would voluntarily save the government $150 billion over 10 years.
None of this comes near to being true.
On the promised $2 trillion, everyone admits that the number isn't built on anything specific -- it's an aspirational goal.
On drug prices, a White House spokesman admitted that "These savings have not been identified at the moment."
It is speculative that these cuts will actually be made, when they would begin, or whether they would reduce government health-care spending.
None of this will stop the administration from arguing that its "savings" will pay for Mr. Obama's $1.5 trillion health-care plans.
By the time the real price tag emerges, it will be too late to do much more than raise taxes and curtail spending on urgent priorities, such as the military.
The stimulus package is a clear example of how Mr. Obama operates. He is attempting to employ the same tactics of bait-and-switch when it comes to health care, only on a much larger scale.
In the Republican Party, there's a rigid history of "follow the leader."
When Dwight Eisenhower's second term was over in 1960, the nomination went to his vice president, Richard Nixon.
Nixon lost, of course, and didn't run in 1964.
So two next-in-lines ran against each other, conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater (Ariz.) and New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller - and Goldwater won, then lost, disastrously.
Nixon was back in 1968.
His Watergate-installed successor, Gerald Ford, survived a challenge from Ronald Reagan in 1976 to be the nominee.
Then Reagan won in 1980, after which his vice president, George H.W. Bush, became king.
After Bush lost in 1992, Sen. Bob Dole (Kan.), Ford's 1976 running mate, won the 1996 nomination.
Arguably George W. Bush's ascendancy in 2000 was a break with primogeniture. But his name was Bush, after all.
Even in the 2008 election, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) was the next-in-line guy, having run against Bush in 2000.
Palin, as McCain's running mate, had every chance to have primogeniture working for her.
All she has to do to become the party's clear frontrunner is knuckle down, pick smart advisers, study hard, travel abroad, make serious speeches and raise lots of money for the party.
Has she been savaged?
She has.
Clearly Palin-hatred is rampant in the media, the left-wing blogosphere, the Democratic Party and parts of the McCain campaign staff.
But now comes her decision, not just to pass on running for re-election in 2010, but to quit the Alaska governorship with 18 months left in her first term.
The manner of her pulling out was weird, but the decision itself has logic.
Instead of dealing with ethics probes and legislative fights in far-off Juneau, she's now free to make money for herself and the GOP, pay off her legal bills, roam the lower 48 and get lionized at right-wing rallies.
And, run for president.
Clearly, she intends to try it.
In her resignation announcement, she said there is "a need to build up and fight for our state and our country. I choose to fight for it!"
"And I'll work hard for others who still believe in free enterprise and smaller government; strong national security for our country and support for our troops; energy independence; and for those who will protect freedom and equality and life."
That might sound like a pledge just to help fellow conservatives, but in a Facebook message on Sunday, she compared herself to other officials who have left office early "for a higher calling" - presumably, Obama - without being criticized.
Does she have a chance to get nominated?
You betcha.
She's attractive, charismatic, ambitious, tough to the point of ruthlessness and smart.
Before she announced her resignation, she was tied in a CNN poll with 2008 candidates Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and a Pew poll showed that she had an 85 percent approval rating among conservatives and white evangelicals, to 52 percent for Romney.
My bet is that primogeniture still works - sort of - and that Palin, Romney or Huckabee, familiar faces, will outrun national newcomers like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels.
I saw the "Journal" that Narth was pushing. As Jim and BTB report, it is simply and anti-gay screed touted fallaciously as a legitimate scientific journal.
Fact is, groups such as NARTH and PFOX can't get attention or approval from real scientific and professional communities, nor can they report genuine anecdotal reports, so they create pseudo-journals and manufacture incidents at state fairs to claim, as our dearest anonymous troll does repeatedly hear, that supposed ex-gay community is being harassed and discriminated by the evil big queer industry.
Honey, we know better. Whom are you trying to convince? Yourself?
"I saw the "Journal" that Narth was pushing. As Jim and BTB report, it is simply and anti-gay screed touted fallaciously as a legitimate scientific journal."
What scientific credentials do you possess, Robo?
Read alot of Magic Schoolbus books?
The article in question examined studies done over more than a century.
The only retort of your buddies here is that any done before the gay agenda took control is biased.
It's a matter of rights.
Everyone can see that you and your fellow minions are trying to outlaw and ban therapy that no one is being forced to seek out.
Mind your own business and stop interfering with others' right of self-determination.
Stop loving company, misery.
My dear anonymous friend, I'm not arguing with you whether reparative therapies are effective or whether adults have a right to engage in them; these issues are settled.
My comment is that the ex-gay movement, embodied by PFOX, Love Won Out and Exodus, are essentially fronts for pseudo-religious anti-gay efforts.
In your case, they clearly are. You don't like queer people very much, therefore you defend the 'rights' of ex-gay therapists or religionists and their misguided clients. It follows as clearly as day follows night.
You're just too obvious dear. Try subtlety.
"You don't like queer people very much,"
Everyone's an individual, Robert. I've known homosexuals who I thought were very personable.
You're hallucinating here.
"therefore you defend the 'rights' of ex-gay therapists or religionists and their misguided clients"
I defend the right of people to seek to rid themselves of harmful desires.
I defend the right of people to seek to provide that help.
TTF would like any such activity declared unethical and banned.
You obviously feel threatened by any suggestion that someone doesn't want to be like you.
"BTB on NARTH Nonsense"
The Box Turtle Bulletin is an authority on nonsense.
If you have any more questions, refer to the Raccoon Register or the Lily Pad Post.
You could also try the Billy Goat Gazette.
They'll have the best analysis of prestigious scientific journals and leafy forest craft projects.
The ex-gay movement, embodied by PFOX, Love Won Out and Exodus, is essentially a resource to assist those afflicted with same sex attraction.
They do good work.
Like a scene from the 'The Office,' the employees of British marketing company onebestway came in to work one Friday and proceeded to get NAKED. The idea came from David Taylor, a cheeky business consultant and psychologist hired by the company to boost team spirit.
"Inviting an organization to go naked is the most extreme technique I've used," he told The Sun. "It may seem weird, but it works. It's the ultimate expression of trust in yourself and each other." The move to bring in Taylor came after onebestway was forced through six rounds of layoffs.
The staff underwent a week of counseling and nerve building activities leading up to the big day. Tasks included photocopying body parts, sketching nude models and discussing at length. Finally, they were asked to strip down to their birthday suits -- but only if comfortable.
Amazingly most turned up in the nude. One man chose to fashion a pouch, and two female workers wore black underwear. The only female to go fully naked was front-of-house manager Sam Jackson, 23. "It was brilliant. Now that we've seen each other naked, there are no barriers," she said. "We weren't put under pressure. If we wanted to come in clothed or in our underwear, we could. But I love my body and wasn't ashamed."
The team was filmed for a one-time TV special, Naked Office, to be aired July 9 on British cable channel Virgin 1.
Hey AnonSybil, that's some mighty fine and fancy cutting and pasting skills you have displayed on this thread while I was away. Did you learn that in Secretarial School? Were you self-medicating in the parking lot out back during the Bibliography class?
Now tell us, what degrees from what schools does your cast of characters hold in economics and science?
I defend the right of people to seek to rid themselves of harmful desires.
We're all rooting for you dear, to rid yourself of your harmful desire to make a fool of yourself and your party online here. Once again, having a sexual orientation is not a harmful desire.
Palin's unconventional step speaks to an ingrained frontier skepticism of authority — even one's own.
Given the plunging credibility of institutions and élites, that's a mood that fits the Palin brand.
Résumés ain't what they used to be; they count only with people who trust credentials — a dwindling breed.
The mathematics Ph.D.s who dreamed up economy-killing derivatives have pretty impressive résumés.
The leaders of congressional committees and executive agencies have decades of experience — at wallowing in red ink, mismanaging economic bubbles and botching covert intelligence.
If ever there has been a time to gamble on a flimsy résumé, ever a time for the ultimate outsider, this might be it.
Democrats are in a bit of a jam on the stimulus, as many reporters have noticed: “Democrats are all over the map on the stimulus and the possibility of a sequel, and it’s not hard to see why: When it comes to a second stimulus, they may be damned if they do and damned if they don’t.”
But there is nothing they would have done differently, right?
That phrase may prove to be this administration’s “Mission Accomplished” banner.
The current excuse — that somehow the administration didn’t understand how severe the crisis was — isn’t going over so well.
In fact, it’s so easily disproved by rolling back the tapes of all the gloom-and-doom talk that permeated the president’s remarks in the early days of his term, that his critics are having a field day.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, for example, isn’t buying any excuses:
"I found it … interesting over the last couple of days to hear Vice President Biden and the president mention the fact that they didn’t realize how difficult an economic circumstance we were in. . . Now this is the greatest fabrication I have seen since I’ve been in Congress. I’ve sat in meetings in the White House with the vice president and the president. There’s not one person that sat in those rooms that didn’t understand how serious our economic crisis was."
Well he does have a point; the president kept calling it the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The simple truth is the stimulus was ill-conceived and poorly executed.
Sooner or later, the president and his advisers will need to acknowledge that deferring to Nancy Pelosi to devise a grab-bag of goodies for liberal interest groups wasn’t smart politics or smart policy.
How long before America begins to hold Obama responsible for his economy?
This was the question dominating Washington punditry in Winter and Spring of 2009.
Political observers knew that Obama would not be able to sustain his approval ratings once the voters began to assign responsibility to Obama for the health of the economy.
They also knew that so long as people viewed the economic collapse as something that Obama had simply inherited from George W. Bush and was trying his level best to deal with, his high approval ratings would remain relatively intact.
The answer to the question now appears to be: four months.
On May 20, 2009, Rasmussen had Obama's overall approval rating at a healthy 58%-41%. The Rasmussen Index -- which measures strong feelings on the President -- stood at 36% strongly approve to 29% strongly disapprove.
On that day, Gallup measured the President's approval rating at 64% approve, 29% disapprove.
The RCP Average of approval polls similarly had him at 61.2% approve, 32.3% disapprove.
In retrospect, May 20th seems to have roughly marked the end of what had been a pretty stable 3-month run for the President in polls (he quickly and perhaps unsurprisingly lost Republican support in his first month in office).
Since then, attention has focused less on "green shoots" in the economy, and more on the rise in the unemployment rate.
And since then, his approval ratings have steadily dropped.
Rasmussen now has him at a tepid 51%-48% approval, the lowest of his Presidency.
People with strong feelings about the President now lean against him: 30%-38%.
Gallup has his approval at 57%-36% -- up a point from the lowest point of his Presidency yesterday (56%-36%).
And the RCP Average has him at his lowest point ever as well: 56.5% approve to 38.5% disapprove.
This is also in line with polls from Ohio and Virginia showing the President's approval rating slipping below 50% in those states.
To be certain, these are not bad numbers.
But they're not the strong numbers from March-May, and they aren't the stratospheric numbers from January-February.
And as more and more people begin to view this as Barack Obama's economy, we can expect more and more people to turn a critical eye toward the President, at least while the economy continues its downturn.
And when you consider that the President's job approval is one of the most important factors in determining how a President's party fares in midterm elections, you begin to understand why we are beginning to hear calls for a second stimulus.
Democrats need the economy to turn around, and they need it to do so fairly quickly if the electorate's perceptions of the economy are going to turn around in time for the 2010 midterm elections.
"...Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, whose quote yesterday about the effects of the stimulus program: “in Ohio, the infrastructure dollars that were sent there months ago, there hasn‘t been a contract yet, to my knowledge. And the fact is I don‘t believe it will create jobs.”
You need to upgrade your knowledge, brother. The last update was from June 15th, by which time the Ohio Department of Transportation had already awarded 83.9 million dollars in stimulus money in contracts for work on Ohio‘s highways, local roads and bridges. Work on a ramp-widening project in Cleveland began on June 9th. And on June 15, one Ohio Congressman said he was, quote, “pleased” that another 57 million had been awarded to Ohio, quote, “for shovel-ready projects that will create much-needed jobs.”
Who said that? The same person who said yesterday that there had not been a contract had been awarded in Ohio and that no jobs will be created, John Boehner. Maybe there are two of them."
"Sarah Palin's bombshell that she is resigning as Alaska governor actually has boosted her a bit among Republicans, a nationwide USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, though it also has dented her standing among Democrats and independents.
Two-thirds of Republicans want Palin, the party's vice presidential nominee in 2008, to be "a major national political figure" in the future. Three-fourths of Democrats hope she won't be.
Independents by 55%-34% would prefer she leave the national stage.
The findings underscore how polarized opinions of Palin were even before Friday's surprise announcement. Seven in 10 polled say their views weren't affected by her decision. Among those whose opinions shifted, Democrats by a 4-1 ratio and independents by 2-to-1 view her less favorably. Republicans are somewhat inclined to see her more favorably."
Before she joined the 2008 Republican presidential ticket, Alaskans saw Sarah Palin as a champion of ethics in government who had twice defeated oil interests, governed with Democrats in a bipartisan manner and brought down powerful members of her own party. She enjoyed record approval ratings, and her major initiatives had all been signed into law.
The good times didn't last. By the next July, Palin's approval numbers had sunk to the mid-50th percentile(about Obama's current national number), the coalition on which she governed had collapsed, and most of her time was spent combating a hostile media and frivolous ethics complaints.
What happened? The campaign. The reaction to Palin's nomination was as visceral as it was unhinged. Knowing almost nothing of the hockey mom turned political dragon-slayer, the media turned rumors -- had Palin supported Patrick Buchanan? Had she been a member of the Alaska Independence Party? Did she believe that dinosaurs were around a couple thousand years ago? -- into facts.
Not content to examine Palin's actual record, the press did its best to transform the unconventional, pragmatic politician into a fire-breathing social conservative who was outside the American mainstream.
Democratic partisans committed to Barack Obama's election demonized Palin until she became the emblem for everything liberals think is wrong with America. Comedians lampooned her accent, her looks, her religion, her education and her family.
Something about Sarah Palin riles people up. After the McCain-Palin ticket lost the election and the governor returned to Alaska, the onslaught against her did not cease. The Democrats in the state legislature who once had been Palin's allies turned on her. Her opponents, continuing their never-ending search for dirt, inundated the governor's office with 150 Freedom of Information Act requests for documents relating to Palin's schedule and contacts.
The Anchorage Daily News counts 18 ethics complaints filed against Palin. All of them have been dismissed, but at great cost to the state. The Palin family's legal liability is around half a million dollars.
Meanwhile, the father of her grandchild went on a publicity tour flacking "intimate" details about her family, and David Letterman joked on national television about Alex Rodriguez impregnating her underage daughter Willow. (He later said he intended for the joke to be about Palin's 18-year-old, Bristol. As if that would make it any more tasteful.) And McCain sources kept providing ridiculous insinuations about her to reporters.
Palin did nothing to deserve the acrimonious venom that has been flung at her non-stop since she first appeared onstage with McCain. The professional, emotional and financial toll on her has been incredible. Partisan agendas and personal animosities have left her with few friends and many opponents in Alaska. And so, last week, she did what she is used to doing. She shook up the playing field.
On July 26, Palin will be a free woman. No longer will she have to juggle official responsibilities, a national political following and her children. She can travel freely to the Lower 48 without worrying about how it may affect her standing back home. She can defend herself and her family against slander without the controversy distracting from the duties of high office. She can make money to pay the bills. She can pick her battles without being hemmed in by the state legislature and bureaucracy.
Palin is impulsive. Her charisma is such that she does not need to hold an office to command attention or wield influence. She resigned from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission all of a sudden in 2004, plunged into a Republican gubernatorial primary in October 2005 and joined McCain's campaign without hesitation. Two of these three dizzying moves ended up in victory, and one did not. Two out of three isn't bad. Why shouldn't Palin think another gamble might pay off?
Palin herself may not know her next move. Speculation about her presidential ambitions is premature, though it will be much easier for her to build a national organization now that she has no professional ties to Alaska.
Whatever she does will be noticed, that's for sure. Because the attention lavished on Palin's decision is further evidence of her unwitting ability to bring out deep-seated feelings of admiration -- and loathing -- in people. We will be hearing from Palin for a long while to come.
NY Times:
With unemployment already at 9.5 percent and likely to exceed 10 percent, much higher than White House officials predicted back in February, Mr. Obama has been facing attacks that his $787 billion stimulus program was either too timid or wrong-headed or both. Now, just five months after Congress agreed on the plan, with only a fraction of the money actually out the door, Washington is debating the need for a second round of stimulus amid economic and political crosscurrents.
In Ohio, where unemployment is above 10 percent and where Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will visit on Thursday, Mr. Obama’s popularity has dropped sharply. In a poll by Quinnipiac University earlier this week, 48 percent of respondents said they disapproved of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy, while 46 percent approved, down 11 percentage points since May.
“People are soured on the system, and that’s understandable,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. “People want to see more money for water and sewers. They want to see more manufacturing growth. They want to see what we’re going to do beyond that.”
another flop from the Democrats:
"Sen. Roland Burris, who has next to no campaign cash, no political operation and no support from any major Democrat in Illinois or national politics, will not run to keep the seat in 2010, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.Burris raised little more than $800 in the first quarter of the year, and his second quarter only yielded about $20,000."
Well, the trolls have been busy!
Here are some news reports they seem to have missed.
The Alaska Daily News reports:
1. Gov. Sarah Palin, explaining her stunning resignation announcement, has repeatedly said attacks on her since she ran for vice president have cost state government "millions" of dollars.
"That huge waste that we have seen with the countless, countless hours that state staff is spending on these frivolous ethics violations and the millions of dollars that Alaskans are spending, that money not going to things that are very important, like troopers and roads and teachers and fish research," Palin said this week.
Palin administration officials provided the Daily News with a breakdown of what it says are $1.9 million in costs. Most if it is a per-hour accounting of the time state employees, such as state attorneys, have spent working on public records requests, lawsuits, ethics complaints, and issues surrounding the Legislature's "Troopergate" investigation last summer of Palin.
"Is it a check that we wrote, no, but is it staff hours, yes," Sharon Leighow, spokeswoman for Palin, said of the expenses related to state employee work.
Those state employees would have been paid regardless...
2. Ethics complaints against Gov. Sarah Palin and top members of her administration have cost the state personnel board nearly $300,000 over the past year, almost two-thirds of which appear to be from the Troopergate investigation of the governor [filed by Alaskans before McCain tapped her for VP].
That's according to new figures released by the personnel board, which described them as "independent counsel expenditures." The board hires private lawyers to investigate the complaints. The expenditures were released after the personnel board expressed frustration at the costs of the complaints. Palin has said the state is wasting money trying to resolve "frivolous" complaints against her.
The bulk of the expenses -- $187,797 -- appear to stem from Troopergate, the messy case involving Palin's former brother-in-law, a state trooper, who got on the wrong side with Palin and her family.
Palin herself initiated at least a part of the ethics case to counter a legislative investigation into the same matter...
...The most expensive cases were all from last year [before McCain tapped her for VP, and they were filed by Alaskans]. The third most costly one, which was listed at $29,962, could be a complaint made against Palin for having the state pay for her children's travel. Palin ended up settling that complaint by agreeing to reimburse the state about $8,000 for several trips.
Alaska Daily News Continued
3. Levi Johnston, the former fiance of Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol, on Thursday joined the crowd offering up potential reasons for Palin's decision to step down.
Johnston met with reporters to say that he heard her musing about a better life, one in which she could spend more time at home, reduce her stress, and accept the lucrative offers coming her way.
Back in December, a month after her election defeat as John McCain's running mate, Johnston said that Palin "had talked about how nice it would be to take some of this money people have been offering us and just run with it, and saying forget everything else."...
McClatchy reports:
Palin's quit before
McClatchy's Politics Editor, Robert Rankin, notes an Anchorage Daily News story from 2004 in which Sarah Palin quit her job as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. I've spoiled the punch line, but read these excerpts and pretend you don't already know the date:
"Palin said it was hard to do her job with potential civil penalties hanging over her head if she talked about what went on at her agency. She said the experience was taking the "oomph" out of her passion for government service and she decided to quit rather than becoming bitter.
Palin is a former mayor of Wasilla. She made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican lieutenant governor nomination in the 2002 election and has been discussed as a possible challenger to U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Palin said Friday her decision to leave the commission had nothing to do with such matters."
Palin in 2012! Please!
another flop from the Democrats
...Sen. Roland Burris, who has next to no campaign cash, no political operation and no support from any major Democrat in Illinois or national politics, will not run to keep the seat in 2010,
Compare that to the latest news about Senator John Ensign, who still has GOP support:
Ensign's Parents Gave Mistress's Family $96k
Lawyer for John Ensign Says Senator's Parents Gave Nearly $100,000 to Mistress and Her Family
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS
An attorney for U.S. Sen. John Ensign says the senator's parents gave his mistress and her family nearly $100,000.
In statement released Thursday, Paul Coggins says Ensign's parents made the gifts "out of concern for the well being of longtime family friends during difficult time."
Coggins says the gift was made in the form of a check totaling $96,000 in April 2008, after the Nevada Republican had told his parents of his affair...
"Palin in 2012! Please!"
I think I can guarantee that this request by Anon-B will be fulfilled.
One of the issues where Palin will have great success is the damage Sir BO has done to our national security.
In Russia this week, our inexperienced young President made a foolish mistake that none of his predecessors did: he agreed to link reductions in offensive nuclear weapons with defensive systems.
Russia has been trying to do this for years because they have no defensive capability.
Simply put, we can shoot down an ICBM but they can't.
Gorbachev tried to lure Reagan into this but he resisted as did Bush I, Clinton and Bush II.
It took our new Ivy League boy to get suckered into giving it up.
And who better to focus on that than someone who can see Russia from her backyard?
"Palin in 2012! Please!"
I think I can guarantee that this request by Anon-B will be fulfilled.
Perfect! Then Obama can beat her again!
It's a little hard to see how that could happen, Anon-B.
He'll have a record to run on.
So will the serial quitter.
She has a solid record of accomplishment that stands in contrast to BO's lack of accomplishment when he was elected.
Sorry, Anon-B, the penduluum has begin its return faster than many expected.
And recent history has shown, when it gets to the Republican side, it tends to linger.
I am coming late to this party, but I got a note saying that I was quoted here. I see that someone said I had no problem with the other conclusions in the article.
Actually, I do. The paper first of all includes nothing new. The leaders of NARTH have presented what is essentially a position paper as something new.
The paper does not criticize the old research due to the many design flaws. There is no need to rehash studies where psychoanalysts provided the answers they thought their poor patients would give. Or to note that Charcot thought hypnosis cured gays. They also cite the discredited Masters and Johnson study and Robert Kronemeyer's Syntonic Therapy which requires patients to scream and beat things (sound familiar IHF folks?). The paper cites materials from NARTH's website and protest descriptions from newspapers.
I could go on, but I did not want to let the idea that I have no problem with the bulk of the paper.
"The paper first of all includes nothing new. The leaders of NARTH have presented what is essentially a position paper as something new."
I never got the idea that it was something new. They said they looked at research from over a period of a century and drew some conclusions from it.
One conclusion they made was that reparative therapy is not necessarily harmful.
Do you agree with that?
"Anonymous"...you constant use of aliases is annoying and childish. Do you really think that using fictitious I.D.s 19 times and posting 35 entries under "Anonymous" will convince us of your unparalleled intelligence, wisdom, and insight into all matters, significant and insignificant, and that we will believe you to be other than the same person? Hardly.
You are becoming so tiresome in your rants, and despite your attempts to pirate this blog site and make it your own, those of us who come here for legitimate reasons have simply learned to ignore your egotistical strokings. I guess learning to accept annoying and silly persons like you is one of the prices we pay in a democracy.
I do, however, plead with the moderator of this site to exercise his authority to ban you. Enough is enough!
Citizen
Sparkler said:
The paper first of all includes nothing new. The leaders of NARTH have presented what is essentially a position paper as something new."
I never got the idea that it was something new. They said they looked at research from over a period of a century and drew some conclusions from it.
One conclusion they made was that reparative therapy is not necessarily harmful.
Do you agree with that?
1. The Narth news release headline is this: "New Scientific Research Refutes Unsubstantiated
Claims Regarding Homosexuality."(http://www.narth.com/docs/pressjournal.html)
NARTH's president said the research "is a significant milestone when it comes to the scientific debate over the issue of homosexuality."
The research in the paper is not new. Reviews of these papers have been done several times before. It is a considerable stretch to call a literature review a milestone unless one can demonstrate some new conclusions or theoretical breakthroughs. None there.
RE: the harmfulness of reparative therapy - two issues. Another problem with the paper is that it lumps all types of change approaches into one general concept of reorientation. So you have what might be more mainstream approaches like cognitive therapy lumped in with unethical approaches like aversive conditioning, lumped in with beliefs that homosexuality is caused by disruptions with the same sex parent in the first 3-4 years of life, lumped in prayer and Bible reading, etc. There is no ability to discern what might be helpful and what could be harmful. This is a significant weakness of this paper.
Reparative therapy is based on the belief that homosexuality derives from broken same-sex parenting. And yes, I know people who have been harmed by that approach. Whether it is generally harmful or not, I do not know. It has not been evaluated.
A word to Christians and Montgomery Countians who remember me from the health ed wars. I got involved because I saw research being squelched and misrepresented. I saw research being used for ideological purposes. We didn't like it and felt it was wrong. However, now that is happening with this report. The papers in the report have some merit but they cannot be stretched to say something they don't say. Just because you think your ideological opponents are playing fast and loose with the data does not mean you should do it in response.
I urge you to consider doing things a different way.
let's give Dr Throck a chance to answer the question, Citizen
Thank you Dr. Throckmorton.
I had no idea when I cited and linked to your paper about NARTH's latest that you'd take time from your busy schedule to comment here as you have before. This regular Vigilance reader thanks you for explaining your view of the NARTH paper and that you do not encourage "playing fast and loose with the data."
I'd also like to point out to Anon the benefits of citing and linking to your sources. You never know when the source himself might explain his reasoning right here for all to see.
Thank you, Warren.
You are the Montgomery County equivalent of Marshall McLuhan, conjured up by Woody Allen in "Annie Hall" 34 years ago to respond to a particularly wrong-headed comment while waiting in line for a movie.
Good to see you're doing well.
Dana, I loved that scene!
JimK
"1. The Narth news release headline is this: "New Scientific Research Refutes Unsubstantiated
Claims Regarding Homosexuality."(http://www.narth.com/docs/pressjournal.html)
NARTH's president said the research "is a significant milestone when it comes to the scientific debate over the issue of homosexuality."
The research in the paper is not new. Reviews of these papers have been done several times before. It is a considerable stretch to call a literature review a milestone unless one can demonstrate some new conclusions or theoretical breakthroughs. None there."
Well, it looks like the PR department at NARTH may have overstated but I first saw this in a Focus on the Family newsbrief and read the whole article and didn't get the wrong idea. It was review of other studies not new research except in the sense that tying all research together may represent research of a kind.
They reviewed all the studies and other material over a century. It may be fair to say that it was the first examination to look at the material comprehensively and synthesize it. Since they looked at everything, it is no indictment to say some of the material was not of the highest quality. That doesn't mean they gave all the material equivalent weight.
"RE: the harmfulness of reparative therapy - two issues. Another problem with the paper is that it lumps all types of change approaches into one general concept of reorientation. So you have what might be more mainstream approaches like cognitive therapy lumped in with unethical approaches like aversive conditioning, lumped in with beliefs that homosexuality is caused by disruptions with the same sex parent in the first 3-4 years of life, lumped in prayer and Bible reading, etc. There is no ability to discern what might be helpful and what could be harmful. This is a significant weakness of this paper."
Well, that may be but that is what these guys here argue all the time. They conflate all types of reparative therapy and say it's harmful. It's an obvious point that not all types of therapy are ethical or unharmful. This article makes the point that not all reparative is harmful, but not that every type is effective or benign.
"Reparative therapy is based on the belief that homosexuality derives from broken same-sex parenting."
This is not true and I'm surprised to hear an academician say it. Are you being blackmailed or something?
"And yes, I know people who have been harmed by that approach."
Well, could you be more specific? I think people assume this is psychological harm.
"Whether it is generally harmful or not, I do not know. It has not been evaluated."
Well, thanks for pointing that out. In this thread or another commenting on this study, one of the anonymous posters was claiming that there are many studies proving that reparative therapy is harmful.
"A word to Christians and Montgomery Countians who remember me from the health ed wars. I got involved because I saw research being squelched and misrepresented. I saw research being used for ideological purposes. We didn't like it and felt it was wrong. However, now that is happening with this report. The papers in the report have some merit but they cannot be stretched to say something they don't say. Just because you think your ideological opponents are playing fast and loose with the data does not mean you should do it in response.
I urge you to consider doing things a different way."
The people involved in the health ed wars don't generally comment here. And thanks for pointing out the lack of conclusive research in this field.
People on this site continually assert that science has proved that:
1. homosexuality is innate
2. homosexuality is immutable
3. that attempts to overcome same sex attraction are harmful
btw, :
"you'd take time from your busy schedule to comment here"
are you that busy, Dr Throck?
Give it up anonymous, you have been destroyed. Stop driving that knife deeper into your chest.
BTW I am so sorry I have been missing this discussion. From what I have read, it's been a good one.
Not really, Alvin.
Anon-B claims that there are studies that have demonstrated that reparative therapy is harmful.
And, now, we've had an expert in the field, that she brought into the conversation, say:
"Whether it is generally harmful or not, I do not know. It has not been evaluated."
Read closely, Alvin, and you will see that we have demonstrated that Anon-B doesn't know what she's talking about.
I know that's no big surprise here but to say "you have been destroyed" is ridiculous. Apparently, something you have pent up, dying to say, which just goes to show how effective my arguments have been in the past.
Thanks for the prop!
Now, try to keep your gorillas in their cages and your governors in the state.
We don't want to hear any more scandal out of Columbia this summer.
Anonymous - I would quibble with a few other things you said but this is what I will reply to:
(Me)"Reparative therapy is based on the belief that homosexuality derives from broken same-sex parenting."
(you)This is not true and I'm surprised to hear an academician say it. Are you being blackmailed or something?
(me)"And yes, I know people who have been harmed by that approach."
(you)Well, could you be more specific? I think people assume this is psychological harm.
No blackmail necessary. I am referring to reparative therapy in the sense that Joseph Nicolosi practices it. And that is what he preaches (see this - http://wthrockmorton.com/2009/04/27/nicolosi-claims-75-cured). Not all people who believe change is common believe this but reparative therapy is marked by this belief. I am surprised you would think otherwise.
Yes, psychological harm and family estrangement, near divorces, depression, loss of sexual responsiveness to anyone, religious apathy.
At the same time, some people believe in the reparative model. Perhaps it worked for them. Some people also believe in the power of crystals and Yogi Ramdev believes meditation can cure homosexuality. Lots of claims, not sure what to make of it. Jim is a social psychologist; I suspect he has some theories...
I first saw this in a Focus on the Family newsbrief and read the whole article and didn't get the wrong idea
This is the "I read it on the Internet" defense.
Verdict - guilty of gullibility.
That doesn't mean they gave all the material equivalent weight.
So quote the passages where NARTH reports the various weights they used for specific types of therapies and how they determined their values if they didn't give "all the material equivalent weight."
I believe this comment by Anon resembles the type of statement Dr. Throckmorton was referring to when he said:
Just because you think your ideological opponents are playing fast and loose with the data does not mean you should do it in response.
I urge you to consider doing things a different way.
If there is data proving NARTH gave the material different weights, provide it to back up your statement.
This article makes the point that not all reparative [therapy] is harmful, but not that every type is effective or benign.
In this sentence, "not all" means "some" as in "some reparative [therapy] is harmful" and "not every" means "few" as in "few type[s are] effective or benign." There should be another sentence: "According to Dr. Spitzer's landmark study documenting change is possible, change is also rare."
Dr. Spitzer found that *some* highly motivated individuals who consider themselves to be very religious have made varying degrees of movement from homosexuality to heterosexuality. He pointed out the difficulty, both in the amount of time and the number of people the various reparative therapy ministries had to use to come up with 200 subjects willing to participate. Spitzer's main objection to pro-reparative therapy organization's use of his study is that they only report his "change is possible" conclusion, but fail to report his "change is rare" conclusion.
It's called "spin."
Aversion conditioning, cognitive and behavioral therapies, prayer, exorcisms and other faith-based ministries, etc. -- all sorts of "cures" have been tried over the last 100 years. "All research" on all of forms of reparative therapies ever reported were tabulated and analyzed (or were they? see below) in this NARTH study. Hodgepodge in precludes anything but hodgepodge out.
"Reparative therapy is based on the belief that homosexuality derives from broken same-sex parenting."
This is not true and I'm surprised to hear an academician say it. Are you being blackmailed or something?
For someone who tries to make it sound like he knows very much about reparative therapy, this statement proves you do not. Dr. T went into some detail, here's more:
Broken same-sex parenting is exactly what Richard Cohen, the ex-gay expert the CRC brought to the MCPS Board of Education to represent them in the curriculum controversy, believes causes homosexuality. He hugs his bay male patents to repair what he believes is the defective same-sex parenting and suggests his patients whack pillows with rackets while screaming at their parents who didn't protect and nurture them properly.
And Cohen isn't alone in his belief. NARTH cites:
1. Satinover : When children do not form healthy same-sex bonds and their needs for same-sex connection go unmet, these needs do not go away; they simply intensify or take on another form. Typically, near puberty, these unmet needs take on a sexual form, the emotional needs become sexualized (Satinover, 1996).
2. Father John Harvey and Gerald V. Bradley: The fatherless home or the emotionally unavailable father joined with the dominant mother contributes to the development of same-sex attractions
3. "Dr. Joseph Nicolosi's recognition of a strong desire for closeness to a remote father in cases of adult homosexuality."
Note: Dr. Nicolosi is a past president of NARTH and he remains on NARTH's Board today.
"And yes, I know people who have been harmed by that approach."
Well, could you be more specific? I think people assume this is psychological harm.
I realize you're asking Dr. T, but back in August 2008, Anon asked me:
Could you be more specific about this harm?
and I replied:
Sure, I don't mind repeating what I already posted about the harm of conversion therapy back in January 2007: [That's three strikes. You're out.]
Here is Haldeman's review of conversion therapy studies and more detail from Shidlo and Schroeder's study:
"Early behavioral work in conversion therapy operated on the rationale that if certain predetermined (homosexual) behaviors could be extinguished, and if "adaptive" (heterosexual) behaviors could be substituted, the individual's sexual orientation would change. Such early behavioral studies primarily employed aversive conditioning techniques, usually involving electric shock or nausea-inducing drugs during presentation of same-sex erotic visual stimuli. Typically, the cessation of the aversive stimuli would be accompanied by the presentation of opposite-sex erotic visual stimuli, to supposedly strengthen heterosexual feelings in the sexual response hierarchy. Some programs attempted to augment aversive conditioning techniques with a social learning component -- assertiveness training, how to ask women out on dates, and so on (Feldman & McCulloch, 1965). Later, the same investigators modified their approach, calling it "anticipatory avoidance conditioning," which enabled subjects to avoid electrical shock when viewing slides of same-sex nudes (Feldman, 1966). One wonders how such a stressful situation would permit feelings of sexual responsiveness in any directions; nevertheless, a 58% "cure" rate was claimed. Again, however, the outcome criteria were defined as suppression of homosexuality, and an increased capacity for heterosexual behavior. It is not uncommon for homosexuals who have undergone aversive treatments to notice a temporary sharp decline in their homosexual responsiveness.
As with aversive techniques, the “covert sensitization” method calls for the use of noxious stimuli paired with same-sex erotic imagery. In this procedure, however, the subject does not actually experience the electric shock or induced vomiting, but is instructed to imagine such stimuli (Cautela, 1967). Outcomes here are limited to single-case studies, and are not generalizable.
More recent studies suggest that aversive interventions might extinguish homosexual responsiveness, but do little to promote alternative orientation. One investigator suggests that the poor outcomes of conversion treatments are due to the fact that they “disregard the complex learned repertoire and topography of homosexual behavior” (Faustman, 1976). Other recent studies echo the finding that “aversive therapies in homosexuality do not alter subjects’ sexual orientation, but serve only to reduce sexual arousal” (McConaghy, 1981). This pattern is reflected in yet another study suggesting that behavioral conditioning decreases homosexual orientation, but does not elevate heterosexual interest (Rangaswami, 1982). In fact, such methods applied to anyone else might be called by another name: torture. Individuals undergoing such treatments do not emerge heterosexually inclined; rather, they become shamed, conflicted, and fearful about their homosexual feelings."
Haldeman, D. (1991). Sexual orientation conversion therapy for gay men and lesbians: A scientific examination. In J. Gonsiorek & J. Weinrich (Eds.), Homosexuality: Research Implications for Public Policy. pp. 149-160. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
"In 2002, researchers Ariel Shidlo and Michael Schroeder recruited 182 men and 20 women for a study on the negative effects of reparative therapy. They found that 176 subjects said reparative therapy was harmful, while 26 said it was successful."
http://washtimes.com/metro/20050926-095613-8795r.htm [no longer maintained by WashTimes]
[Here's what Shidlo and Schroeder found:]
Psychological Harm
Participants reported perceiving the conversion intervention as harmful in the following areas:
Depression, suicidal ideation and attempts. Many participants spoke of depressed feelings resulting from the conversion intervention. Some attributed the negative effect to the event of having being told by the therapist—and their believing—that they had chosen a homosexual orientation:
"I felt more depressed after I did the therapy. The negative aspect was that I really felt it was all up to me, a choice I had made, and because of that choice I was condemned to being in this pain forever. This need for unnatural affections."
Other participants said that they tried not to be homosexual, and when change failed to come or they experienced a resurgence of same-sex desire, they then became depressed. Some participants spoke of suicidal ideation and attempts:
"I wanted to die. I felt as though I would never change and be “cured.” It harmed my self-esteem very much. I wanted to die. I felt as though it [the conversion therapy] took away who I was. . . . It took away my dignity."
One female participant described her experience of conversion therapy as an experience akin to being killed:
"I attempted suicide with pills. I just wanted to die. Part of it had to do with the feeling that I was dying already because of what the nun [conversion therapist] was doing to me. It felt like she was killing me, trying to rid me of my lesbian self."
In examining the data, we distinguished between participants who had a history of being suicidal before conversion therapy and those who did not. Twenty-five participants had a history of suicide attempts before conversion therapy, 23 during conversion therapy, and 11 after conversion therapy. We took the subgroup of participants who reported suicide attempts and looked at suicide attempts preintervention, during intervention, and postintervention to see if there was any suggestive pattern. We found that 11 participants had reported suicide attempts since the end of conversion interventions. Of these, only 3 had attempted prior to conversion therapy. Of the 11 participants, 3 had attempted during conversion therapy.
Self-esteem and internalized homophobia. Many participants linked the iatrogenic effects of conversion therapy on their self-esteem to the therapist’s intervention of devaluing their homosexual orientation and providing defamatory and false information about gay and lesbian persons, and their lives, relationships, and communities (see Schroeder & Shidlo, 2001). This is consistent with the portrayal of lesbians and gay men in the conversion therapy literature (cf. Nicolosi, 1991, 1993, 2000; Socarides, 1978, 1995). It seems incontrovertible that an intervention that frames a homosexual orientation as undesirable, sick, and evil, when applied to individuals who fail to change their homosexual orientation, will have iatrogenic effects by virtue of exacerbating self-hatred, poor self-esteem, and internalized homophobia. One participant reported:
"I think it harmed me. . . . It reinforced all my own negative stereotypes about homosexuality and my being a failure and an inadequate human being."
Distorted perception of homosexual orientation. We found that some conversion therapists and patients appeared to attribute, without substantiation, many—sometimes all—negative traits and life events to a homosexual orientation. For many of our participants, homosexuality became a receptacle of all that was dysfunctional and undesirable. This created unrealistic demands that a change of sexual orientation would resolve unrelated personal and interpersonal problems.
Intrusive imagery and sexual dysfunction. A group of participants who underwent cognitive behavior therapies, especially those who had aversive conditioning, reported long-term harm as indicated by the intrusion of disturbing images formed in conversion therapy. Some male participants also complained of sexual impotence:
"In a sex act, I can imagine . . . my wife . . . and I find that disturbing, because it doesn’t belong there. He [the psychologist] taught me to do that a long time ago. The first time I attempted to have anal intercourse with my lover, I couldn’t because I would get flashbacks of my life. The same way when I was in the behavior mod program, when I was in the relationship with that guy, my therapist would have me envision [wife’s name] there, versus the guy being there; I was to envision her, not him, while having sex with him. That was a mind bender. . . . I still have it with me sometimes. Not as bad as I used to, but I still get a flashback; either it takes away from the moment or destroys the moment. . . . When I’m involved in a sex act, sometimes I really have to try to push out thoughts in my mind that he planted, or I will not be able to achieve an erection or ejaculation."
Unanimously, participants reported that aversive conditioning had especially destructive effects. They experienced aversive conditioning as punitive and degrading, and they responded with fear and shame:
"It was a pretty humiliating experience. It was sitting in somebody’s office and unzip your pants and strapped to electrodes. And [then] walk out to the waiting-room with burn marks in my arms—the size of quarters. Being in his presence [and] having to look at these pictures [pornographic images]. It was embarrassing."
Monitoring of gender-deviant mannerisms. Some respondents spoke about an increase in worrying that they appeared “gay-acting.” This is not surprising, as a central component of some conversion therapies is to increase stereotypically gender-appropriate behavior. Some participants reported hypervigilance over displaying incongruous gender traits, resulting in an increase in paranoid-like worries and fears that they would not “pass” as being heterosexual.
Social and Interpersonal Harm
Many participants spoke of having experienced significant harm in their relationships and social functioning in the following areas:
Family of origin. Many respondents reported that conversion therapy significantly harmed relationships with their parents. These participants reported that they were instructed to blame their parents for their homosexual orientation and were taught to identify failures in parenting as causal to their sexual orientation. Participants spoke of anger, alienation, hatred, and other negative emotions toward their parents as results of the conversion therapy:
"I really wanted to believe . . . [my therapist about the cause of my homosexuality]. So for a while, it added to my hatred of my father. . . During that period I broke off relationship with my father to get away from that influence. "
Alienation, loneliness, and social isolation. Many participants complained of experiencing social isolation and loneliness as a consequence of conversion therapy. This occurred even in individuals who had many ex-gay or heterosexual social supports. Participants attributed their loneliness to hiding that they were still homosexual:
"[The conversion therapy] made me feel like a freak. Made me feel about it even worse than I did before [the conversion therapy]. Consequently, I couldn’t reach out to anyone about it. . . . I had no one to talk to, and didn’t feel I could be open with that therapist. "
Interference with intimate relationships. This included loss of same-sex partners or missed opportunities to commit to long-term relationships with same-sex persons whom participants were in love with. Some therapists advised their clients to break off intimate relationships with same-sex partners. Long-lasting exacerbation of shame about sexual orientation interfered with lesbian and gay relationships after treatment failure:
"It changed my sexual life as well. . . . I feel that it has been a very slow process to having a normal sexual life as a gay male. Subconsciously or consciously I still view being gay as bad, or something you should be guilty about. . . . I think it made me less of a sexual homosexual."
Loss of social supports when entering and leaving the ex-gay community. Upon entering ex-gay support systems, many participants were instructed to distance themselves from lesbian and gay friends. A converse loss occurred when leaving the ex-gay community; many reported being rejected for abandoning the struggle against homosexuality.
Fear of being a child abuser. Some male participants reported that conversion therapy created in them a fear of becoming child abusers and subsequently interfered with their relationships with children:
"It really screwed me up, because these thoughts were put in my head that I was attracted to little boys, and I’m not. I was very angry at that... I had very young nephews, I was afraid to be around them, afraid to play with them."
Delay of developmental tasks due to not coming out as gay or lesbian earlier. Many participants reported that the years invested in conversion therapy (over a decade for some) delayed opportunities to have intimate relationships and develop social skills. They complained of difficulties in distinguishing between intimacy, friendship, sex, and love:
"It delayed my being a gay man once again. It preserved the false notion that sexual orientation could be changed and added more years to my time in the closet. I lost a lot of my life as a result of this."
Spiritual Harm
The majority (66%) of our sample was religious. Many who considered themselves to be treatment failures reported experiencing a negative impact on their religiosity. We identified several negative outcomes in this group: (a) complete loss of faith, (b) sense of betrayal by religious leaders, (c) anger at clinicians who introduced punitive and shaming concepts of God, and (d) excommunication.
"I had this spiritual foundation that therapy fXXXed up. God became this very punishment. In church you get homophobia twice a year, in therapy it was every week. God was a punishing-homophobic figure, and I became an evil sinner every time."
Read closely, Alvin, and you will see that we have demonstrated that Anon-B doesn't know what she's talking about.
Nobody has to read closely to see that you are all spin and absent on facts. This is the Vigilance blog of TeachtheFACTS.org. "I urge you to consider doing things a different way."
So, when Dr Throck said:
"Whether it is generally harmful or not, I do not know. It has not been evaluated."
you think he was just ignorant of the studies you just mentioned?
Why couldn't the various "harm" you mentioned be the consequence of any type of change, say trying to cure alcoholism?
It all boils down to whether homosexuality is moral or not.
This is not a scientific question.
If someone decides it is, then they can decide whether some type of therapy is worth the discomfort, which is not the same as "harm".
Gay advocacy groups are wrong to try and ban this and interfere with the others right of self-determination.
"Whether it is generally harmful or not, I do not know. It has not been evaluated."
you think he was just ignorant of the studies you just mentioned?
No, Anon, I think you have taken his words out of context.
Dr. Throckmorton has been working in this field for a long time and I do not believe for one moment that he is unaware of the studies I mentioned. Those studies included aversive conditioning and behavior modification, as well as the various types of conversion or reparative therapies offered by various ministries. I'm quite sure he's aware of the harm caused by these therapies. In fact, everyone in the field, except apparently those at NARTH (or should I follow your lead and say "at a heterosexual advocacy group?"), knows about the harm caused by attempts to change sexual orientation.
Dr. T may best speak for himself, but since he didn't comment last night, let's look at the entire paragraph that ended in that pair of sentences you cling to like life preservers:
Reparative therapy is based on the belief that homosexuality derives from broken same-sex parenting. And yes, I know people who have been harmed by that approach. Whether it is generally harmful or not, I do not know. It has not been evaluated.
I think he's saying he knows people who have been harmed by therapies based on the belief that broken same-sex parenting causes homosexuality. And he's added his view that therapies based on that theory have not yet been evaluated in scientifically rigorous studies so there's no way to know if the harm he's seen in patients who have submitted to it is common or rare.
I'd also like to add that if the NARTH paper is truly a review of "all" the studies in this field, it most certainly should have reported the same harm that Haldeman reported in his earlier review of older studies, as well as the harm Shidlo and Schroeder found more recently.
And please don't think it's just these researchers who have reported harm from attempts to change sexual orientation. Google the two terms "reparative therapy" and "harm" (with a comma between the terms but without quotation marks anywhere), look for reputable sources (avoid both wings, left and right), and read some facts instead of spin for a change.
Dr. T is not alone when he says "I urge you to consider doing things a different way."
Gay advocacy groups are wrong to try and ban this and interfere with the others right of self-determination.
This straight ally can only speak for herself. IMHO, everyone, gay, lesbian, bisexual, straight has a right to self-determination. I don't want unsuspecting people misinformed into believing their orientation can be changed because change is so rare. Those offering reparative therapy should be honest and detail the risks before allowing someone to sign up. It's called "informed consent." Often times it's the failure to change, as noted in some of the comments reported by Shidlo and Schroeder's research subject above, that leads so many to outcomes of depression and worse. My biggest problem is with the danger for harm to teenagers forced to attend by well-meaning but misinformed parents. The only people demonstrated to have made any change in orientation were those highly motivated to do so themselves, not those who are forced to try by well-meaning parents. Teens have a right to self-determination too.
Warren said: At the same time, some people believe in the reparative model. Perhaps it worked for them. Some people also believe in the power of crystals and Yogi Ramdev believes meditation can cure homosexuality. Lots of claims, not sure what to make of it. Jim is a social psychologist; I suspect he has some theories...
Okay, I'll bite.
Social psychology has recently been shifting away from an information-processing or cognitivistic view of the individual, to a view of embodied individuals. The prevailing view, not so long ago, was that a person is like a computer with (often biased) sensory inputs, we receive information from the world, process it rationally, and output behaviors. But that view left too many loose ends, not the least being the fact that human beings are very rarely observed behaving rationally!
So we are embodied, we are driven by the feeling of our bodies, vague emotions, needs that might not be conscious but are part of our biological heritage, all of this set in a highly interactive social context that shapes behavior and thought. Decades of research establish some principles for affecting someone's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors through social influence, and embodiment seems to set a kind of limit -- you can get a person to hold their breath, for instance, but only for so long before they hit a biological barrier.
The question at hand is whether an individual can be persuaded to change their sexual orientation, and as I am presenting it the base question is whether sexual orientation comes with the biological package or is part of the social world. And the answer seems to be that it is more of the former than the latter. You can persuade an initially-homosexual person to behave in a heterosexual way, but it does appear to resemble holding one's breath. We are overwhelmed by the number of people who, having "changed," change back. That doesn't mean the biological mechanisms have been, or ever will be, identified, it only means that an embodied individual seems to grow into a sexual orientation independent of social influence.
Social psychologists have changed all kinds of attitudes, but as far as I know, there is no social psychological research into the question of changing sexual orientation, and I doubt there will be. There is simply no reason to believe it can be changed. (It's been a while since I read through Daryl Bem's ideas, but I remember them being provocative, speculative, and developmental, though he is a social psychologist.)
I don't think it's good enough for scientist/practitioners to consider a psychological model as equivalent to crystals and yoga. Clinical psychology has to build on research results and rule out wishful thinking. Research needs to be published in academic journals and beaten around by reviewers and competitors, results will be challenged and replicated or not-replicated, alternative hypotheses will be proposed and tested, and theory will move forward incrementally. None of this has happened with the kind of "theory" NARTH promotes. They propose a model of developmental psychology, the weak father and overbearing mother leading to homosexual orientation, it is a testable hypothesis but as far as I know no "real" developmental psychology journal has ever published any results supporting it. In the absence of research evidence the NARTH theory is scientifically equivalent to crystals and yoga. (Oh, and I like crystals and yoga, they just aren't science!)
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