Ex-Gay Watch is reporting (http://www.exgaywatch.com/wp/2007/05/aapa-votes-to-oppose-attempts-to-cure-homosexuality/) that the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA) has joined a large number of prestigious professional associations in opposing the quackery known as reparative therapy marketed by the Christianist far right. On the matter of conversion therapies, the AAPA voted the following:
The American Academy of Physician Assistants opposes any psychiatric treatment directed specifically at changing sexual orientation, such as “conversion” or “reparative” therapy which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her sexual orientation.
With this decision, the AAPA joins a large number of prestigious professional organizations in the view that homosexuality is not a disorder to be cured, and that therapy claiming to do so not something to be endorsed. It's a shame that groups like Exodus International and its affiliates have no regard for legitimate medical and mental health expert opinion, particularly since the cure programs do not work - just generate a lot of money for the fundies. Just look at Focus on the Family's ex-professional ex-gay, John Paulk (pictured on the cover of Newsweek at left), who was photographed by Wayne Besen cruising in a gay bar.
1 comment:
Under the present circumstances, where torture is sanctioned in the War of Terror (under some odd euphemism) -- notwithstanding the century-old Geneva Conventions, I suppose the practice of reparative torture is sanctioned by the very same folk who espouse government torture (but, please, let's not call it "therapy").
But a civil society would ban both.
Torture of any and all kinds never yields the intended results, and only inflicts pain on others for someone else's twisted pleasures. But those documented facts have never stopped those bent on practicing it. Some dissimulators try to justify torture as if it is Pavlovian operant conditioning (a categorical mistake in extremis). But even if one could stretch one's credulity to claim the parity, let's not forget that Pavlov practiced operant conditioning on dogs, and humans are not dogs. But those who practice torture are.
A civil society, of course, would ban all forms of torture (a sort of recriminating self-indictment, unfortunately).
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