I can’t ‘celebrate’ but it doesn’t mean I hate you

FRIDAY, 17 JULY 2015

I can’t ‘celebrate’ but it doesn’t mean I hate you

BY STEVE C. CRAIG

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From left to right, the car’s bumper stickers read: “Hatred is Not a Family Value,” “Celebrate Diversity” (in rainbow colors), and “Obama-Biden.”
Collectively, these refreshed my growing fear that I should soon “celebrate” certain lifestyle choices or suffer the consequences. There was once another option, but memory of it is fading rapidly like an image in my rear view mirror.
Both the imperative tone and intolerance of the bumper messages are troubling; as is the shallow and muddled thinking behind them. A polite “no thank you” is now an unacceptable response to the colorful and demanding “celebrate”. It is time we rediscovered the validity of conscientious objection.
Conscientious objection is objection to an act, not a person. Equating conscientious objection with bigotry is unkind and a particularly egregious kind of ignorance. And restricting and penalizing the exercise of religiously-informed civil rights is simply wrong -- though in modern parlance it is “evolved” behavior.
Two examples might help.
First, most would agree that a manufacturer of forceps has the right not to sell her product to an abortion clinic, due to a conscientious objection to dismemberment.
Forceps play a direct and key role in late-term abortion, an act many Americans consider immoral. This act is the basis of the forceps maker’s objection; not the sex, race or sexual orientation of the clinic’s staffers, customers or victims. The objection concerns the act, and the same is true for any vendor or employer who would refuse to enable an abortion.
Returning to “celebrate”, consider cakes or photographs at gay weddings. Gay weddings are also acts, not people. The difference is real, although in some circles conflating acts and people produces the ugly charge of bigot against those who would avoid celebrating.
Like forceps, these cakes and photos play a material role in an act many find immoral. Their materiality is confirmed by the importance assigned them by both sides of a very intense debate, one that recently played out in Indiana over a religious freedom law.
However, even though religiously-informed bakers and photographers object to material cooperation in gay weddings, their doors are open to homosexuals for the purchase of regular cakes and every day photographs. This is important. It tells us that participation in the act of gay marriage is found unconscionable, but not the customers themselves.
Bigotry, on the other hand, is comprehensive, more proactive, much more personal and far less nuanced – lynching being an extreme, but crystallizing example.
Yet it is the unjust charge of bigotry that is masking the broad daylight theft of the right to conscientious objection. Many are confused and this confusion results directly from a media-induced failure to think, loud and hysterical demagoguery, and an aggressive and unprincipled quest by some to have their sexual choices celebrated and publicly validated, though this is not a right.
Out of guilt and fear citizens have succumbed to a widely promoted fiction that wedding cakes and photos are a homosexual civil rights issue; that this is Selma all over again; and that discrimination against homosexual persons across numerous goods and services is a big problem, leading to disenfranchisement, segregation, exploitation and violence. It is not, and to assert that it is makes light of Selma.
Homosexuals have equal access to goods and services, cakes and photos, in all but one scenario: an act in which some religious people would prefer not to participate. If Selma’s biggest problem were that a few Black residents could get cake all of the time from most bakers but only 95 percent of the time from the rest, Selma’s movies would have been much better attended than Selma’s marches.
The conscientious objection of the forceps manufacturer to their use in abortions is not a civil rights issue for women as such, because that manufacturer provides equipment for women for all other purposes, and because other manufacturers, who do not have the same objection, can supply what is need to protect the right to abortion.
In a similar way, the conscientious objections of the baker and photographer concerning gay weddings are not civil rights issues for homosexuals, because those vendors sell to homosexuals the rest of the time, and because other businesses can meet the demand.
The one, very predictable exception in either case concerns an objection to a particular action, not to person. We should all be intelligent, stable and mature enough to understand this.
These questions have nothing to do with sexism or bigotry and should be resolved consistently in favor of the right to conscientious objection. Everyone should have the right not to be forced into material cooperation with an act they find immoral.
For the law or public policy to say otherwise represents an invasion of government into personal conscience. Our longstanding system of pluralism embraces a diversity of views, whereas forced affirmation requires unanimity through the power of the police state.
Clearly, the better answer is a live-and-let-live, bi-lateral, peace-be-with-you agreement. For the same reason that Christians don’t force gay bakers and photographers to work on their weddings, homosexuals shouldn’t force Christian bakers and photographers to work on theirs.
But live-and-let-live is what the “celebrate” movement won’t tolerate. Now that rights have been recast as the ability to force others to validate, to do things -- sell products, render services and provide benefits -- force is being applied in a new way. It is now trained on the elimination of dissent.
The recent attack on an Indiana pizzeria, a $135,000 fine imposed on an Oregon baker, and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s comment about Christian school tax exemptions being at risk, prove the crusade is growing more predatory. “Celebrate” is now a menacing and direct order. The validation movement’s use of force is an aphrodisiac driving new conquests.
This is a problem. As the right to judge, live and work according to one’s conscience is checked by the newly manufactured right to validation, Americans will find it increasingly difficult to live according to standards that differ from those held by a minority of influential citizens seeking celebration of or validation for one thing or another.
And although ours and every generation fancies itself modern, evolved and unprecedented, we have seen this before. Henry VIII forced consciences to validate his sexual choices, and state tyranny resulted. The preamble of his Suppression of Religious Houses Act is eye opening. Many who were religious were deprived of their property, liberty and lives. Henry proved that forced validation is a bad path and no business of the state.
History‘s arc is looping and those in charge are again targeting religion in the name of sex. Last time the enforcer was Cromwell as Vicegerent. This time it will likely be Verrilli as Solicitor General or Koskinen as IRS Commissioner.
A chasm again exists between those who believe that chastity is virtuous and those who reject the concepts of both chastity and virtue. In twenty first century America these two groups should be able to live freely, each guided by their very different beliefs. But just as in 1535, the latter group is increasingly intolerant of the former’s view of vice, and wrongly seeks to police its thought and constrain its religious civil rights. Then, Henry labeled priests and nuns “vicious, unthrifty and abominable”. Now, sexual validation crusaders label Christians sexist and bigoted.
As before, these are lies. The premise of bigotry on which the attempt to constrain conscientious objection rests is a smokescreen. Christians see a homosexual person’s dignity as rooted in something great and common -- that we are all children of God -- whereas those insisting on the validation of sexual choices are fixated on a mere act as the source of a homosexual person’s dignity -- a far lower and less glorious standard.
The realization of a common dignity gratuitously gifted by God is both why there is no Christian pride parade and why Christians can’t condemn others for their parades. It is also why Immanuel Kant’s invention of autonomy and Justice Kennedy’s more recent version of it as the “right to define one’s own… existence… meaning… and mystery” ring so hollow. Ask the truly mysterious ex-NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal about the difficulty of defining your own existence.
The Kant/Kennedy approach is a heavy yoke and an uncertain foundation for living. Defining our own meaning is as improbable as creating ourselves. Plus, it casts us as islands and makes us needy, insecure and irritable when validation isn’t forthcoming or constantly awarded. It leads to frustration from time wasted by inventing troubles, instead of living life.
Christians may not throw stones but they may rightfully ask not to be force marched, as validators, in others’ acts or parades. This is what they are asking – that their diversity be tolerated (actual celebration is not necessary) and rights of conscientious objection respected. It is a courtesy we must extend, in the name of freedom of conscience, intellectual honesty, pluralism, rediscovering actual bigotry, mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence.

Steve C. Craig is a financial analyst who lives in Texas.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/conjugality/view/i-cant-celebrate-but-it-doesnt-mean-i-hate-you/16524#sthash.tGqI1KD6.dpuf

Free speech: what banning ‘gay conversion therapy’ will really stop

Free speech: what banning ‘gay conversion therapy’ will really stop

A professional therapist explains his work and what it is not.

Christopher Rosik | Jul 15 2015

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Not every man or woman who finds himself or herself sexually attracted to someone of the same sex is happy with that attraction. Parents of adolescents who show such tendencies may consider it best for the happiness of their child to seek counseling or other professional help for them. And such help is available.
However, the assumption that homosexual attraction, and, in some cases at least, more established orientation, can change, runs into a wall of opposition from gay rights campaigners and professional bodies. These assert that it is harmful to try and change something they believe is not even a problem, but a naturally occurring phenomenon.
In April this year the White House threw its weight behind this anti-therapy campaign, which had already seen three US states ban sexual orientation change therapy for minors (New Jersey, California and Washington, D.C.). In May the openly lesbian Governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, signed another such law. At the same time Representative Ted W. Lieu introduced a bill into the US Congress that would ban so-called "conversion therapy" throughout the United States.
MercatorNet believes this is a very one-sided culture war. Where is there space given to professional therapists who work in this area to explain what they do and to defend it? Well, right here. We emailed some questions to Dr Christopher Rosik, a practising psychologist and director of research at Link Care Center in Fresno, California, as well as a clinical faculty member of Fresno Pacific University. Here, in the first of three articles, we begin his responses.

* * * * * *

Earlier this year President Obama endorsed a ban on “gay conversion therapy” for minors. What would this mean for the kinds of young people you see in your practice?
In my opinion, this topic is above our President’s pay grade. What the ban in California has meant for me is that I immediately added language to my advanced consent forms, which parents and adolescents read at the outset of therapy, indicating that the law is in effect and therefore I can no longer engage in any intervention that could be construed as promoting change in unwanted same-sex attractions and behaviors.
The California law is very nebulous, as I am still allowed to share information, talk about change, or provide support to a minor, but not say anything that could be viewed as promoting change. Given that costly ethics complaints are made by patients, whose perceptions may vary wildly, such distinctions are of little practical value, and I suspect these laws will hinder the provision of any type of professional psychological care to these minors that is not overtly gay-affirmative in nature.
The White House defined “conversion therapy” as “any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” – Does this term and its definition describe what you do?
The progressive left has done a superb job of demonizing terms such as “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy” beyond recognition. These terms have been repeatedly and widely associated with abusive aversive techniques that have not been used within the psychological professions for over three decades, and this includes licensed therapists who do such work.
We are further characterized as coercing minors into treatment and telling such patients they must have been sexually abused.
However, my colleagues and I always follow the lead of the client in goal setting because we understand that there is no genuine therapeutic process without client self-determination. Nor do we assume every client has a history of childhood sexual abuse, although there is reason from the literature to believe such abuse can be an important influence on the development of sexual orientation for some people (Beard et al. 2013; Bickham et al. 2007; O’Keefe et al. 2014; Roberts, Glymour, & Koenen, 2013; Wells, McGee, & Beautrais, 2011; Wilson & Widom, 2009).
Such poor practices, were they actually being used by licensed therapists, would surely risk ethical censure or even loss of licensure without the aid of such bans. Yet I am not aware of a single therapist who has had to deal with an ethics complaint on such a basis. Indeed the lack of any ethics complaints against such therapists at the state level suggests that their professional conduct is not the problem but rather their willingness to entertain the possibility of change for some patients.
Recent legislation in Washington State further disclosed ban supporters motives as seeking to suppress the free speech rights of therapists. A bill with bipartisan support to prohibit harmful aversive techniques with minors (e.g., electrical shocks, chemically induced nausea, ice baths) eventually died after ban advocates protested that the bill still allowed for therapist speech in the potential facilitation of change.
In point of fact, there is no one special kind of therapy for such patients. I am not a reparative therapist, but I do see insights from this paradigm as being applicable to some patients. Therapists like me who work in this area typically utilize a number of mainstream interventions that address relevant emotional and cognitive processes as well as certain relational dynamics. While many of these therapists operate from a psychodynamic and developmental perspective, they often incorporate insights from the cognitive, interpersonal, narrative, and psychodrama traditions as well, to name just a few (Hamilton & Henry, 2009).
Often these therapists are not focusing on same-sex attractions at all, but rather on the broader issues of identity and specifically gender identity in an attempt to resolve various factors that may contribute to the patient’s difficulties.
For those patients who prioritize their traditional religious and/or cultural values above acting upon their same-sex attractions, chastity/celibacy, behavioral management, and the modification of same-sex attractions and behaviors are all valid options that should be embraced by their faith communities.
Having said all this, it has to be acknowledged that conservative hyperbole on these issues (e.g., Ben Carson’s recent statements on people choosing to be gay; mean-spirited and scientifically uninformed comments by some leaders of the religious right) also does damage to how this work is seen by the public and makes a reasoned discussion around these issues more difficult.
Are there any questionable practices in this field, in your opinion?
Among licensed therapists working in this area I believe questionable practices are kept to a minimum by accountability to a professional code of ethical conduct, including full informed consent and careful assessment of client motivation. I spearheaded a related effort to provide practice guidelines for clinicians who affirm the right of patients to pursue change of unwanted same-sex attractions and behavior. Therapists doing work in this area should be familiar with this document.
There is much greater variability regarding questionable practices among unregulated and unaccountable religiously oriented counselors and life coaches. It is a great irony that legal bans that prevent licensed therapists from assisting a patient’s free choice to pursue change actually increase the risk of harm by causing some of these individuals to seek out such non-licensed counselors.
Any sort of “therapeutic” nudity, which has apparently been offered by some ministries, is an invitation to (so to speak) get one’s pants sued off.
Less egregious but very important concerns arise when the counselor wanders too far from what current science says (or does not say) about sexual orientation.
Examples of this include the counselor overselling the likelihood and degree of change, not sufficiently exploring the role of outside pressure on the client’s motivation to pursue change, offering reductionistic explanations for homosexuality, overstating the co-occurrence of psychopathology in homosexuality, and ignoring or minimizing the potential impact of stigmatization and discrimination, both as a cause for the symptomology of a client or possibly resulting out of their pursuit of change.
Do many of these patients drop out of therapy or decide to embrace a gay identity after all?
Psychotherapy patients in general do drop out of therapy with some regularity.  In itself, this is not a clear indicator of harm.  Some may drop out because of dissatisfaction, but others may drop out because they are doing better and no longer feel a need to continue in therapy.  Some patients do decide to adopt a gay identity, and that is their right. As a psychologist, I am obligated to honor that decision as well.
Next: In Part 2 of this interview Dr Rosik discusses his work with minors and the position of the leading US professional groups on sexual orientation therapy.
Christopher Rosik is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Oregon and earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from Fuller Graduate School of Psychology.  He is currently a psychologist and director of research at Link Care Center in Fresno, California, as well as a clinical faculty member of Fresno Pacific University. He has published more than 45 articles in peer reviewed journals and has served as President of the Western Region of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies.  He is currently Past-President of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/child-abuse-or-free-speech-what-do-bans-on-gay-conversion-therapy-aim-to-st/16507#sthash.nsJp00Qi.dpuf

A Dangerous Bill Introduced in Congress!

May 29, 2015 Recently I wrote this Op-Ed that was published at CNSNEWS.com

"President Barack Obama and I have shared a similar experience. In a White House statement supporting a ban on Sexual Orientation Change Efforts therapy for minors, he said, “Tonight, somewhere in America, a young person, let’s say a young man, will struggle to fall asleep, wrestling alone with a secret he’s held as long as he can remember. Soon, perhaps, he will decide it’s time to let that secret out. What happens next depends on him, his family, as well as his friends, his teachers and his community. But it also depends on us—one the kind of society we engender, the kind of future we build.”

I couldn’t agree more. My experience also involves a Christian young man. He’s in my office, sobbing in pain: “How can the president not understand? Why is he disowning young people like me? I don’t get it! Do my experiences and values not matter?” This young man also lies awake at night, hoping someone will help him. He also needs compassion, understanding, and healing. He is struggling with same-sex attractions, but doesn’t identify as gay. His homosexual feelings resulted from a drug dealer who got him high and molested him. He has a tremendous amount of shame over this experience, and is confused about his unwanted homosexual feelings. He likes girls and wants to marry one someday, but he’s addicted to drugs. When he feels badly, he gets high and looks for casual sex. He knows he’s just trying to kill the pain but can’t stop.

If the President gets his way, this young man may never have the chance to get the help he desperately needs. Since he started counseling with me two months ago, his self-esteem has increased. He’s started to form a support network and goes to a 12-step sex addicts group every week. Where the effects of sexual abuse were once devastating, he’s now hopeful and can talk about his pain with other safe people. Clients like this do not identify as gay. They believe they are straight but have unwanted homosexual attractions. Sadly, professional mental health associations have been infiltrated with activists and have turned their backs on these young men, and now, so has our President. Those who oppose this therapy support youth who want to change their gender but not their sexual orientation. They say every person should be free to be whoever they want, unless this means transitioning from homosexuality to heterosexuality. They believe no one should be forced to be something they’re not, unless they are being forced to remain captive to unwanted same-sex attractions. I empathize with this young man because I was once like him. When I was young, I lived a gay life. But homosexuality didn’t work for me, and I benefited greatly from therapy that helped heal sexual abuse and resolve my sexual attractions for men. Today, I am married to a beautiful woman, and we have three wonderful children! As a psychotherapist, I am passionate about helping others struggling with unwanted attractions, because I know how they feel. Those who oppose therapy don’t want others to hear this. They want people to believe therapy is abusive, so they invent stories of torture to further their political agenda. But when pressed for details, they never provide verifiable facts. This is exactly what happened in Washington State. An activist told of a client forced to sit in an ice bath as a means of aversion therapy. Republican lawmakers then worked with Democrats on a bill to ban these harmful aversive therapies. But gay activists suddenly changed their tune and refused to support the bill, saying it didn’t go far enough—because “far enough” for them means shutting down the debate completely. Shutting down free speech. Shutting down clients’ rights, like the young man sitting in my office. The bedrock principle of mental healthcare is to keep the client first. But those who oppose therapy don’t care about those who want change, and neither does President Obama. That isn’t tolerance or love or empowerment; it’s a double standard. Just ask the young man in my office, who through therapy finally has hope he can live the life he’s always imagined. Take away his hope—now that’s abuse. That’s torture. Don’t take that away from him." This article was originally published here. Following President Obama's statement, some radical members of Congress introduced a bill that would essentially outlaw therapy for clients that seek to resolve unwanted same-sex attraction (for both adults and minors). Please continue to pray with us and join us as we continue the battle for the lives of those who seek healing from their conflicts with sexual orientation and unwanted same-sex attraction. If you feel led, click the "donate" button below and make a generous, tax-deductible donation to the work of IHF. Sincerely,

Christopher Doyle, MA, LCPC Director International Healing Foundation ihfnewsletter@getresponse.com; em nome de; Ihf office <ihfinfo@comingoutloved.com>

The fairest referendum money can buy

TUESDAY, 19 MAY 2015

The fairest referendum money can buy

BY MICHAEL COOK

As Friday’s referendum on same-sex marriage in Ireland approaches, attention has turned to the funding behind the Yes campaign.

A petition has been launched which says that “this push for same-sex marriage in Ireland has not at all been a ‘home-grown’ phenomenon, but, rather, a carefully-orchestrated and massively well-funded assault on the natural family, coming from private American funding”.

In most countries funding local politics with overseas money would be as popular with voters as barbecuing puppydogs at a school fair. But not, apparently, in Ireland.

A charity founded by Irish-American businessman Chuck Feeney, Atlantic Philanthropies, cheerfully acknowledges that it has poured about US$28 million over the past 13 years into strategic LGBT campaigns in Ireland.

A columnist for the Irish Times, Breda O’Brien, was seething with rage this week at the thought of American dollars buying Irish votes:

“This is not Atlantic Philanthropies funding a hospital or school. This is foreign money being systematically invested to change public opinion, to deliver seamlessly a Yes in a referendum that has enormous consequences for family law for generations. All the while soothing us by spinning it as just ‘seventeen little words’. Can American money buy an Irish referendum? Let’s wait and see.”

What has Atlantic Philanthropies achieved? Quite a lot. Even Friday’s referendum, it turns out, has its fingerprints all over it. Another columnist, Bruce Arnold, says, "In my opinion, The Atlantic Philanthropies has bought this referendum."

Atlantic has funded four influential organisations: the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN), Marriage Equality, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI), and LGBT Diversity. Its report on a decade of funding claims credit for LGBT political victories:

“GLEN had extensive lobbying and public policy experience but their multi-year grant from Atlantic enabled them to ramp up their work into a full-time highly professionalized lobbying machine. It works ‘inside’ the machinery of government where it uses a ‘principled pragmatist’ model in which it consolidates support, wins over the doubtful and pacifies those who are opposed.”

Most Irish voters are unaware that foreign money is being used to boost the Yes campaign. As Breda O’Brien says, “Groupthink has been exalted to an Irish sacrament. While journalists were targeting tiny bootstrap conservative organisations and accusing them of being American-funded, GLEN, the most successful lobby group in Irish history, was swimming in greenbacks.”

She didn't need investigative journalists to reach this conclusion. The funded groups themselves acknowledge it (see the video above).

The director of GLEN, Brian Sheehan, admits that Atlantic’s money was critical in lobbying politicians:

“Atlantic’s commitment to GLEN allowed GLEN to follow its strategy of building a majority from a minority and delivering transformative change for lesbian and gay people in Ireland. We did that by engaging really good professionals, by building very strong relationships with politicians, with TDs, with senators, with senior decision-makers in departments all across a whole range of areas, and enabling the to deliver on change for lesbian and gay people.”

Broden Giambrone, director of TENI, the transgender group, admits that Atlantic’s money gave it organisational clout:

"Atlantic’s multi-year commitment allows for TENI to employ core staff, which was unprecedented in the trans community."

Marriage Equality Chairwoman Gráinne Healy admits that Atlantic’s support was vital for political change in Ireland:

"The Atlantic support … has been a support for the vision of marriage equality. In some ways, we’ve done two things: we have unleashed that potential and that passion that the supporters of marriage equality have, but more than that we’ve been able to channel it into political change."

“Money can't buy me love,” sang the Beatles. Atlantic Philanthropies has bet $28 million that they were wrong.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

- See more at:
http://www.mercatornet.com/conjugality/view/the-fairest-referendum-money-can-buy/16178

Bishops Need Science, Not Gay Propaganda

 

Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons on the recent homophilic actions of the German bishops. The USCCB should not follow suit, which denies the reality of the disorder.
           

By Rick FitzgibbonsSUNDAY, MAY 17 2015

Recent statements by the German and the Swiss Bishops’ conferences, in anticipation of the next Synod on the Family, show them going soft on same-sex unions. The Germans issueda statement for the upcoming Synod on the Family in October that asserted alleged discoveries: “in the human sciences (medicine, psychology), namely that sexual orientation is a disposition that is not selected by the individual and that it is unchangeable. It is therefore confusing for the questionnaire [for the upcoming Synod] to speak of ‘homosexual tendencies,’ and this is considered to be discriminatory.”

As the highly respected Vatican reporter Sandro Magister has described the situation: “Not only do the German bishops approve of giving absolution and communion to the divorced and remarried, but they also express the hope that civil second marriages be blessed in church, that Eucharistic communion also be given to non-Catholic spouses, that the goodness of homosexual relationships and same-sex unions be recognized.”

Such unions, the German bishops have explained, will now, except in extreme cases, not be an obstacle to employment by the Church in Germany. It’s not difficult to detect that pressures to fall into line with this new sexual ethic, subtle and not so subtle, are being exerted on the Church everywhere.

But the German bishops’ claims do not faithfully reflect psychological and medical science on the origins of same-sex attractions. Catholic bishops should not only resist pressures to conform, but should be promoting the benefits of treatment, as well as participation in the Church’s Courage apostolate. A 2006 statement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recommended treatment and spiritual direction for those with same-sex attractions (SSA). Perhaps it’s time for an update: beginning with the scientific data about the serious medical and psychiatric risks to those in same-sex unions, and the severe dangers to the psychological development of youth who are deliberately deprived of a father or a mother as a result of being raised in same-sex household.

One of the most extensive studies of same-sex couples found that only seven of the 156 couples studied had a completely exclusive sexual relationship, and that the majority of relationships lasted less than five years. Couples whose relationship lasted longer incorporated some provision for outside sexual activity. The authors found that the “single most important factor that keeps couples together past the 10-year mark is the lack of possessiveness” – a rationalization to minimize the emotional pain of being victimized by repeated infidelity.

A 2011 Danish study found that the age-adjusted suicide risk for same-sex men in registered domestic partnerships was nearly eight times greater than the suicide risk for men in a heterosexual marriage.

Two systematic reviews were conducted of 47 studies examining interpersonal partner violence (IPV) among men in SSA relationships. As one concluded, “The emergent evidence reviewed here demonstrates that IPV – psychological, physical, and sexual – occurs in male-male partnerships at alarming rates.”

Cdl. Reinhard Marx, chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, chats with Cdl. Walter Kasper

Two 2015 studies found that emotional problems were twice as prevalent in 512 children raised with same-sex parents. Another researcher found that, compared with traditional married households, children being raised by same-sex couples were 35 percent less likely to make normal progress through school.

A 2013 Canadian study analyzed data from a very large population-based sample. It discovered that children of gay and lesbian couples are only about 65 percent as likely to have graduated from high school as are the children of married, opposite-sex couples. The girls struggle more than the boys. Daughters of lesbian “parents” displayed dramatically lower graduation rates.

Contrary to widespread propaganda, there have been reports for several decades, from both patients or clients and therapists, of professionally assisted change in unwanted SSA. The professionals used a wide variety of treatment protocols spanning the various schools of psychotherapy. Contrary to widespread assumptions, there is no scientific proof of harm from professionally assisted change of unwanted SSA.

Some clients receiving professional care for unwanted SSA have reported “complete” change, and others “no” change. Still, many clients have reported achieving sustained, satisfying, and meaningful shifts in the direction and intensity of their sexual attractions, fantasy, and arousal, as well as in their behavior and sexual orientation identity.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, asked the bishops throughout the world to “support, with the means at their disposal, the development of appropriate forms of pastoral care for homosexual persons.” Such care “would include the assistance of the psychological, sociological and medical sciences, in full accord with the teaching of the Church.” [emphasis added]

A doctoral research study of members of the Catholic spiritual support group Courage demonstrates its effectiveness in helping those with SSA. (SSA respondents have more mental health distress than does the general population.) Those SSA respondents who were more chaste had improvement in their overall mental health. Authentic spirituality is also correlated to increased mental health. Positive correlations are also found between chastity, religious participation, and self-reported measures of happiness.

In my professional experience of almost forty years working with priests, a major psychological and spiritual obstacle to embracing and preaching the Church’s truth about human sexuality and homosexuality has been their failure to teach the Church’s truth about contraception proclaimed in Humane Vitae. Ignoring God’s created order is bound to produce further problem areas.

The Synod Fathers and bishops’ conferences need to be brought up to date on the psychological and medical science related to homosexuality. The Catholic Medical Association of the United States and the Courage apostolate provide such much-needed education in association with other international Catholic medical associations.

One valuable resource that has been translated into a number of languages is the Catholic Medical Association’s publication, Homosexuality and Hope (second edition in press). But there is much more as well – if our Catholic leaders really want to know the truth about these matters.

http://www.thecatholicthing.org/2015/05/17/bishops-need-science-not-gay-propaganda/

•  About the Author
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About Rick Fitzgibbons

Rick Fitzgibbons is one of the contributors to Homosexuality and Hope, second edition, of the Catholic Medical Association, www.cathmed.org.

• Bishops Need Science, Not Gay Propaganda - Sunday, May 17 2015
• Contraception’s Cascading Rampage - Thursday, January 29 2015

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        Image: Cdl. Reinhard Marx, chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, chats with Cdl. Walter Kasper

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