Comments on: NARTH article reviews Danish study on childhood correlates of gay and straight marriage

By: ken

ken — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 04:59:18 +0000

Heh, actually I did mean for this response to be to the other post.

However your comment about the risks associated with being gay do highlight a big problem I tend to see with NARTH (and Exodus etc). They’ll take correlations (like higher depression rates, suicides, HIV etc.) and use that to justify why gays should be “helped” to become straight. What if these same correlations turned up with

other populations, like Jews or blacks, do you think there would be the same kind of push for people to not be jewish in that case? Or do you think there would be more of a push to do more research to find the specific causes of the correlation?

By: Warren

Warren — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:47:24 +0000

I think this article was mostly consistent with the actual research report, but I commented on the aspects that were somewhat unclear and misleading. The article in this post is more on line with your comment I think. I should mention that I know people who belong to NARTH who think more like me on this topic. Also, I and they think that way because of the research not because of ideology. If the research pointed to dramatic health risks and shortened lifespan, I would say so. However, there are some unique risks but these are pretty clear and no one really denies them (depression, mental health difficulties) but the disagreement is about why they occur and the extent of the difference between gay and straight.

By: ken

ken — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:40:26 +0000

I think what you’ve commented on is an example of NARTH’s bias of “homosexuality is BAD, you should CHANGE” that pervades most of what they do. The article you critique is not an exception to what they post on their website, but the common case. To me, this bias seems to render NARTH members incapable of recognizing how they are mis-representing research or worse that they are doing it deliberately.

By: Boo

Boo — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 06:08:02 +0000

Many towns were not unfortunate enough to be hosting LWO and large anti-war parades on the same day. But mainly I just thought it odd NARTH would put this up as though it just happened. No, actually considering how NARTH behaves, I don’t think it odd.

By: Warren

Warren — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 04:56:57 +0000

Whether biased or not, many gay oriented groups have not reacted that way when LWO came to town. Hard to know why things appear like that.