Writing in defense of unnamed NARTH leaders, Julie Hamilton recently said on the NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) website:
NARTH will continue its mission as a scientific organization despite the propaganda, and the research will continue to speak for itself.
However, then just across the page, one encounters a “NARTH Research Report” titled, Health Risks: Fisting and other Homosexual Practices. NARTH authors Michelle Cretella and Philip Sutton suggest that gay advocacy group GLSEN is currently teaching high school kids that fisting is safe practice. However, the authors fail to say that the incidents provoking their article happened 9 and 10 years ago. The NARTH article begins by framing the concern over those incidents as being in “recent weeks” but the incidents are old news. I am no fan of GLSEN’s conferences or reading list, but why use old news as a hook?
Furthermore, the article is a clear effort to associate risky practices with gays in a way similar to that being used now by Martin Ssempa in Uganda. However, the title and tone of the article overlooks an important fact – some heterosexuals also engage in those practices. In fact, if you go on Amazon.com and look up the practices referenced in this article, you will find how-to books written for straights (actually just take my word for it). Would a scientific organization claiming to provide science on sexuality overlook such things?
Now after a brief selective review of opinion and some studies, the authors determine that all things gay are harmful and lead to dysfunction. The studies don’t actually say that but most studies do find that homosexuals as a group report more psychiatric problems than straights and that there are risks associated with some sexual practices. However, the scientific train goes off the track with the conclusion.
Conclusion: An adolescent’s desire to prevent or cease experiencing serious medical, psychological, and relational health risks is sufficient reason for him or her to seek and receive competent psychological care to minimize or resolve the desires, behaviors and lifestyles associated with such increased risks.
Translation: If you experience same-sex attraction, better get some reparative therapy quick so you can avoid all the nastiness.
A scientific organization would then offer research the benefit of reparative therapy for mental health outcomes. The claim in the conclusion above is that changing orientation will allow you to avoid the problems NARTH finds with being gay. However, the problem with the claim is that those studies have not been done. To evaluate Cretella and Sutton’s conclusion, one would want to assess the mental health of ex-gays and gays and see who has the best outcomes.* Or one would expect to see large gains in mental health outcomes as the result of the therapy NARTH proposes. Where are the studies?
An author Cretella and Sutton quote is David Fergusson. Last year, Fergusson had this to say about a similar NARTH review of homosexuality and health risks:
While the NARTH statement provides a comprehensive and accurate analysis of the linkages between sexual orientation and mental health, the paper falls far short of demonstrating that homosexuality should be classified as a psychiatric disorder that may be resolved by appropriate therapy. To demonstrate this thesis requires an in depth understanding of the biological and social pathways that explain the linkages between homosexual orientation and mental health. At present we lack that understanding. Furthermore it is potentially misleading to treat what may be a correlate of mental disorder as though it were a disorder in its own right.
Fergusson also told me that studies designed to demonstrate positive changes in mental health via reparative therapy have not been done. In other words, there are no guarantees that changing orientation, if it could be accomplished in the manner suggested by Cretella and Sutton, would alter the mental health differences currently observed between gay and straight groups.
Julie Harren-Hamilton says the scientific research will speak for itself. However, just across the page, we have two authors providing a conclusion without adequate research. Apparently, on the NARTH website, the research needs a little help to speak in advance.
*There was a study which found better mental health outcomes among a sample of gays than an Exodus sample but this has not been replicated to my knowledge. Nottebaum, L. J., Schaeffer, K. W., Rood, J., & Leffler, D. (2000). Sexual orientation—A comparison study. Manuscript submitted for publication. (Available from Kim Schaeffer, Department of Psychology, Point Loma Nazarene University, 3900 Lomaland Drive, San Diego, CA 92106).
Another study of some relevance is the study of Exodus participants from Jones and Yarhouse. They found that their entire group of participants experienced enhanced mental health over the study period. Inconvenient for the NARTH claim is that the entire sample, whether gay or ex-gay, experienced improved health from Time 1 to Time 6.
Thank you Dr. E.W. Throckmorton for permitting me to post here & have this dialogue, though much of what was posted by me is peripheral to your topic of NARTH-does the research speak for itself? Hopefully, my writings here have generated something for you & other posters to think about, that you may have given little if any thought to before my short return here. Thanks again for permitting me to post & have my dialogue.
EDITED FOR SPELLING MISTAKES.
Thanks Ann for sharing your thoughts. With harassment-words people use such as ‘unwanted sexual advances’ is a euphemism. You wrote to just walk away if 1 is being harassed, but just as there no need to say no to harassment, there’s also no need to walk away when youre’ being harassed in a business such as a restaurant you like to eat in, as again the other person had no right to do that to you in the 1st place. If a homosexual is going to harass customers by propositioning them in a restaurant, then the person who should be ejected is the homosexual & if he refuses to leave, then he should be jailed for harassment.
You can find cases in business such as restaurants, where a man propositions or makes sexual comments to a woman customer (such as telling the woman that she has big boobs) & after she or another female customer complains the manager, the manager either tells him to leave w/o incident & if he refused to do so, the manager reports him to the cops, who then either escort the man from the business & give him a warnin; or arrest the man for harassment-the police officer’s discretion. Even if the woman doesn’t personally care about being propositioned or hearing that she has big boobs, other women who are in that restaurant or other business may care & after all, a restaurant, store or any other business is the place to eat, shop & do business.
So your idea that if some1 is being harassed in a business, the person should just walk away is weak because again, there’s no need to walk away from what the other person had no right to do to you in the 1st place. A synonym would be if some1 is working in a company doing a job that they like & they’re being harassed by another employee, it’s a bad idea to suggest that the person just walk away & quit their job, because again the other person had no right to harass in the 1st place.
coldweatherisfun,
I read this last post several times and will try to respond to some of your comments.
I understand your observation and experience that men want to mostly have sex with young and pretty women. I don’t think much has changed there over the years. I also understand your position that older women are not as attractive and that it has been your experience that they do not want to have sex as much. You also mentioned that in this scenario, they think it is ok for their husband to find other women to have sex with. While these might all be true or partially true or not true at all depends on the people involved. I just don’t think I can impart anything further of value about it in a broad sense.
Regarding individuals who express a sexual interest in others, whether it be the same gender or opposite gender, and the other person is not interested, I still maintain the best response is to walk away. If a life or physical well being is in jeporady, then defending oneself anyway one can becomes necessary and is justifiable.
As to the comments that offended others, we have all done them – they important thing to remember is that you don’t have to do it twice. You sound like someone who has interesting thoughts and are interested in what others have to say. That is great.
Regarding your other comments about ethnicities, religions, etc. – they all sound very interesting and I am sure lots of discussion could come out of it. I want to respect Dr. Throckmorton’s admonishment though to stay on topic.
Thanks Ann. It’s fine that you asked me to define what disabuse means. To your other point. 1st of all on your 2nd point , if a man wants to have sex with the prettiest youngest women & can find young women willing to do it, then that’s good. You keep talking about the man this & that (as though sex is somehow the man’s sole responsibility when IMO it’s not the important part of a straight relationship), yet you ignore that the older woman doesn’t want to do it anymore & tolerates the man fooling around with younger woman. Younger men & women are the 1s who are the most beautiful as beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. As people get older, well nature makes them ugly. Sex is really supposed to be about procreation, not recreation. If a woman is past her childbearing years or has passed menopause, she won’t be able to mother any more kids & thus it won’t be interesting for a man to have sex with a woman who can’t bear kids, because of well the base animal instinct. This is true in the animal world-lions, bears & other animals will look for female species who they can have sex with to procreate, not recreate.
Anyhow to your other point, where my past posts offended some people & where perhaps people didn’t understand or became hostile to me was when the politics surrounding homophobic violence was discussed-my point is that most other batteries & murders don’t have ideology surrounding it. It’s easy to discuss that some1 committed battery or murder, but evaluating WHY something happened is a different matter & my evaluation got hostility as it has on other sites.
You read my eg. of a man who kills another man or woman after the victim had provoked him by telling him that the man’s mom was a slut, where the man tired of hearing the victim insult his mom, hits the victim or in worst case scenario pulls the trigger & shoots the victim dead in a passion crime. Ok, it’s 2nd Degree Murder & the man must spend many years & possibly the rest of his life in prison. Many people (perhaps some who post here) would say that while the man should go to prison, that the victim was an expletive & they’d discuss how ordinary people can lose it if given the circumstances. There usu. won’t be politics which surround this passion crime & chances are you won’t have a Day of Silence for these victims.
What offended people was when the scenario was raised by me of a man who kills a homosexual who is harassing him in the public restroom-though such a case has similar circumstances as the above eg.-that the crime happened as a result of provocation, there are politics & even a religion which surrounds this victim. My issue isn’t the law-already stated that it’s not worth killing some1 who is harassing you & spend perhaps the rest of your life in prison, but rather to end the religion surrounding this victim-writing this got me condemned-which most people wouldn’t do if I were discussing the above eg.. It wasn’t written to insult you, but rather to get you to consider things you may not have thought about. If a 15 year old high school student were to say the same things just done here (comparing the 2 eg.) during a Day of Silence @ a High School, that student may get detention or get suspended from school for thinking critically.
I didn’t give much thought & reach my conclusions about why homophobic violence sometimes happens & the poltics of this in 1 day-but as written earlier, by talking with & then thinking considerably about it-this took me years to do. The reason I posted about this in Feb. & March 2010 after an absence of almost 2.5 years on this website was to challenge people’s thinking on this, not to again discuss homosexuality & repair therapy per se (though I started by doing this) mainly because my views on this were given in 2006 & 2007 under the ID Swissalps & n/i in duplicating what had already been discussed.
There are other things that could be written by me which chances are wouldn’t offend most people. If I were to discuss a topic of can a Jewish man who lost relatives during the Holocaust work with a German w/o hating him or her, it wouldn’t generate much controversy. This is written because in a similar case, when my dad was an engineer, he knew a case of where a Japanese engineer (who worked @ his company) didn’t get along with a Chinese engineer & felt that the Chinese engineer treated him unfairly. It’s a good possibility that the Chinese engineer had relatives killed during WW2 by Japanese soldiers-China & Japan have a long turbulent history. There are many Jews who won’t drive a German car (incidentally Ferdinand Porsche Sr. was the engineer who created the VW Beetle) & there are Chinese & other Asians who won’t drive a Japanese car. My point on this is that discussing the other topics incl. this relations topic between Jews & Germans; Chinese & Japanese; etc. usu. won’t generate the hostile & even volatile responses (though people would say that it’s controversial & touchy) as my view on homosexuality does.
Finally, here’s 2 weak answers people sometimes give, when I’ve discussed what I just did surrounding homosexuality. 1 theme which isn’t about homosexuality but what people have written when I’ve discussed this is that society doesn’t take seriously men who sexually harass, rape & abuse women-this is untrue. Sexual harassment lawsuits disabuse this. In fact, rape & sex abuse by men against women is taken so seriously that it even has resulted in cases where men accused of rape & sex abuse were zealously pursued by prosecutors only for the men to later be found innocent. The 2006 Duke case is an eg. where several men were accused of gang rape, zealously pursued, only to later be found innocent. Society also zealously prosecutes men accused of of hitting (battery) their wife or girlfriend & some of the men prosecuted for domestic violence against their wives & girlfriends are innocent & didn’t do what they were accused of-cops sometimes do reach the wrong conclusion in domestic violence cases.
The 2d answer is the theme that if a homosexuals harasses a man in a public restroom, some people (usu. homosexual groups but even some straights) give the weak answer that the man should just say ‘no thanks’ & walk away. Again, propositioning some1 in a public restroom is a crime-harassment, disorderly conduct & disturbing the peace. There’s no need for a man to say ‘no thanks’ to a homosexual who propositions him in a pubic restroom for the same reason as there’s no reason for a shopkeeper to tell customers ‘don’t steal’-no need to say no that what the other person had no right to do in the 1st place. If some1 is committing harassment, theft, etc. then they must be reported to the police, arrested & jailed. Hopefully people incl. Dr. EW Throckmorton aren’t offended by what’s being written here. If you have nothing more of significance to share, then thanks for having this dialogue with me. Best wishes.
coldweatherisfun,
I should have looked up the word “diabuse” in the dictionary – sorry – I understand what it means now – I consider myself very well read but have not seen that word before.
Also, when you say this,
it loses it’s sincerity when you add this,
It is always better received when you just admit an err and take responsibility for it. Also, much more appealing and conducive to re-connecting.
As to the all the other things you wrote – while the information you imparted could be interesting to some on a particular level, I would venture to say these are things, if felt, are better to be left within a private thought. I think this would be a good example of how to exercise discipline and self restraint. If you are an introspective man, you might consider looking at your own attributes and limitations and how they could benefit a relationship rather than looking at those qualities in others that you find so offensive. A creative man can have sex with a donut. A man who scrutinizes and finds fault will always be looking for others to do his work for him sexually. When we see ourselves with a sense of reality, we can then see others in a different light. Self centeredness is never sexy – it is boring.
EDITED, REPLACES 11:58 AM POST
Thanks Ann for your thoughts. Another way to define disabuse would be to debunk a false idea. For eg. 2 + 2 = 4. If you heard & believed that it’s 5, then by me telling you it = 4 would disabuse the idea (false notion) that it = 5.
On another note Ann, I didn’t post here to provoke but rather to be thought provoking. Ok, I admit that on some of my posts, I ended up being provocative by poorly writing things which wasn’t my intent to do so, but haven’t others? I do feel that the problem with some of my posts was not only that I poorly worded it, but that people perhaps didn’t understand where I was going with it.
I used to post here in 2007, but had an absence of almost 2 years & 6 months until February 2010, mainly because the discussions became repetitive & why discuss what’s been talked about by others with regard to homosexuality so many times. I don’t have the interest to discuss homosexuality per se, because what more can we say? I posted again mainly to discuss a topic of homosexuality which people don’t give much thought to. Anyhow, if you wish to have a private dialogue with me by my email address & not here on the message board, you’re welcome to do so. If Dr. EW Throckmorton wishes to give you my personal email address, then he can do so, but only if you wish to have email discussion. Hopefully, I’ve answered your ? on what disabuse means. Best wishes. Thanks.
Thanks Ann for your thoughts. Another way to define disabuse would be to debunk a false idea. For eg. 2 + 2 = 4. If you heard & believed that it’s 5, then by me telling you it = 4 would disabuse the idea (false notion) that it = 5.
On another note Ann, I didn’t post here to provoke but rather to be thought provoking. Ok, I admit that on some of my posts, I ended up being provocative by poorly writing things which wasn’t my intent to do so, but haven’t others? I do feel that the problem with some of my posts was not only that I poorly worded it, but that people perhaps didn’t understand where I was going with it.
I used to post here in 2007, but had an absence until March 2010, mainly because the discussions became repetitive & why discuss what’s been talked about by others with regard to homosexuality so many times. I don’t have the interest to discuss homosexuality per se, because what more can we say? I posted again mainly to discuss a topic of homosexuality which people don’t give much thought to. Anyhow, if you wish to have a private dialogue with me by my email address & not here on the message board, you’re welcome to do so. If Dr. EW Throckmorton wishes to give you my personal email address, then he can do so, but only if you wish to have email discussion. Hopefully, I’ve answered your ? on what disabuse means. Best wishes. Thanks.
coldweatherisfun,
I want to respect Dr. Throckmorton’s decision on this matter. I will consider all the information you imparted as information you wanted or needed to share rather than information you thought I needed to know. I still don’t know what the word “disabuse” means though.
Ann, will answer what you’ve asked shortly, but you’ll need to inform EW Throckmorton know that you’re interested in what my views are & wish to have a dialogue with me, as he is hostile to my views. Anyhow, to Ann’s points including answering what disabuse means.
Ann, what you wrote about ‘Peter Pan’ syndrome is actually ordinary. It’s normal for a man to want the prettiest youngest women. Younger women are prettier & with older women, well, looks masculinize with age. Older women have deeper voices, look more masculine & thus it’s expected for most men to lose interest sexually in a wife or girlfriend as the years pass. In fact older women lose libido & sexual interest in their husbands as the years pass as younger men are just more handsome. After 30 years old, both men & women’s libido decr. With women, ovulation raises libido physically while childbirth, aging (esp. menopause onwards) & diseases will reduce libido (for men as well). Keep in mind that for an old man to get a young woman, well the old man must have charm & be interesting (w/o the money that is). A younger man will have the edge (he’ll be more handsome) when it comes to getting young women. If a 60 year old man can get a 20 year old woman to be interested in him & have sex with him (again w/o spending money), then he must have charm & has to be interesting-that’s where the talent is.
AC Kinsey made the 1950s idea that women’s libido is greatest during the 30s & 40s, but this idea must be disabused & has been by neutral sexologists. Disabuse means to dispel a false belief with facts. The forces which reduce libido are > than the forces which raise it. Sex is best when couples are newlyweds & as the years pass, well it becomes boring for most couples as the novelty runs out, among other things. As people get older, they see more stressful events in life, such as tragic events, among other things. People who work in certain jobs will have lower libidos. You can be sure that war veterans, cops, paramedics & Fire Dept. will often have lower libidos. Seeing children killed & mangled in wrecks can traumatize the mind & thus result in insomnia, nightmares, libido loss, etc.
The main point among other things is that Ann, it’s normal for a man to want the prettiest youngest women to have sex with because younger women will be sexually desirable, while an older woman often won’t be. As mentioned, there are women who after menopause have the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy when it comes to their husbands affairs which is that if their husband wants to have an affair with a much younger woman because the wife can’t give him the sexual satisfaction anymore, they don’t have a problem with it. Another main point is that in marriages, loss of sexual interest happens. While the official # currently has sexless marriages @ 2%, it’s my belief that the actual # is higher, perhaps between 5 to 10%. As people age, sex frequency goes down. A happy marriage is the ability to enjoy eachother’s company, long after the sex has become boring & ended. Sexual bliss for most people will only last a few years into the marriage. Anyhow, your thoughts are welcome & please let Dr. EW Throckmorton know that you’re interested in reading & replying to what my views are. Thanks.
coldweatherisfun.
what does the word “disabuse” mean?
coldweatherisfun has been deleted due to multiple violations of the commenting guidelines. He continues to find new IP addresses however. I am trying to keep up.
Coldweatherisfun,
I read your comments above and will read them again and respond a little later.
LOL.
coldweatherisfun: My friend, you’ve really got to get yourself a clue. While you might want to inspire a discussion of the OJ Simpson case, this is a website belonging to Dr Warren Throckmorton. He picks and presents the main topics…we do our best to discuss them and tangential issues. OJ Simpson’s trials aren’t even tangential.
Also interesting that this is the second time you’ve said that it is probably your last post. I’m okay with that…we’ve all said we were stepping away only to find ourselves still here. What is peculiar is that you’d say that just as you announced you were leaving. Makes no sense unless your only aim was to pick something controversial simply to watch people rant.
This is hopefully my last post on this website &
Removed by Throckmorton – Way off topic.
.
Michael,
Thank you Michael. It was a privilege to be there and with you and your friends. I will never forget how everyone accepted and included me, walking together in honor of Jefferey, how we all talked with each other and cried and hugged and how my heart felt when I left – so grateful and humbled and inspired.
🙂
Of course! Couldn’t agree with you more on this point. That’s why I wish the guys who harrassed, gay-bashed and stabbed me — and who murdered by best friend without provocation as we left a local gay bar — would have gotten much longer sentences.
Unllike me and Jeffery, at least you survived your “bad experiences with homosexuals in the workplace” physically (if not psychologically) unharmed.
http://www.riversideca.gov/rpd/press/2002releases/jun20a02.htm
There is a great NPR piece of how the APA de-pathologized homosexuality – a friend of mine sent this to me yesterday – thought it is was somewhat fitting since it discusses Charles Socarides and NARTH
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=204
THAT, my friend, is an understatement
coldweatherisfun,
Thank you for the example – I agree that it was inappropriate in the work place and the employer should have put the person on a written warning. Obviously, this didn’t take place or followed up on. I am also glad you exercised self discipline and realized that it was not worth you jeopardizing you well being to meet the incident with a physical response. I actually believe you are a different man beneath the facade you have shown – one that is not quite as judgemental as you seem. I also hope you find a loving relationship – one that brings out the best in you.
As to the comment about doing without baseball – that is something that I could never agree with – can’t wait for opening day and want the Dodger’s to go all the way to the world series!
Thanks. I will and do live my life that way. So should everyone else live according to their conscience — as long as it does not infringe on another person’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If the goal of the therapy is to help the client become heterosexual — to go straight — I believe the counselor, therapist, doctor or pastoral counselor has the moral and ethical responsibility to educate the patient regarding the likeliness of that happening. If I had a client who wanted to stop craving heterosexual relationships or heterosexual sex, I feel I would have the very same responsibiltiy to make it known whether or not the available science supported such a goal.
I have never had an objection to a person trying not to act on their gay (or straight) feelings. That is their right. I have never had a problem with a therapist supporting a patient’s right to choose the way they live their life as they see fit or even to pursure orientation change, if that is their choice. I have not seen good, solid scientific evidence of it.
That said, I do feel a professional and moral responsibility to tell them what I know about whether or not the available science supports such a goal — and whether or not I have the skill to help them change their orientation. I don’t think the science does and I don’t have that knowledge or skill. I don’t think anyone else does either. At least I have seen no good scientific evidence of orientation change — partcularly in gay males.
To Ann & Michael Bussee. Hopefully this will be my last post & it addresses your points, as there really isn’t anything significantly new that I can think of. But here it goes. Don’t have much more to add to lockerroom/gym talk which Ann asks about but yes, it’s credible in that the men Iwho have told me that they have had sex with many women work in a job or have done things which gives them the potential for this to happen-entertainment, college football player. The former college football player told me that getting alot of pretty women is 1 of the rewards for playing sports. He also told me that NASCAR (can NASCAR be called a sport) drivers can potentially have sex with many women if they want to because again, certain types of men are just interesting to many women. You can bet that many men would love to have the chance to do alot of women if they had the personality. But to the other points you raised.
What the homosexual employee would do is graphically talk about homo&bisexual acts during work hours with other employees. When complaints were made about this, the employer did nothing. Yes, he still has use of his hands, though he had 1 broken arm in a cast as a result of an accident. I didn’t work @ that company very long as I was a bad worker. No, I didn’t commit violence against, but I certainly felt like hitting him when he graphically discussed homosexual activities during work hours. But it’s not worth getting arrested & jailed for. To my knowledge, the company did nothing about it & @least 2 other former employees complained about this harassment.
As to what harassment is, the above eg. is 1. Let me say that it’s my belief that even if some1 is provoking & harassing you, it’s not worth to beat up or kill some1. Why spend the next 25 years or perhaps the rest of your life in prison for killing some1 in a passion crime? Ann, you & Michael Bussee are wrong if you think I believe some1 who commits a passion crime shouldn’t be held legally accountable for it. They should.
With assault&battery how much jail time you get depends on a # of factors such as was there provocation by the victim or was it an unprovoked attack; what are the injuries that the victim sustained (was it a punch in the face-usu. a misdemeanor or was it a stabbing a felony?) & does the suspect have past convictions.
With murder, yes the punishment is more. If it’s 1st Degree Murder, it’s life without parole in almost all cases & in most states the option of the death penalty is there. 2nd Degree Murder & Manslaughter both carry life sentences, but the possiblity of parole does exist after the convicted murderer has spent many years in prison-mandatory minimum sentences. But as written, it’s really not worth killing some1 who has provoked you & spend 20 years or perhaps the rest of your life in prison for killing some1 who has provoked you.
Hopefully you & Michael Bussee understand that indeed I do believe people who commit crimes such as assault&battery as well as murder, must be held accountable & go to prison for many years if it’s murder. My hopefully final thoughts on homosexuality are this. Michael Bussee, right or wrong, you’ll live your life as you see fit. You probably won’t change your views & no, you can’t be forced into repair therapy. But if a homosexual wants repair therapy to go straight, then let them do so. Already written that if same sex behaviors & Gender Dsyphoria (GID) disappears, then I’m for it.
I also believe the same way if baseball were to disappear. I don’t watch baseball, but as long as people have interest in this sport, it’ll exist. But let’s say that people share my interest & lose interest in baseball in the future & this sport disappears. Then I won’t lose sleep if baseball disappeared.
I used to watch boxing but since I don’t have Pay Per View, I’m not going to pay to watch TV-Pay Per View is a ripoff. As it turns out, boxing is disappearing because people are losing interest in this sport, as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) has gained popularity. I do like watching football, likemany Americans. But if people lost interest in watching football & it disappears because there isn’t the interest to play this sport, then that’s what happens. Those are my thoughts & hopefully it answers your ?s.
Have you considered therapy for this? It must have been pretty bad to generate this level of sustained animosity. What happened? What did you do about it? Does the guy still have use of his hands?
Coldweatherisfun,
When you say you have no problems, are you referring to your sex life? Able to stand to attention each and every time with the opposite sex? If so, I am wondering why you find locker room talk from others so credible and interesting instead of being fortified and sustained with and from your own sexual life.
Well, you are certainly entitled to an opinion, however, I am not sure how many individuals would consider this as a remedy to unwanted attractions or desires. It seems to me that if one starts with the truth of these feelings, then any real healing will begin with that. Actually Dr. Throckmorton said it better than that but the words and thoughts are similar and I agree. The stronghold is lessened when we acknowledge that it is there.
I am not condemning it, however, I will submit to you that, from my point of view, that all life, from the moment of conception, has intrinsic value and should be treated as such.
What is understandable is that the person who is doing the harrasing is a jerk. I do not think the appropriate response is to beat him up – not that I wouldn’t want to, however, I am not sure if it would be a good investment of time or energy to spend on a jerk. I also would not want to jeopardize my job. Words, in and of themselves, do not justify a physical response that could compromise my well being.
Again, I am going to ask you to define what constitutes harrassment – I need to envision and understand it before I answer.
Well, most ordinary people exercise discipline instead of resorting to physical violence. If my life is in emminent danger or I am being physically accosted so that I am being injured, I would have no problem responding in a way that would eliminate any further injury. In all other instances, I feel capable of exercising my well honed skills of self discipline.
I never said I lived in the Ukraine – I said I went there on a missionary trip.
I am familiar with some of this but not all of it. I talked with many, through translators, who had served in the Red Army, also many who had lost loved ones at Babi Yar and other places the Nazi’s invaded, and many who are holocaust survivors that we helped move their meager belongings from their schtetls to Israel, which they now call their home. I appreciate the discussion on this as it is one that I am very interested in, however, I want to respect Dr. Throckmorton’s request that all posts stay on topic. I also want to respect his request that the word Nazi not be used. My apology for using it in this response.
Point of Order!
I’m not Transsexual, neither technically nor biologically. Nor legally, I’m unable to have my birth certificate changed under the UK Gender Recognition Act, as I don’t conform to the required ICD-10 diagnosis of Transsexuality. This diagnosis requires that the patient not be Intersexed.
Psychologically, yes, I had classic Transsexuality, the only thing that doesn’t conform to the stereotype is a lack of cross-dressing. Mid-way between Type V and Type VI on the Benjamin scale though.
Technically, I’m a protandrous dichogamous pseudohermaphrodite. An Intersexed female who looked more male than female at birth, but whose body normalised later in life.
It’s a rare syndrome (to put it mildly).
Protogynous dichogamous pseudohermaphrodites are far more common. Intersexed males who look more female than male at birth, but whose bodies normalise later in life. That’s almost always due to either 5alpha-reductase-2 deficiency (5alpha-RD-2) or 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-3 deficiency (17beta-HSD-3) syndromes.
See for example this CNN program on a cluster of 17BHDD cases.
Or The ‘Guevedoces’ of the Dominican Republic by the Urological Sciences Research Foundation.
The two syndromes differ in minor details in their somatic effects: 17BHDD cases usually require surgery to look completely normal, 5ARD cases less often.
Still, while technically speaking the label “Transsexual” cannot apply to such cases, that’s a rather pedantic view in my opinion. I used to look male (mostly).. I now look female (mostly). That that was the result of a natural rather than therapeutically-induced change is to me a minor detail of no importance.
Sex Identity – called Gender Identity in the literature for historical reasons – is determined by the neuro-anatomy anyway, rather than genitalia, chromosomes etc. See Prof Sid Ecker’s excellent presentation on the subject at last year’s APA annual conference.
Getting back to your own issues, perhaps you should think about seeking therapeutic help. Your desire to distress others, and the obsession you have with genital reconstructive surgery, are things which you might be aware of yourself, looking at your posts. It is quite reasonable to feel discomfort at the thought of such, but when you talk about eugenic cleansing and discount the opinions of others with no rational explanation, the situation becomes pathological. Your use of the impersonal pronoun “this poster” might be clinically significant, especially if you have gone through Parris Island.
However, I’m no mental health professional, and it’s usually unhelpful to get a patient to have insight into their own condition. It just entrenches their position, and strengthens their irrational and increasingly bizarre behaviours.
coldweatherisfun–
Thanks for your more complete answer. It helps to understand where you’re coming from.
Something to understand about this forum…we KNOW we disagree but we try to come here with some semblance of mutual respect. Comments such as “your views are worthless” are, IMHO, way out of line. You can disagree with someone; point out the flaws in their logic; raise questions about their conclusions or point of view…but to say (and believe) that someone’s views are worthless is a level of disrespect that I believe most of us are extremely uncomfortable with.
If you continue to demonstrate such disrespect to our fellow bloggers, who we have chosen to dialogue with, you will likely find that it will be your own posts that are rendered worthless…we’ll simply skip right past them. Like the proverbial tree falling in a forest, it really won’t matter much if you’re making a sound…no one’s going to hear it.
OK Eddy hopefully this answers you. Admit to having bad experiences with homosexuals in the workplace which has generated my hostility. Came to this website to offer a new view, though it’s hard to do. Not here to be wise or smart, just generate ideas. As to not being a Christian, well it’s not required to be a Christian to see something wrong with homosexuality & GID. 1 can be Jewish, Muslim (Moslem), Hindu, or 1 can even be an atheist. This poster doesn’t always agree with evangelical Christians on topics such as abortion & our involvement in the Middle East, but this poster agrees with the evengelical Christians on the harms of homosexuality & GID. Finally, to the transexual poster, given that you’re an apologist for sex changes, your views are worthless.
No, you just have no insight into your condition, making the outlook very poor.
Denial that you have a problem is a common part of the syndrome.
coldweatherisfun–
You answered how you found this blogsite but not what led you here. My question was intermixed with a lot of other words, please reread them and tell us why it is that our discussions interested you enough that you followed that link you found and why it is you feel that you have a vested interest in these discussions? As I mentioned we discuss things that are a bit weighty and often highly personal, for that reason, we’d like to know why a person who isn’t a Christian…who isn’t gay or ex-gay…who isn’t a professional therapist…has such an interest in our conversations and feels they have so much to provide us by way of enlightenment?
Since this poster has no problems, it’s unethical to ask this poster to be an experimental subject. Homosexuals who want to be celibate but have failed @ repair therapy would be the perfect experimental subjects. Admittely, my position is off the wall, but IMV, any1 who is an apologist for sex changes has no right to condemn my hypothetical idea of helping homosexuals become impotent, because that’s no different than a big time thief like BE Madoff condemning a shoplifter. You also have no right to condemn my view of supporting a woman’s right to abort unborn homosexual, GID & intersexed babies. As far as Eddy’s ? on how the blog was found, well on an Internet search-google, find & comment.
Thought about what Ann was asking about what harassment & provocation are. Here’s a synonym. Let say that a man goes up to another man in the workplace & tells him that his mom who just died was a slut & talks about his mom in a sexual manner. The man having had enough beats up the harasser. Now OK Ann, the right thing to do in that situation is to walk away & report this to his boss, but it’s understandable why he beat the harasser up. Many people won’t sympathize with the harasser. Yes, the man must be punished for assault&battery, but most people aren’t going to say that he is the Devil Incarnate.
Now let’s say that in the same workplace, a homosexual starts harassing a man who after having had enough, he beats up the homosexual. Again, the man must be punished for assault&battery, but the situation is the same as the above paragraph & to suggest that he is the Devil Incarnate is just wrong.
Most people who commit crimes such as assault&battery as well as murder are usu. ordinary people who just lose it. Yes murder is a serious crime, but cops will tell you that murderers can be the nicest people.
BTW, since you lived in the Ukraine, you may know that during Operation Barbarossa (WW2), there were Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians & Estonians who fought in the Wehrmacht against the Red Army during the Battles of Stalingrad & Leningrad. Sometimes brothers killed other brothers. Stalin killed way more than Hitler & how many Americans know of Dubno, Kolyma, Krasnogorsk & other GULag of the former USSR? More people were starved & worked to death here as well as being sent to Vorkuta (or Workuta), north of the Arctic Circle. Many people can recognize Himmler, Eichmann & Mengele, but how many people can recognize Lazar Kaganovich, Genrikh Yagoda or Lev Mekhlis-Stalin’s Soviet thugs? As you were in the Ukraine, you may have heard horror stories of Stalin’s Cheka squads who killed people brutally by tortures, beating prisoners to death & they’ve learned that the former USSR actually had the 1st gas vans.
During WW2, in SOME cases, the Imperial Japanese (who fought against the USSR from 1938-39 & again in Aug. 1945 shortly before Japan’s surrender) & the Nazi Germans did kill bad people who were Stalin’s henchmen. Of course, if you’re waging a war & killing millions, in some cases you’re going to kill evil people. The Commissar Order comes to mind. Among those shot & killed in the ditches by the Einsatzgruppen were Stalin’s Commissars. Well the Commissar Order should be called evil men (Nazis) killing other evil people who were Stalin’s Soviet Commissars (both men & women were in Stalin’s execution squads & women could sometimes be more violent than the men).
Some of Stalin’s Soviet henchmen ended up being starved & worked to death (Ar Beit Macht Frei) in Auschwitz or were killed by other means in Nazi concentration camps. Yes, the Nazis were evil, but in SOME cases, the Nazis did kill bad people & the Stalin’s Soviet henchmen were the bad people killed by the Nazis during the war. Anyhow, if you want to do a history discussion, please share your thoughts. Thanks.
CWIF wrote:
None that I know of.
I’m Intersexed, with a condition so rare and a metabolism so endocrinally anomalous that any treatment for me has to be classed as “experimental”. Hence I’ve had to become aware of the effects of various hormones, just so I can self-monitor. On expert advice, I have to titrate doses according to somatic changes rather than lab levels.
In any event, I probably know more about such matters than anyone else here. There’s been no published studies I know of on the effects of chemical castration on a set of people purely self-selected on the basis of sexual orientation. Very few published studies on chemical castration in general.
I leave aside the ethical questions vis a vis third parties. I do think though that since this is so important to you, it would be ethical to use yourself as an experimental subject.
LOL! Oh wow – this phrase speaks volumes about the person who wrote it!
coldweatherisfun,
Eddy has asked you a good question and one that I am interested in as well – what brought you to this blog?
Coldweatherisfun,
You’re welcome. I learned about Yiddish on a missionary trip to the Ukraine.
Regarding your prior posts and the possibility that I am not comprehending what you have written – I think I have but just to make sure I will read them again.
coldweatherisfun–
You know something, perhaps you ought not to advise people to ‘think carefully before responding’ when you obviously don’t take your own advice. My post to you was quite simple:
You addressed your comment to me but you didn’t even begin to hint at the answer to my question.
We’ve had many a stranger join our conversations from time to time but you are definitely a special case. We discuss matters that are weighty and we also get very personal at times, so I want to know what led you to discover this blogsite to begin with?
Don’t be mistaken, it’s not just Michael that you are ticking off. I’ve found some of your comments so off the wall that I didn’t even know how to respond. Perhaps if we understand what led you here in the first place, we’ll be able to put some of your annoying nuances behind us.
Yes, telling a person to ‘please think carefully before responding’ is a bit annoying. It implies that we need to be told…and somehow it suggests that your words are worth reading and weighing more than once. So far, I haven’t seen much that was worth reading even once.
So, do me a favor, follow the advice you gave to me and to Michael and ‘think carefully before responding’ to the question “what led you to discover this blogsite in the first place?”
Hello Eddy. Thinking over what was written by me & the angry replies it has generated by 2 posters incl. a personal attack illustrates & further reinforces my points. What’s ironic is that it’s even OK to be against straight sexual activities. My guess is that Michael Bussee has no problem with bisexuality while he condemns repair therapy to try to cure or better treat homosexuality.
Given that Michael Bussee didn’t decry sex changes when it was asked by me, it further proves that he only supports science when it agrees, which is typical of most homosexual groups. It’s wrong to have repair therapy for those who wish to be straight, but in their view it’s Ok to surgically maim some1 to make them an artificial member of the opposite sex. Homosexual groups usu. don’t have any problem with the idea of puberty delaying drugs which was raised earlier by me.
Yet when I raised a hypothetical where a repair therapist honestly tells a homose that repair therapy in trying to make him straight hasn’t been successful so far but if he wants to be a lifelong celibate, here’s a drug which if the homosexual wants it can make him celibate by causing impotence w/o any mutilation & where the client has been informed, the hostile replies come.
Michael Bussee & other posters who reacted angrily to my hypothetical either don’t have a problem or certainly haven’t protested sex changes & Drs. prescribing puberty delaying drugs to teens with GID, because it’s science they agree with-for that reason it’s contradictory & inconsistent for them to condemn my hypothetical scenario. Think carefully before you reply. Thanks.
coldweatherisfun–
What led you to discover this blogsite in the first place?
Michael Bussee, don’t understand why you raise the Bible when it’s not my faith. You were offended but again, this poster opposes forcing any1 into repair therapy & also mentioned that it’s optional.
The issue is that it’s best to help end same sex behaviors if that’s what they want, regardless of orientation change. If a homosexual wants to be celibate, then what’s wrong with a psychologist suggesting that he take a drug which makes him impotent-depending on what the drug is? I’m against sex changes & thus oppose feminizing drugs. Which drugs are there that don’t involve feminization & can cause impotence w/o causing a disease? Of course I know that they’ll still be gay even if they’re impotent, but if it makes them lifelong celibates providing that this is what they want, then it’s for the better. Anyhow, think carefully.
CWIF – there’s nothing for women. An anti-androgen can suppress libido, but in some cases can enhance it.
For men, cyproterone acetate in doses sufficient to suppress lutinising hormone and follicular stimulating hormone production can produce impotence, and reduce libido. But it’s not FDA approved.
Massive doses of Finesteride or Dutasteride, which blocks Testosterone->DHT metabolism can cause a reduction too, but have feminising side-effects in the doses needed.
Spironolactone is an effective anti-androgen, but requires potassium intake to be strictly monitored, and deaths have resulted.
The recommended way of lowering libido is bilateral orchiectomy – a rather permanent solution. Hormone balance can then be kept at a healthy level through lifelong hormone replacement therapy. I suggest you try it, and get back to us with your experiences.
You can (depending on the circumstance) call us names, preach to us, Bible-beat us, debate us, examine us, research us, despise us, analyze us, beat us, “treat” us (sometimes with and sometimes without our consent), demean us, insult us, criminalize us, jail us — even kill us.
You’ll look foolish and hateful. And we we still be here. Still gay. Still proud. After all those trials are over, we still won’t be straight no matter how hard you try or we try. None of that will solve “the problem”. Because that atittude is “the problem” You are the problem. Fix that.
I am struck completely DUMB.
Ann, 1st of all thanks for pointing out what Yiddish is. As my past posts already answer what you’ve asked, for me to write again would be rehash. Perhaps you’re not comprehending what my posts are.
To EW Throckmorton, while you’re right that straights do harass & commit abuse & battery as well, they don’t usu. have apologists like PFLAG who think that harassment & indecent exposure are OK when committed by homoseu, as already mentioned in a past post.
But here’s something regarding repair therapy which usu. doesn’t get attention, but which I admit will be controversial & perhaps offensive if you differ. If a homosexual wants to be straight or celibate & the repair therapy is not succeeding in making him straight (which it often doesn’t), then why don’t the repair therapists with the patients consent give the homosexual drugs which can make him impotent so that he’ll be celibate, if making him straight doesn’t succeed? Before you jump to conclusions, I’m against chemcial & physical castration. But aren’t there drugs which can make a homosexual impotent & help succeed in making him celibate? Impotence benefits homosexuals.
Coldweatherisfun,
My question was not how to respond to provocation, rather what kind of unwanted activity from another requires a violent physical response from you – here is my question again below
Please give me a couple of examples of what kind of activity, physical or verbal – passive or aggressive, that a person would have to do to justify “deserving it”. I just want to envision it and be clear on what you are saying.
Thanks Warren, and thanks for deleting my comment. I did not mean to demean horses in any way.
au contraire – Yiddish is a combination of Russian/Ukrainian and German slang used mostly by European Jews that has nothing to do with a formal language. It is not a surprise that someone of German descent, regardless of their religious beliefs or background would understand it.
Michael Bussee, don’t regard homosexuals as a group comparable to ethnic groups. If you think my intent is to be offensive, then so be it. Homo is a mild word, so don’t see what the stink is. Besides, this poster isn’t even White.
But since you raise race & ethnic issues, as some1 who knows alot about this incl. the 2 World Wars, Korean War & Vietnam War, here are some thoughts. Race & ethnic prejudice isn’t always the result of ignorance-people can fluently understand other ethnic groups & their languages, but still hate them. Germany & Japan are both cultured & advanced nations who have done many nice things to be proud of-most Germans & Japanese are nicepeople. Japan has a long history of turbulence with China which goes back centuries. From the Meiji Restoration in Japan of the 1860s (Germany was also becoming militarily powerful during the same time) through WW2, both Japan & Germany believed that they were the best. Many of the Japanese soldiers who participated in the Rape of Nanking could fluently speak Chinese & fluently understood Chinese culture. Bushido (Samurai’s way) was brought back to Japan during WW2-1931-45.
The Japanese had colonized Korea in 1910 & the Japanese fluently understood the other Asian languages & cultures. Yet though they had a fluent understanding of other Asian cultures & languages (Tagalog in the Phillipines, Korean, etc.), the Japanese leaders believed that their ethnic group was the best & that might made right in colonizing other Asian nations. Incidentally if some1 is 1/2 Japanese & 1/2 Chinese & they were born in China between the years, 1931-45, you can bet that it’s most likely not the result of love.
With Nazi Germany, the Nazis also fluently understood other European cultures, but the Nazis believed the Germans were the best. Many Nazis could speak other European languages. Some of the Einsatzgruppen (Special Action Groups) could fluently speak Russian, Polish & other Slavic languages, when they threw people (most Jewish) in ditches & then killed them.
Adolf Eichmann fluently understood Yiddish which is a Jewish language. This poster is not Jewish, so if any1 wishes to comment on Jewisyh languages, then please do so. It can be said that in the Middle East, many Jews fluently understand Arabic language & culture & many Arabs fluently understand the Jewish culture (Arabs & Jews are both cousins-Semites), yet they still hate eachother. It proves that fluently understanding other ethnic groups doesn’t eliminate animosity & greed.
As to Ann’s point of self-defense, you can reread my past posts of eg. of what reasonable force is to protect 1self . Here’s a case where a jury felt that deadly force was justified. W/o knowing all the evidence as it was presented, it’s easy to critique this jury just by reading a newspaper account huffingtonpost.com/michael-rowe/man-acquitted-of-murder-a
coldweather: I am going to add a plank to the commenting guidelines about using derogatory terms to refer to various groups. You have been informed that homo is offensive. Do not use the term again or I will delete the comment.
Regarding use of force. The kinds of things you are describing are not specific to gays. If someone feels assaulted by anyone regardless of their perceived orientation, one has the right to defend self. There is no need to bring perceived orientation into that kind of discussion.
Ir not, why not?
I don’t understand why you insist on using “homo”. Are you trying to be offensive? I am not talking about being “politically safe”. You know the term is offensive and you use it anyway. Do you also use the “N’ word?
Coldweatherisfun,
Please give me a couple of examples of what kind of activity, physical or verbal – passive or aggressive, that a person would have to do to justify “deserving it”. I just want to envision it and be clear on what you are saying.
Thanks for your replies & some thoughts to both Ann & Michael Busseee. Will get to Ann’s point about sex being dull among married couples in the end.
If you’re offended by me saying homo, this poster doesn’t appeal to what’s politically safe. Made it clear that if a homosexual man grabs a man’s groin against his will, then reasonable force could be to break the homosexual’s hand(s). With MW Shepard case, already wrote that his death wasn’t justified & if AJ McKinney’s account is true, breaking MW Shepard’s hand(s) would’ve been enough to stop the homolestation. Whether deadly force is necessary to protect 1self is for jurors to decide.
As far as your accusation of do homosexuals sometimes deserve to be beaten up ? If it’s unprovoked where they’re not bothering any1, then no. If it’s self-defense to protect yourself, then yes, some homosexuals do deserve it. If it’s a passion crime where a homo is beaten up or killed after he has harassed some1 in a public restroom, then no it’s not justified (though I don’t empathize with the victim) & juries will usu. convict on 2d Degree or it’ll most likely be pleabargained (most criminal cases are). But passion crimes like that can’t be compared to the 2007 VA Tech Massacre, where a deranged gunman goes into a school & kills 32 people who did nothing to him. Sure all murders & batteries are wrong, but not all murders & batteries are the same-some are just worse than others, which is why we have juries determine if it goes to trial. When it comes to ‘homophobic’ violence, homosexual groups even decry the right to have juries decide cases. Michael Bussee, my conclusions about ‘homophobic’ violence were thought of after thinking about it over a period of time.
As far as harassment which you & Ann refer to. Not to go endlessy about homosexuals who harass others in public restrooms, but again to suggest that you say ‘no thanks’ or in other words ‘don’t harass me’ is a bad idea just as telling a woman who is propositioned while she is using the public restroom by a male janitor to say ‘no thanks’. People don’t have a right to harass you to start with.
Here’s another scenario. Let’s say that in a restaurant, a man goes up to a woman customer & tells her that she has nice boobs. If the woman complains to the manager, then he’ll be expelled for harassment. Even if the woman isn’t offended or even happy about him telling her that she has nice boobs, another woman customer who overhears this may get offended, report it to the owner who’ll expel the male customer. The man could even be arrested for harassment if it’s reported to the police & the cops decide to do this. Now if a homo is going to harass another man in a restaurant in the same scenario, then he should be arrested. Again men who harass women as Ann was writing about don’t have their behaviors tolerated.
To Ann’s point about marital sex. In a truly loving marriage, sex is a minor part of the relationship. There’s just much more to a marriage. There are many couples who don’t have sex after a # years. They’re happy to be in eachother’s company & don’t care to do it anymore. It must be said that many women also lose sexual interest after a few years of marriage, esp. after a woman has had children or after menopause.
The woman may not see her man as strong as he was when he was 25 years old. Again, just in lockerroom & gym talk, I talked to 1 man in his 60s who have told me that he & his wife have been married for over 40 years & that sex in their marriage diminish to the point that it ends, but they’re happy just being in eachother’s company & they don’t need the sex anymore. Women like men also experience libido loss. If a 60 year old man can get a 24 year old woman who is willing to have sex with him w/o him having to pay for it (Chinese proverb-money can buy sex but not love), then that 60 year old man has talent in that he can get young women who finds him interesting.
Thanks Ann. I was moved by your willingness to see those places, to hear those stories and to feel the pain our community — gay and straight — experienced that night. Meeting you and sharing our common humanity was truly a healing experience for me. I will sing a song for you next Monday.
Think I have been to this bar Michael is referring to. Have to say it was a friendly, quiet, cozy place where people were polite and appropriate. I even went into the bathroom. It was only when I went out in the parking lot and was told an innocent man was killed by thugs when he was getting into his car one summer night that I felt uncomfortable and shaken and sick. Men come onto women – men come onto men – women come onto men – women come onto women – if you are not interested – WALK AWAY. If it persists, LEAVE where you are. Do not respond with a physical confrontation unless your life is in danger and you must do so to protect yourself.
On an adjacent thread in response to your comments here, Eddy said:
I get that same creepy feeling. What does the gender or orientation have to do with this anyway? If a “breeder” tried to slip his filthy hand up some lady’s skirt, I think she would have every right to bust his disgusting finger. No one, male or female, gay or straight, should have to put up with such behavior or cower in fear of it.
I had a friend who worked in an office that employed mostly females. Some of them thought it was great sport to grab his crotch from behind when he reached under a desk to put in phone lines. He never beat one of them up. He angrily told them to “knock it off” and reported it to their supervisor — who declined to do anything since “guys don’t get sexually assaulted my women”. Should he have bloodied them?
Your repetitive hammering on how “homos” might deserve a good beating — and the sideways implication that perhaps Matthew Shephard may have gotten what was coming to him — makes me think you might derive some sort of sick pleasure watching the groin grabs and subsequent beatings on tape — over and over again.
Agree with Ann entirely on her comments above.
Some more thoughts about “groin grabbing homos” and the appropriate legal response. Self defense has long been established by law. It’s a fundamental human right. But how often does such a thing happen? If someone grabbed mine without invitation, I might feel compelled to punch him in the jaw, and would have every right to do so. Groin grabbing can be painful and the guy has no right to grab.
But if you watch actual gay cruising behavior, it’s more like a “dance” than an “attack”. I watched it last night at our local gay bar. You avoid eye contact at first. An hour passes. Someone you have seen before comes in and sits nearby. You might say hello. I say “might” because most guys are afraid to do even that — even when they know they are in a gay bar.
No one likes the feeling of rejection. Eventually you might smille and make a comment about the guy who just destroyed a Karaoke version of some broadway tune. He might smile back. Silence. More silence. You ask him is he is going to sing. He says, “maybe” after another beer. You might try to break the ice by commenting that you have seen the Broadway show.
He mentions he has never been to New York. You say how much you enjoyed it. Silence again. You say, “By the way, my name”s Mike. He says, “I’m Evan.” He asks if you are going to sing. You say yes. After you do, you chat a bit, talk about the weather, or about work or politics.
He asks if you come to Karoake every Monday might. You say, “usually”. He says, “Maybe I will see you here next Monday.” You say, “That would be nice.” He asks if you are on Facebook. You say you are. He writes his name on a napkin and you thank him. It’s 10:30 so you say good-night.
You shake his hand. “Good to meet you Evan.” Both smile. Maybe you have just met a new friend. You feel preety good about it. You go home, stopping in the restroom first. Even though it’s all gay men, no one looks, no one gets lewd. No one grabs groin.
Maybe you and I go to different restrooms.
Coldweatherisfun,
If it became dull and boring for you, I would submit that you were dull and boring. Men who are creative and caring and kind and loving and authentic and genuine and mature also tend to be content and confident, thus able to enjoy sex with their wives and in an enduring way. Men who are self centered and scrutinizing of others tend to lack confidence and are rarely ever content – too busy trying to fill themselves up with artificial remedies and delusions – like I said before, this kind of man is not appealing or sexy at all.
Coldweatheris fun: Your use of the pejorative term “homo” and your persistent defense of “beating one up” if one comes on to you sickens me. You sound like yout think you would be doing society a favor — keeping restrooms safe for humanity or something.
Why “beat him up” when you could just push his hand away forcefully, say, “Hey, dude, keep you hands to yourself”, walk out and call the police? I have been “cruised” many times and I have seen an instance or two of indecent exposure, but I never felt so threatened that I felt the need to “beat someone up”.
In fact, in over 55 years of using public restrooms, I have never had someone “grab my groin”. I have never so much as been touched by another guy. If I felt in REAL danger somehow, that might be a different story. Enough force to stop the assault — but only enough. Every person has the right to defend himself.
I just want to be clear that in using the word “perpetrator”, I am referring to the one who responds with violence – not the person who is provoking or showing an interest in another.
Thanks Ann for your thoughts & to address them. Yes, there are men who brag & boast about their sex lives when it really doesn’t happen. Obviously, it’s hard for me to prove or disprove the stories I hear of men’s sexual proweesses in the locker room. What has been my observation is that for a man to have sex with many women, well he has to be interesting. Football players can potentially have sex with many women, because women often find such men interesting. The late Evel Knievel had sex with alot of women during the 1970s when he did his jumps, because he was interesting. You’ve heard the saying that men who are nice don’t usu. get many women, but if a man’s a jerk, there’s alot of women willing to sleep with them, because those men are just interesting.
On your 2d point of ‘homophobic’ violence, well it’s a jury issue to determine what degree to convict. With provocation, well it depends. Take the bathroom eg. If a homo is harassing another man in the public restroom, then then homosexual must be arrested for harassment & disorderly conduct. It still wouldn’t justify beating the homosexual up, but in this case, if the homosexual hadn’t harassed him while he was using the bathroom for the intended purpose, then it’s unlikely the violent reaction would’ve happened. The right thing in that case is to call the police & hopefully he’ll be arrested, convicted & jailed. To say that in that situation, he just walk away & do nothing is bad advice, because if the homosexual thinks he can harass others in public restroom, he may then get the idea that he can commit indecent exposure.
It must be noted that in the bathroom eg., groups such as PFLAG oppose arresting homosexuals who harass others in public restrooms. Men who sexually harass women, other than their defense lawyers usu. don’t have apologists defending such harassment. When I went to ASU in 1989, PFLAG & other homosexual groups protested the ASU police arresting homosexuals who were harassing other men in public restrooms. If a homosexual grabs another man’s groin against his will, then it’s sex abuse & the man has a right to use any reasonable means to protect himself. It still doesn’t justify what happened to MW Shepard (if AJ McKinney’s story is true). In self-defense, you do have a right to use any reasonable means to stop the abuse, but once the danger is reasonably over you have no right to continue hitting or killing.
With your 3d point, I’m divorced & thus not in a relationship. But over the years, yes it did become dull, because if it’s been there done that, what’s new. Eventually for almost every couple, the sex has to become boring. On your 4th Point of Peter Pan Syndrome, could that also be called a Midlife Crisis? There’s a saying that most women don’t admit their age, but few men act their age. Is the Peter Pan Syndrome then normal? Men are usu. childish & puerile.
Coldweatherisfun,
My observation and experience has been that men who talk about their sex lives to other men, in a boastful or crude manner, usually do so to compensate for a lack of success in other endeavors. Women who talk about their sex lives to other women usually do so to gain counsel, compare common concerns, or talk about common traits men have that women find funny, cute, or a turn-on. Unless it is an intimate coupling between a man and a woman, I do not think it is common at all for opposite sexes to discuss their sexual experiences or lives.
As to what you term “homophobic violence”, I do not agree. Provocation of any kind can be dealt with by walking away. Women who are approached by men they are not interested in do it all the time. I have also indirectly known people who have been attacked and killed by thugs when there was absolutely no provocation at all. If you are referring to defending oneself because of physical violence from another, then I see where that would be necessary, however, to promote violence as a response to a man exhibiting an interest in another man for a romantic or sexual encounter, indicates a mental instability in the perpetrator and needs immediate intervention by police and bystanders and then followed up with legal and psychological authorites. I do not read Box Turtle Bulletin – while the articles might be informative to some, if the author is offensive to many, then they and he hold no credibility or value – at least for me.
Before I delve into a response on this, I have an observation and question for you. It seems to me that you refer to what you hear from others rather than what you know for yourself through experiences. Is that true?
This might be true for the man who experiences The Peter Pan Syndrome. It is unappealing for a woman to interact with a man who has this kind of emotional immaturity. Also, very unsexy. Just reading it turns off the switch.
In other words, If it happens for gay men, it seems to happen very, very rarely.
“Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis.”
Mary, I was VERY careful NOT to “apply it way across the board.” Re-read my comments. I said, “some” and “seems”. Not ALL. Like it or not, “ex-gays” who are now heterosexual are the very rare exception to the general rule. It’s not “my situation”. It’s a fact.
Michael – you just take your situationa nd apply all the way across the board to ewveyopone – sort of tired of it.
Good for you — if becoming straight fits better for you. From what I understand, some women even report some spontaneous fluxuations in sexual orientation over their lifetime — without trying.
And, as you know, I believe that, in general, women experience more fluidity in the sexuality than men do. So do some bisexual men. Ex-gay men very, very rarely say “I did” — and some of the ones who did weren’t being completely honest.
So for me, the question isn’t really “Can gays change?”, if by that you mean, “Can gay men become straight men?” The answer to that question (as least so far) seems to be, “not very likely” — and it is enethetical to suggest of insist that they do.
Perhaps a less confusing and more useful question would be “What can gays change?” or “Can gays change something?”
The answers depend enitrely on the questions you ask.
Evan, the men that engaged in lockerroom talk were in their 20s to mid 30s. But for most men, even sodomy with a woman is kinky for language that can’t be described here. Visit a website & you’ll find plenty of Friends With Benefits (FWB) & No Strings Attached (NSA) of women willing to engage in those kinky acts. If you’re talking about kinky sex, only homo&lesbian sexual behaviors are viewed as kinkier. Again, wouldn’t lose sleep if all those kinky sex acts disappeared & if a cure were eventually found for them.
But continuing with sex, there are wrong things which psychologists often say about this. For eg. rape. A common mistake that some psychologists make is when they say that they don’t do it for sexual pleasure, when it’s a crime of BOTH sex & power. Rapists do do it for sexual pleasure. You would be right if you were to say that sex isn’t the only reason & that it’s a combination pleasure & power, but to say that sex has nothing to do with it is just rubbish.
With the consent defense in rape trials. If the suspect’s story is credible, sometimes his account is that the woman asked him if she could perform sex on him, but he told her ‘no, just normal sex.’ The suspect in this case’s defense is that he wanted to do 1 sex act (penis-vaginal sex) but didn’t want to do another act (oral sex). Rape trials must be judged individually & it’s for juries to decide which story is credible.
David Blakeslee, didn’t say that most women after a certain age will tolerate their older husband fooling around with a younger woman. Only that there are some women who’ll tolerate it. It can be said that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tolerated her husband having affairs with younger women, given that she still stayed with him. If a woman continues to stay with her man after she finds out about the affairs, then it’s possible that she has the ‘don’t tell me about it’ attitude.
Since you raise marriage sex, it’s most frequent during the 1st year of marriage. Of course it depends on how old the couple is. If a 40 year old man is married to a 24 year old woman, he will have less sex with her, when compared to a 24 year old man married to a 24 year old woman. The 40 year old man will be more value the fact that there are young women still interested in him & not take things for granted, while the 24 year old man is more likely to take things for granted. As already written, it’s alot easier for a 40 year old woman to get a 24 year old man, than it is for a 40 year old man to get a 24 year old woman.
A man’s sexual peak is between 18 to 25 years of age & after 25 it gradually goes down. Sex is a physical activity like gymnastics & the older 1 gets, well the less good they are @ it. The 20 something couple will frequently have sex esp. during the 1st year of marriage. But after she has had kids, her sexual interest usu. goes down & his sexual interest in her may go down after he sees the stretch marks (+any added lbs), that he may not find her as sexy as when he 1st met her. Ok, they may still continue having sex, but over time the frequency will go down. There are couples who stop having sex after a few years of marriage, or 2 or 3 kids later because it’s just not interesting anymore, age, + other things.
But such sexual visualty you can even find watching women on TV. If you see the same woman year after year, wearing the same short mini-skirts, after a while it becomes old. For eg. Megyn Kelly on Fox News. When she came to Fox in 2004, it was nice to see her in the mini-skirt. But after 1 has seen it year after year & with aging signs on the face, the mini-skirt a few years later on her just don’t look as attractive on Megyn Kelly as it did in 2004.
The same thing can be said for runway models such as Cindy Crawford. Sure it was sexually appealing to see her dressed provocatively from 1990-98, but in 2002 the Pepsi commercial she did after having 2 kids just didn’t have the same appeal as it did in 1992. Incidentally, while runway models are pretty, most of them don’t have a good boob size, so they’re not the perfect women-they’re 90% perfect but the small boobs on runway models take away an otherwise perfect figure for many men. Your thoughts are welcome.
I did.
The orientation doesn’t. The intensity of the desire does. That seems to be true of heterosexuals, too. But, gays don’t tend to become straight with age.
What exactly is the difference between change and maturity? Growth means growth. You were once something and now someting else. Does it matter how that changes – the fact is – it changes.
Yeah, we’d have to take a look at the age stats on ex-gays. Conversely, some make the a similar claim about gay males who settle down with a partner…that they no longer have the energy, looks or both to play the field as they once did.
Maybe some boredom. Some had let themselves go physically and found their partner’s obesity or poor grooming unattractive. Some just got lazy. They stopped romancing each other, appreciating each other, dating each other. I saw that a lot among straight and gay couples when I was doing Couples and Family Therapy. It was hard work to get them motivated to make changes.
Anal, Oral, mutual masturbation, wearing funny costumes…Who CARES what two consenting adults do in bed or how often they do it? Whose business is it? What possible difference does it make? As long as they are not hurting you in some way?
I suspect that is true of people in general. Sex and thoughts about sex were much more on my mind as a younger man than they are now. When some “ex-gays” talk about their “SSA” lessening, they excitedly take it as proof of “change”. I suspect that they are not experiencing change in orientation, but maturity. Age.
It seems this post was about the leaps NARTH takes from science to assumptions…
Aren’t we doing the same thing?
coldweather isfun:
You couldn’t be more wrong. Maybe you’re talking to people in their 40s.
Anal sex, maybe, but oral sex doesn’t mean she is loose, if she only does it once in a while and only with you. My girlfriend did it for me, but she is rather inexperienced in bed, really far from loose. You can tell a lot about a woman#s experience by how much and how well she does in bed.
If you tell anyone who knows her about it, you might make her stop doing it, because most of them don’t want to be seen as loose. Even a dumb guy can be smart about that, if you know what I mean.
coldweatherisfun
Your comments are interesting, but anecdotal…for example: men rationalizing promiscuity due to wife’s “permission” is possible, but unlikely.
Novelty based sex, and your other assertions, may be accurate, or deeply flawed.
I would be more persuaded with references to surveys or studies…got any?
As I recall…marriage sex is reported as the most frequent and satisfying…will look for study to support this…
Also, religiously based marital sex is the most satisfying and frequent…with Catholic women reporting the highest satisfaction…
Thanks Ann for your thoughts. Yes, women can also talk about their sex lives, but they’re most likely to discuss it with other women & not with men. My point is that men are more likely to discuss it with BOTH men & women & in lockerroom language.
The same thing with ‘homophobic’ violence. You know what’s written in the press & on Box Turtle Bulletin lecturing about homophobic violence. But again, just by talking to others what has been my observation is that in many cases, there was harassment, provocation & even abuse by the homosexual before the violence happened. If a jury convicts a man of 2nd Degree Murder or Manslaughter rather than 1st Degree for killing a homosexual, then maybe the homosexual was harassing him. It still doesn’t excuse it because if 1 is convicted of 2nd Degree or Manslaughter, that person’s going to prison for many years, but ordnary people can lose it if given the circumstances.
Returning to what’s being discussed surrounding sex lives. It was mentioned by me that a couple’s sex lives are @ their best the 1st 5 years of marriage or much less. Actually, their sex lives are the best the 1st year of marriage. Now people often tell me about how if 2 people love eachother, then their sex lives will always be good, but I’m dubious of this. For most people esp. those who love eachother deeply, the foreplay is almost always better than the sex. I’m skeptical of Viagra, Cialis, Levitra for men as well as Zestra for women. It’s usu. not physical problems unless 1 has had a stroke or disease.
It’s usu. because sex becomes boring for many couples. After a # of years, the aging signs arise-wrinkles, white hairs, etc. Even for couples under 35 years old, the best sex comes before a woman has had kids. If a man & a woman got married in their mid 20s, it’s unlikely that 2 kids & 5 years later, he will view her the same way sexually as he did when they 1st married. He’ll see the stretch marks the woman has had which will diminish sexual interest + there will be other committments of raising the kids, trying to get the bills paid on time & other stresses which’ll reduce time for sex. Anyhow, your thoughts on this are welcome.
Women just don’t discuss it when menfolk are around.
Trust me on this. I was a spy in the enemy camp for 47 years. It’s good to come out of the cold.
Ladies, guys are even more clueless than you think.
Ann–
TMHBIMCL!!
(ThrowMyHeadBackInMyChairLaughing)
Masterfully understated!
I am sure this is true. Another way would be If a woman listens closely, they can learn the same thing, and more, when a man whispers in her ear.
Oh, I can assure you they do discuss these things and in great detail – I was also going to add in length and depth but thought that could be mis-understood.
Ann,
I’m male. Learned the word Friends With Benefits (FWB) for the 1st time by going to a rape trial in Oct. 2009-the suspect was acquitted-a he said she said case with consent being raised with a defense. After hearing this word, just by talking about this with other men in the gym about this & thus you can learn alot about what men like sexually just by lockerroom talk. Women are less likely to discuss this, so your best info. would be to talk to the men. Always known the word No Strings Attached (NSA), but by visiting a website which has casual enounters, I further understood what NSA & FWB are.
BTW EW Throckmorton, Dr. Nicolosi is a devout Catholic, so he has to be against oral sex & sodomy. Don’t understand why E.W. Throckmorton is surprised by this. Continuing Ann, there’s so much about the complicated & complex nature of human sexuality which EW Throckmorton doesn’t delve deeply into, which proves my point that you can learn alot about human sexuality just by talking to people.
But Ann, here are some other things of delving into human sexuality which you may find interesting. Most people’s sex lives peak after 5 years of marriage. The reason is because the novelty runs out, a woman has had kids, stress of life + other things. Learned by lockerroom talk that some women after hitting menopause, will tell their husband that they don’t want to do it anymore, but that if the husband wants to fool around with a much younger woman, just don’t tell her about it.
You may have heard the hype surrounding cougar relationships-older women with younger men. Well it has always been true that it’s much easier for an older woman to get a young man, then it is for an old man to get a young woman. All a cougar needs are average looks. An old man who gets a young woman has to be a lion. He has to be interesting to the young woman in order to have a relationship with her.
What’s often not written in psychology books on cougar relationships & this was learned by me just by lockerroom talk & even reading about affairs in the news, is how often do you hear cases of men in relationships with much older women who are found fooling around with women their age or younger? Actor Naveen Andrews talked about how he likes his cougar Barbara Hershey & in 2005, he was found to have fathered a child with a Czech actress Elena Eustache-a few years younger than him & who resembles a young Barbara Hershey. Know 1 case of a woman who is married to a man 11 years younger than her, but then her husband was found fooling around with a 20 year old woman in a motel room.
It can be said that if a man who is married to a much older woman is fooling around with a much younger woman, then he maybe doing it because he isn’t sexually satisfied with his much older wife or girlfriend. Naveen Andrews may not be sexually satisfied with Barbara Hershey which is why he fooled around with Elena Eustache & it has been speculated that they have an open relationship.
Coldweatherisfun,
Some of the terms you use are interesting. Do you mind if I ask what your gender is?
CWIF wrote:
I am wondering how you know that?
E.W. Throckmorton:
OK, what’s written by me supporting repair therapy for homosexuality is repetitive, but then again, the posters who’re hostile to repair therapy are also repetitive. No offense, but even what you write regarding repair therapy is repetitive, because it’s hard to think of new things on this.
As to why NARTH didn’t adequately answer your ?, well what you asked is not understandable. For eg. you talk about how straights also engage in kinky sex, but what you didn’t delve into was the fact that it’s taboo even among straights. You also didn’t mention what NARTH’s position is on oral sex & sodomy, when Dr. Nicolosi’s view would be the right sexual activity is straight foreplay & then penis-vaginal sex between a man & a woman.
But 1 can learn alot about people’s sex lives not by listening to what psychologists say but by talking to people. Since you wrote that straights also engage in it, here’s what you didn’t delve into. When I’ve talked to men who engage in oral sex with women, my observation has been that most of them don’t get it from their wives or girlfriends. Rather, the men have Friends with Benefits (FWB) or No Strings Attached (NSA) relationship with a woman who is willing to give them head, or they pay a prostitute from a Craigslist ad.
While there are many straights who engage in oral sex & sodomy, there are just many women who aren’t willing to engage in oral sex & even fewer in sodomy. The taboo is that if a woman is willing to perform these sex acts, then she is loose. Much of the kinky sexual activities that are found among straights are more true in porn, FWB or NSA relationships & paying prostitutes. Again no offense, but what you wrote isn’t understandable, which is why you didn’t get a satisfactory answer from NARTH.
Why shouldn’t we love religious people? You do good work; I even still contribute to Catholic Charities (though OxFam America is starting to get the bulk of my giving). Most all of my extended family are still Catholic, I even attend the Mass from time to time (it lifts my spirits, but see below).
Many atheists consider religions to be a necessary outgrowth of social life combined with a species’ sentient awakening under primitive conditions. Religions are good ways of uniting a family group, tribe or even nation and provide social cohesion. But over times the gods have been dwindling away anyway, though I recognize that for any one human some form of god/religion that entails some goal-oriented life/afterlife will likely be needed for their sanity.
I reallize that many atheists do not appear to think that way – thinking hear of the ‘new atheists’ like Dawkins, Hitchens, or PZ Myers. But even they tend to soften their opinions at times (though I have some very real scientific differences with Dawkins concerning why religion is important to man). Most of those who support these ‘new atheists’ do so only in certain political situations as concerns teaching science in schools, etc.
I guess that makes me a pragmatic atheist, but then I also consider myself to be a spiritual atheist. Before you go off and say spirituality is something supernatural; I consider spirituality to be a completely natural function of a sentient mind reacting to the natural world or life itself. Lack of real knowledge has led man to poorly interpret his spiritual experiences as something supernatural and set up institutions to promulgate those wrong interpretations. However, man’s own extrasomatic knowledge continues to slowly but surely chip away at those wrong interpretations of spirituality.
@ Wister,
The Joy of Contempt.
@ Jayhuck
A bit simplistic…and your getting redundant.
Both evolutionary theory and functional analysis of same sex behavior identify limitations which have nothing to do with religion.
This seems like a repetitive thoughtless analysis of those who disagree with you…’religious reactionaries.’
such eloquence for a purported well known and esteemed writer to express himself – I’m glad we were able to see your skills and credentials at work
Wister,
Sweet dreams – xoxoxox
David – RE: Lifestyle – I don’t know what they mean except living as a gay person. My guess it is an import from the culture war and has no real connection to psychology. Alfred Adler had a concept of lifestyle but in his thought, everyone has a lifestyle (style or approach to life) and was a neutral concept in the sense that lifestyle could be healthy or unhealthy depending on what a person does.
The whole article and most of the website is written for the culture war and would not pass peer review.
Zoe: Perhaps we should not be hard on wister. After all, until the last comment, we did not realize how important and special he is. I now understand why I should never have required him to go by the commenting guidelines like I do other lesser commenters. Instead, we should probably feel enhanced that he stooped down to mingle with us and share his distain. So please ignore his projections of self-importance and hatred. Better he despise us than ignore us.
Okay, Jayhuck, we won’t go with parent/child…we’ll go with siblings. Back in the 60’s, I was an active anti-Vietnam protestor while three of my brothers actually enlisted in the service and two had several tours of duty in Vietnam. Yet, I loved them and they loved me. We were people who had a very big issue on which we disagreed (back then there was none bigger) and yet we continued to love each other.
As to denying your equal rights, I’ve conceded that there are Christians who really don’t get ‘Love the sinner; hate the sin’…and yes, I do envision them objecting to gay rights but of the many Christians who really believe in “Love the sinner; hate the sin”, there is no objection to equal rights or partnership benefits. I’ve stated my own political beliefs numerous times on this blog…for that reason, I find your use of the personal reference ‘you’ throughout your diatribe, both ridiculous and offensive.
What will your dodge be this time? That you were speaking ‘you Christians’ not me personally? You started with a very personal ‘you’ and then addressed me by name. Your next accusing ‘you’ came one word later.
Charles Thomas–
How can I even begin to respond to a statement that starts with such an uninformed presupposition? Not only have I witnessed MANY over the course of the past 40 years but I’ve been involved in quite a few. My best friend is an ex-ex-gay… We don’t argue though. I know where he stands; he knows where I stand. I’ve even offered him advice on his relationships over the years and he’s offered me advice for my situation too. He married his partner just before Christmas; if I were still living in Minneapolis, I would have been at the wedding…I would likely have been in the wedding; his partner and I have become friends too. (How can you not be friends with the partner of your best friend?)
wister – your assessment of Dr T is (within experimental error) exactly 180 degrees wrong, +/- 0.1 degree.
While I may have my disagreements with him, I’m at least as confident of his academic honesty and intellectual integrity as I am in my own.
is about as inaccurate a description as it’s possible to make of him.
That he let your post through refutes your argument.
NARTH… I won’t speculate on their morality, just the provable failings of their scientific advisors in one area I happen to know about.
Eddy,apparently you’ve never witnessed an argument between a gay who sees nothing at all wrong with homosexuality,and a Christian who believes homosexuality is sinful.
Also,I was raised by Christian mother and an agnostic/atheist father and both of them frequently argued about thier differences. I can’t count how many times growing up I heard one or the other exclaim in effect that “I don’t hate you,I just can’t stand your stubborn unbelief!” or “I have nothing against you personally.I married you,didn’t I? I just can’t stand all that superstitious crap you spout!”
I need not provide you with the transcripts of conversations or arguments between atheists and Christians,or a gay people who use the same logic against those who judge them by saying that “I love the heterosexual but hate his sexual orientation” to validate the point I was trying to make.The reason Christians say they love gays is not because they really do,but because thier religion commands it.Love(at least human love) has to be earned.
I don’t think that love should have any bearing on this issue at all.People who go around proclaiming thier love for everyone actually trivialize love.It is not possible for a Christian or anyone else to love everyone equally and without conditions.But one can recognize and respect the fact that every person has the right to self-determination.
I see my post was deleted by this person who feels himself important enough to keep this blog.
I make my living from my writing. Unlike you I actually work in a free market. My work is produced across the US and around the world. My work has given work in its turn to hundreds of people. I am about to go to Vienna and then Prague and London where my work is enjoyed. I don’t keep a blog to make me feel important.
You are mere prudes with tenure. How dare you presume to patronize gay men and women who are persecuted in this country by evil minded Christians, Mormons, Catholics, NARTHists, NOMists, etc.
You’ll delete this too, throckmorton, because you’re a second-rate busy-body who wants to think of himself as some kind of philosopher-saint.
And for that scared nasty Exodus man – I know what you think about at 3 in the morning with your wife snoring beside you. I know what you want.
For the rest of you, I pity you in your ignorance. And if you think this is mere ranting then you deal with the torrent of hatred and lies and slander that falls on the head of every gay man and woman in this country 365 days of every year from the day you are born till you die and then tell me about fucking NARTH and its ‘science’.
I will now got to bed beside my husband of 40 years. Be happy in your ignorance. Be happy in your lack of imagination. Be happy in your lack of humanity. And know that I despise you.
geez – guys, I’m still loopey.
Wow – consider, just for a moment that that is not the issue. Just for a moment. and then think about the like myself who have benefitted from a therapist or dcotoc taking that chance to work outside the “APA” rules.
As long as you are asking for good scientific evidence, they never will. NARTH has always worked backwards from the conclusion they have already reached. That’s not, and never will be “science”.
David, it had to happen sooner or later. 🙂
You cannot couch this issue in a parent-child relationship – that is also patronizing. It boils down to respect for me Eddy. You will never be successful at “lovingly engaging” homosexuals, when you continue to deny them civil rights, not because they are doing anything illegal, not because they have a disease, but simply because those things run counter to your PERSONAL religious beliefs. As long as you treat them as the other, as long as you suggest that they don’t deserve the same rights as you simply because of your religious beliefs, you will fail!
Wister–
Sorry for missing coldweather’s statement. Some of us can see from the outset that there’s nothing to be gleaned from a post and so we don’t read it. I barely made it through yours for the same reason but it was shorter.
Sorry, Jayhuck, ‘equality’ needs to be defined. I can envision parents loving their children, respecting the fact that their children have rights under the law, but still disapproving of and disciplining their behavior and none of that being patronizing. That’s not a rebuttal…I’d have to know what you were actually saying in order to offer a rebuttal if needed. That’s simply a demonstration of how your statement and word choice is a bit too general. Rather than guess what you’re saying, I ask you to state it more precisely.
Charles Thomas:
I believe I’d like to call your bluff. you said:
I’m having a hard time imagining the conversation(s) as indicated by ‘some gays I know’, where they say ‘they hate heterosexuality’…wow, they hate it even though they were conceived from a hetero relationship? and then they actually proceed to volunteer that they ‘love heterosexuals’. Can you provide the framework in which even one of those conversations happened?
And I’ve known a few atheists in my time and had a few spirited conversations yet none ever went so far as to say they ‘loved religious people’. Can you share one of the actual examples with us? This is exciting news and intrigues me.
Beyond that, though, you do see many Christians who fail but we’ve got a supernatural ally who helps us to do things which to you would seem impossible. He hates sin and yet He loved the world so much that He sent His only begotten son into the world to rescue the world from the sin that He hates. Shall we major on the hate or shall we major on the love? Somehow, it seems that He pulled it off; somehow, I believe that He can continue to pull it off through His people if they allow Him.
Thanks Ann, thanks Michael. I’m out of the fog for a couple of hours. Hope this breaks soon.
David,
What is their “scientific” position? It seems, to me, they are more like Creationists in that they start with religious beliefs and then try and legitimize those beliefs using pseudo-science!
Equality, then, would be an excellent goal for such Christians.
Dr. Throckmorton:
May I ask you a professional question? I note that NARTH uses the 1970s politicized term “lifestyle” to refer to homosexuality. I honestly don’t know what that term is intended to convey, since homosexuality is not a style of living. The quote to which I am referring is:
“Conclusion: An adolescent’s desire to prevent or cease experiencing serious medical, psychological, and relational health risks is sufficient reason for him or her to seek and receive competent psychological care to minimize or resolve the desires, behaviors and lifestyles associated with such increased risks.”
Since behaviors is listed separately from “lifestyles”, NARTH appears to be saying that there are serious medical, psychological and relational health risks arising from something called a “lifestyle” which is separate and distinct from an individual’s behavior.
I would ask whether you, as an academic and a mental health professional, see this term used in mainstream psychology, or whether NARTH is simply importing terminology from the culture war.
The reason that people have a problem with “love the sinner but hate the sin” has nothing to do with thier opposition to the idea that homosexuality is sinful.Like people everywhere,most gays really don’t place much value on what others think about them,or whether thier neighbors condemn thier behavior as sinful.
The reason I and others object to the notion that one can love the sinner and hate the sin is that it is illogical and impossible to practice consistently.
Some gays I know claim that they hate heterosexuality, but love the heterosexual,or atheists who claim that they hate religion,but love religious people.This is tantamount to claiming that you can love a Christian,yet hate the religion that gives his life purpose and meaning,or that you can love the homosexual,but hate what is perhaps the most ingrained and intimate aspect of his personality.
At best the love-the-sinner-and-hate-the-sin attitude results in loving some aspects of a person(what you consider his virtues)and hate other aspects of him that you consider sinful(his vices).
oops – Mary’s comment should have been in the block
have a really bad cold
@ Michael,
:).
It seems we agree.
I guess that would depend on many things — for example what sort of outcome was most supported by science and less by the therapist’s beliefs. As I have said until I am blue in the face, if a client, for personal or religious reasons, doesn’t want to “identitfy” as “gay”, does not want to “affirm” their “SSA” and does not want to have gay sex — that is completely up to them. I would never encourage a client to do that which violates his/her conscience or causes him/her undue distress.
State Ranking on Suicide Rates — Suicides per 100,000 residents,
Copathology, I guess. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_suicide_risk Some have even suggested that “suicide rates were indeed higher during periods of conservative government.” Maybe older, white, unmarried males in DC when conservatives are in power should stay on their meds.
Sorry about your cold.
They may. I think some racial groups do too.
than any other group by comparison – sorry – have a really bad cold
There was an article on some recent research in the Nehterlands that showed more gay men complete suicides. Hmmmm.
If you are really concerned about “reducing the # of copathologies-fewer incidence of Venereal Disease (VD), depression & suicides” let’s start with ending oppression against gays. See what happens to the “co-pathologoies”.
I am sure they would do it now. Doesn’t make it any less disgusting. Some cultures used drown female infants in the river.
That’s not a “fact”. That’s your own prejudice.
David Bussee, your argument against repair therapy to treat homosexuality contradicts itself, if you share the views of most homosexuals groups, when you raise cutting off a right arm because the client wants it. Most homosexual groups as I mentioned in my past post think it’s Ok for a Dr. to mutilate a man to make him an artificial woman, because he wants it. In a small # of cases women are mutilated to become artificial men. Sex changes are the same thing as mutilating the healthy right arm of some1. People who post on Box Turtle Bulletin & sometimes here such as Timothy Kincaid, David Roberts & Priya Lynn think that these surgical maimings are Ok, while being hostile to repair therapy to treat homosexuality. Homosexual groups only agree with client self-determination when it agrees with them, which is supporting sex change maimings while decrying repair therapy to treat homosexuality.
In 2005, tennis legend Martina Navratilova condemned experiments on gay sheep as animal cruelty because of the possibility that such research could indirectly find the cure for homosexuality, though that wasn’t the researchers intent. Yet Martina Navratilova to my knowledge hasn’t protested sex changes which were originally experimented on animals as animal cruelty. Again, another eg. of only supporting science when it agrees.
If repair therapy doesn’t work in making homosexuals straight, then they’ll continue their ‘gay’ ways. But if repair therapy succeeeds in making homosexuals straight or @least celibate, then it does benefit them in that it reduces the # of copathologies-fewer incidence of Venereal Disease (VD), depression & suicides by curing homosexuality.
As to meddling in utero to insure that an unborn baby won’t be a homosexual or have any other deformity, you can be sure that many women would do this. When 1 thinks of abortion, many women already aborn unborn babies who will be known to have deformities such as Down Syndrome. You can be sure that if in the future they can predict that an unborn baby will engage in homo&lesbian sexual activities or have GID as an adult, many women will abort them. I’m pro-choice, yet what has been my observation is that some people who call themselves pro-choice cringe @ the idea of aborting unborn homosexuals, when IMO, aborting unborn homosexuals is the same thing as aborting an unborn deformed baby who’ll have 1 arm or Down Syndrome. Pro-lifers are usu. consistent, but it’s people who call themselves pro-choice who contradict themselves.
Michael Bussee, you can keep saying that homosexuality doesn’t need to be repaired, not a disease, etc., but the fact remains that there will be fewer problems if homosexuality is eventually cured & there’s no more same sex behaviors. Asking a homosexual to be celibate if their orientation doesn’t change is what benefits them. Finally what was meant by ‘preaching to the choir’ is that Box Turtle Bulletin almost always only has people who agree with them posting there, rehasing the same things.
coldweatherwhatever:
You’re not saying much that is different every time you post. If you have something constructive to add, you are keeping me guessing what it is. You did say this which was somewhat relevant to my post:
The point I made in my post is that there is no evidence I can find to support the idea that any differences between gays and straights can be altered by reparative therapy. I asked NARTH for this and got nothing. How about you go ask them?
@ Michael
Within reason, yes.
“It is not always benevolent…” Of course. The same can be said of gay affirmative therapy.
MIchael,
I agree that we should not amputated arn arm just because a client desires it. But the idea of living with a sexuality that a person does not feel good about is a different argument. No doubt we see this from different perspectives, nonethless, I’m glad I had the opportunity to pursue counseling for my sexual concerns.
I am hostile to “reparative” therapy because homosexuality doesn’t need to be repaired. And to David, just because a person wants something, should we offer to repair it? What if they were unhappy having a right arm and wanted it removed? Do it in the name of “client self-determination”? It is not always benevolent or ethical to give a client what they want.
When you speak of “they” — you are including NARTH and advocates or reparative therapy in this, I hope.
Yes, Michael Bussee & D.B., the topic has shifted from repair therapy to ‘homophobic’ violence. But what else can be said about repair therapy or homosexuality for the same matter, w/o going over the same things that have been rerun so many times? Homosexual groups will typically rerun the efficacy arguments, etc. But honestly, the efficacy of repair therapy to treat homosexuality is a side issue. Most homo groups will be hostile to repair therapy to treat homosexuality (using the same mantra that it’s not a disease) & GID, even if repair therapists eventually find the 100% cures for homosexuality & GID.
Since ‘homophobic’ violence was raised by me, the politics surrounds this. Homosexual groups are quick to try to turn any violent incident against a homosexual into an issue of ‘homophobic’ violence, even if there was provocation, harassment & abuse by the homosexual. We may never know for certainty why MW Shepard really was killed because in most homicide cases, there are no other witnesses other than the victim & those involved.
This will go into the larger topic of murder trials, but take the 1995 OJ Simpson trial. So much has been written about this being a passion crime of love & jealousy, but there’s a good possiblity that R.L. Goldman was the intended victim (he had most of the wounds) & Nicole Brown Simpson lost her life trying to stop the killer(s). There are no known witnesses, so only the killer(s) know why they did it & IMO the evidence supports the idea of multiple killers. The late RJ Wagner (died in 2003) is an engineer who watched the entire 1995 trial & his conclusion’s that it was done by the Underworld & that the killers lured OJ Simpson to visit the crime scene 15 minutes after it happened. See http://www.wagnerandson.com
It’s not my intent to stray away from the topic of repair therapy, but what else can we signficantly say about this? Michael Bussee, Timothy Kincaid & others who post on this site their hostile views on repair therapy will repeat the same things on other websites, such as Box Turtle Bulletin. They almost always only post views of those who agree with them, that it’s preaching to the choir. Perhaps we must look @ other new topics to discuss surrounding homosexuality, ‘homophobic’ violence & repair therapy, but it’s a hard task to think of anything new.
This thread seems to have started about the Narth scientific assertions and moved quickly tangentially into homophobia…
Like it or not, transexual surgery is quite a bold decision in search of a set of positive research outcomes to support it.
This surgery occurred long before any outcome studies could exist…
Reparative therapy has been in a similar situation for some time…it is much less intrusive; “And it is likely easily reversible (when compared to surgery).”
Narth’s problems are slowly resolving…and they may stagnate at the stage of political activism;
But their scientific position is completely valid, based upon the science and scientific ethics:
–Negative outcomes associated with any human behavior have a right to serious effort on the part of psychological professionals to address that problem.
–Client self-determination
–Accurately portraying risks and benefits based upon known (but incomplete scientific data).
Narth needs to separate their position from the assumptions that they take and the leaps to conclusions that they take….it is doable and a worthy final move for NARTH.
Are there any new or ongoing studies or research that are/is being conducted and are/is scientific in nature regarding human sexuality? Also, what does instinct have to do, if anything, with human sexuality?
I really miss the contributions of Drowssap, Evan, and Carole.
Many have problems with “Love the sinner, hate the sin” but it’s clear that we certainly indict the Christians who don’t show or feel love for the homosexual…conclusion: the Christians must stop hating the sin, in fact, the only resolution that will be accepted is that they stop seeing homosexual behavior as sin at all….they must stop seeing homosexuals as misguided.
The justification for this shift in their belief based on the Bible is not revelation from God that it isn’t sin, not scholarship that demonstrates that their interpretation of the Bible is wrong…no justification is being presented other than that the homosexuals don’t like to be thought of as sinning.
Given the options, I think we’ll stick with “Love the sinner, hate the sin” and accept the challenge that we Christians need to engage homosexuals more and demonstrate a love that doesn’t patronize.
Yes – please – for the love of…. – let the research speak for itself! Scientific organization? Really? Is there anyone outside NARTH’s small community of mainly religious followers that truly consider this a scientific organization? LOL
And it explains the ambivalence that some gays feel towards some Christians – this is a very old argument and one that, from my perspective, can come across as incredibly patronizing…. those poor, misguided homosexual souls – we must love them but not treat them as equals…..
No, Charles, it doesn’t. It’s very much akin to a parent watching a child make some bad choices. The son does drugs…do they stop loving him? The daughter gets pregnant outside of marriage…do they stop loving her? Granted, some don’t respond admirably…but we’ve got thousands upon thousands of examples of how you can still love a person even while you hate what they’re doing or have done.
I appreciate Zoe’s illustration as well. It’s another side of this same coin.
Charles – first one must recognise the sins within ones-self, and hate them, and work to remedy them, without hating yourself. Do that for yourself, and it’s impossible not to do it for others.
I’m not even Christian, but even I know this stuff.
Love the sinner but hate the sin?
Does this mean you hate a person when he’s sinning and love him when he’s not?
The hate-the-sin-but-love-the-sinner approach certainly explains the ambivalence many Christians feel toward gays.
The Bible simply commands its followers to love and fogive the sinner despite his sins.
Zoe–
Can we have rational feelings of discomfort? Do we have any sense of how many have irrational feelings of discomfort as opposed to those who have rational feelings of discomfort? And, I suppose, there are those who have both rational and irrational feelings mixed together.
I am not minimizing irrational feelings of discomfort. When I started singing karaoke at a VFW in Minneapolis–and got pretty good at it–I simply couldn’t get my gay friends over their irrational feelings of discomfort over a ‘VFW’. It seems that even without judging something as right or wrong, we can have irrational feelings of discomfort simply because it’s ‘other’ than what we are familiar with and perhaps because we have bad associations related to ‘others’ of its type. (I know that my gay friends were moderately tolerant of ‘bar/restaurants’ that were mostly straight; their discomfort grew if that straight bar was labelled as a ‘sports bar’ and it escalated if that straight bar had military association–like a VFW or American Legion. No amount of talking or anecdotal observation on my part could shake them from their irrational feelings. Whatever was encoded in their feelings overruled the current facts.)
Perhaps I should mention that I’m mildly homophobic, and a bit racist too, in my feelings. I just chose course one, not course two. That requires some degree of introspection, and the ability to accept that one isn’t the kind of person one would like to be. To accept one’s own flawed humanity, and to try to transcend it, however poorly. To realise that bigots and evildoers are no worse than ones self, and the only difference is the degree to which we’re all aware of and try to transcend our own flaws.
No doubt I’m unaware of many of mine.
When you see things like that, the whole “love the sinner hate the sin” and “treat one’s neighbour like one’s self” bit becomes an inescapable consequence.
I personally don’t think homosexuality is a sickness however this statement led me to consider ‘alcoholism’–which is a sickness and ‘drunkenness’–which is a sin. It seems that to say “One can’t have it both ways” as a generalized truth is an oversimplification.
The important thing is that it be condemned because it makes them feel uncomfortable. The exact mechanism is less important, as long as there is one.
Homosexuality – or Intersex conditions, or people with a different coloured skin – cause irrational feelings of discomfort in many. This is, to some extent, instinctive.
One can deal with this in one of two ways:
First, to recognise that it is irrational, and to accept one’s discomfort as unjustified. One can still feel uncomfy, but at least it won’t affect one’s decision-making. Many people can’t deal with the fact that they have racist or bigoted feelings though, even though it’s OK, as long as you over-ride them.
Second, when one doesn’t want to admit to having irrational feelings of discomfort, that one has racist or bigoted feelings, then one can search for, or manufacture, justifications for those feelings. The feelings come first, but that is ignored. And the more justifications, even if they’re mutually contradictory, the better. Thus someone who is gay can simultaneously be seen as sinful, sick, and part of a conspiracy to destroy society, all at the same time.
Now pardon me while I find a way to wash my mind out. That quote from my blog about destroying other people’s personalities in a Mengeslesque way… it’s horrific. The cold amorality and arrogance in it is the road to Auschwitz. It took me a real effort to write it originally, and it still gives me the shivers.
I don’t understand those who want to define homosexuality as both a sickness and a sin
One can’t have it both ways.
If homosexuality is an illness,then it is a medical issue not a moral one,and one has no justification for calling it a sin;if homosexuality is a sin,then it is a moral issue not a medical one,and there is no reason to call it a sickness.And if sexual orientation and behavior can be altered by science,then so can any other aspect of the human personality.
Those who want to medicalize moral and social issues don’t understand that they are partly responsible for the so called secularization of society that social conservatives routinely blame for the moral decline of America and the rest of the world.
If science can “cure” what was once considered sinful,or claims for itself the authority to resolve political and moral conflicts between the individual and society,then religion,philosophy,ethics and personal morality are all on thier way to becoming obsolete.
I suspect that is true in the reverse as well.
Michael Bussee, if you see nothing wrong with same sex behaviors, then of course you’ll be offended by my idea of curing same sex behaviors & attraction. Orientation may not be chosen, but sexual activities are. If NARTH or other repair therapists can cure homoseuxal orientation, then same sex behaviors will eventually disappear. Rerunning the American Medical Association (AMA) mantra that homosexuality isn’t a disease isn’t changing my view of go ahead & cure same sex orientation.
Though homosexuality isn’t classifed as a disease, it’s a fact that homosexuals & lesbians (esp. gay men) have higher copathology rates. Venereal disease (VD) amongst homose, depression & suicides are higher among those who engage in same sex behaviors. Homosexual groups typically say that it’s societal attitudes & homophobia, but Dr. NE Whitehead has said that it’s way more complex & complicated than that.
Fail to understand why it offends people if meddling in utero prevents homo&lesbian orientation & future same sex activities. For me it’s no different than meddling in utero to prevent Down Syndrome & GID. Fail to understand why it offends people if same sex behaviors & sex changes disappeared.
Incidentally, don’t care 1 way or the other if oral sex disappeared, but suggesting that oral sex disappear doesn’t offend people incl. straights. When I’ve talked to men who engage in this, they haven’t condemned me for this neutral view of not caring if oral sex disappeared, as people have condemned me for my views on repair therapy & homophobic violence.
BTW, with the MW Shepard case, I don’t know if AJ McKinney’s story is true, but the scenario given by him is possible. By talking with others I’ve asked people ‘are there any circumstances you could beat up a homosexual?’ The typical answer that has been given to me is that if a homosexual is minding his own business, then no they won’t. If a homosexual is going to harass them in a public restroom or touch them against their will, then there’s going to commit ‘homophobic’ violence.
Your thoughts Michael Bussee are again welcome, but chances are you’re not going to raise anything signficantly new that hasn’t been already considered by me.
We’ve got lots of stories of people who mistakenly believed themselves to be straight only to discover later in life their ‘true gay identity’. I believe we must concede that there are also people who have mistakenly believed themselves to be gay. The common response is that there are more natural pressures towards making the straight mistake than the gay one but I maintain, that especially since the sexual revolution that began circa 1960, many have gone into homosexual behavior and found it gratifying and thus assumed that they were gay. Some of them were mistaken too.
We also have that in-between orientation of bi-sexual. Since there’s incomplete understanding of that condition and tremendous pressure to identify either gay or straight, some identified as gay based in part on whatever their prevailing pressure (often social) was at the time.
For these reasons, I believe that there is still ‘work to be done’. Our understanding of the development of sexual identity would help us prevent people from mistakenly assuming the incorrect identity–whether it be gay or straight; our attempts to help people identify with a new sexual identity would help us recognize which factors are immutable…which are based on memory and response patterns. NO ONE should force another into such a change but any individual facing the quandary of dissatisfaction with their sexual identity, should at least have the benefit of some complete and thoughtful studies to guide them through these mostly uncharted waters.
Perhaps they won’t change enough to meet the standards of others. But sexuality is private. If they change enough to succeed in not violating their conscience, then we have a study in ‘mind (or spirit) over sexuality’ which would enhance our understanding both of the power of the mind (our primary sexual organ) and the power of our sexuality. If they change enough to have a happy and fulfilled sexual relationship with their new gender of choice, it seems we could learn from that too. We’d learn from what they found easy to embrace and difficult to embrace; we’d also learn from what they found easy to leave behind and difficult to leave behind. I say let’s not shut down any area of study or observation…if it exists, let’s see what we can learn from it.
Who “needs” it to be done? The ones who believe it needs to be “fixed”.
I’m talking about orientation, not behavior. Being gay or straight is not a “behavior”.
That’s a justification for “fixing” something?
You don’t “cure” them. They are not diseases.
Gayness is also not a “deformity” — and your suggestion that we “go for” in utero “repair” of it is digusting. So is your use of the murder of Mattehew Shephard to try to prove your points.
I’ll quote from my blog as regards GID –
I’ll leave aside the questions of whether what could be seen as a natural variation requires a “remedy”, and whether destroying someone’s personality is ethical.
The following only applies to Transsexuals, not the Transgendered in general:
Cause – hormonal screwup in the womb causes cross-sexed neuro-anatomy. Cross-sexed anatomy in turn leads to predispositions, biases towards crystallisation of a cross-sexed sex identity. Some gendered behaviour (a minority) is affected too.
Current remedy – whatever works, The only thing that we’ve found is to modify the body in accordance with the sex identity.Otherwise premature death is certain in severe cases, likely in the rest (with severe misery certain) due to the body map problem. There are also usually gender issues.
Future remedies – in order of ease
1. Complete post-birth body modification including functional reproductive anatomy may only be 30-50 years away
2. If we knew more about “phantom limb syndrome” and “lost limb syndrome” then even today we could surgically intervene after birth to change the body map. This could be done with current technology, if we knew just what parts of the brain to destroy. Then you’d just get Transgendered women and men, cross-gendered but not cross-sexed, and likely frigid or impotent. Add psychological intervention during post-birth sex identity crystallisation, and you’d get very butch women or very femme men instead. We don’t know how to do that yet, Zucker’s work on crude aversion therapy doesn’t cut the mustard, but it should be possible by surrounding the child with nothing but cross-gendered people for the first decade of life – longer if sex identity crystallisation is delayed.
3. Early ‘heroic” hormonal intervention to “force” the issue one way or the other before the natural path is known. But we’d need to know far more about development in the womb before we could do this safely. If we did, we could do this now. Parents (or Governments) could choose the desired sex of all children, ignoring chromosomes. ( But see Fetal Cosmetology for some drawbacks with our present state of knowledge here)
4. Make hormonal adjustments in the womb to give a body (fully functional reproductive system etc) congruent to the neuro-anatomy later than 13 weeks in gestation. This would require diagnostic technology we don’t have, but would be relatively safe.
5. Use really advanced nanotechnology to modify individual cells, and rebuild the brain completely, either pre- or post-birth. This would require diagnostic technology beyond our wildest dreams.
Remedying undesirable sexual orientation is another matter, but would involve similar issues.
I must emphasise that this is only applicable to Transsexuals. The Transgendered don’t require treatment, as there’s no body-map issue to address.
I must also emphasise that “undesirable sexual orientation” means someone at 1 or 7 on the Kinsey scale (not that that’s terribly valid, but you know what I mean). Where a significant degree of bisexuality is present, it may be possible to adequately supress the ando- or gyna-phillia without causing undue stress or anxiety. An even lesser degree of suppression would just remedy unwanted behaviour rather than attraction. If straight males in particular could not cope with physical attraction to unavailable females without acting, we’d be in deep trouble! So it should be possible.
Michael Bussee, yes repair therapy has a high failure rate which the repair therapists admit. More work needs to be done. Yes, repair therapists often use religion to justify their views, but there’s nothing wrong with having faith. You can be non-religious or even an atheist & see something wrong with homosexuality & sex change maimings.
Why people engage in same sex behaviors is a complex topic. IMO, it’s a combination of biology & learned behavior. With biology, they don’t know if it’s genes, hormones or a combination of both. Even straight sexual behavior isn’t entirely genes & can be learned. When I talk to men who engage in oral sex with women (most of them have told me that they prefer a woman performing oral sex on them than vice versa), they told me that they learned this behavior. I know women who won’t engage in oral sex because they think it’s non-hygenic. Oral sex is an eg. that even straight activities can be learned & isn’t entirely biological.
With that said, that doesn’t mean that science couldn’t eventually find the cures for homosexuality & GID. They’ve already discovered cloning. Homosexual groups sometimes ask, ‘well why not then cure lefthandedness?’ Lefthandedness isn’t controversial. Honestly, -couldn’t care 1 way or the other if a cure for this were found. Ok, many would say that it’s science not curing a disease, but many perhaps most just don’t care if science found a cure for lefthandedness-a cure for homosexuality however does generate controversy. If it’s true that by interfering in the womb, you can guarantee that an unborn baby won’t have a deformity & will engage in straight sexual activities & orientation as an adult, then go for it. Yet some people are angry by this idea of making unborn babies straight, if this can be proven. If science eventually does find a pill, shot or surgery to make a homosexual straight, you can be sure that there would be a huge business for this. It’s hard to know how many homosexuals want to be straight but engage in same sex behaviors because they’ve come to believe that going straight isn’t an option.
There’s alot of ideology surrounding homosexuality whether it’s repair therapy & ‘homophobic’ violence. This may offend some people, but let me explain a controversial discussion on another message board of do homosexuals sometimes provoke ‘homophobic’ violence ?
Now there’s no excuse to hit or kill any1 other than to protect 1self, but whether some1 is convicted of 1st, 2nd or manslaughter is a jury topic. The same with assault&batteries. In cases of ‘homophobic’ violence, how many of them are unprovoked attacks vs. where the victim was provoking & harassing his attacker What do i mean by provocation & harassment ?
1. Provocation: If some1 is using the bathroom & a homosexual starts harassing him & the man reacts by beating him up or even killing the homosexual (2nd degree or manslaughter imo in this case), then that is provocation & harassment by the victim & i can’t empathize with the victim, though what happened is extreme. The restroom is the place to use the toilet & wash up. No, harassment still doesn’t justify beating or killing some1, but the homol should be arrested & jailed for harassment & disorderly conduct. If a male janitor harassed women in the bathroom as they were using the toilet, he would most likely be fired & jailed for harassment, which he should be. Many won’t sympathize with the male janitor, if he gets beaten up by women in the restroom that he was harassing. There’s a time & place for everything & the restroom isn’t the place.
2. What really happened in the 1998 Matthew (MW) Shepard case? There are conflicting versions. The common 1 is that it was an unprovoked attacked where MW shepard became the victim. Yet another scenario which the defense lawyer said happened is that MW Shepard 1st touched AJ McKinney’s groin against his will, where AJ McKinney lost it, hit MW Shepard many times with a gun, after which he & RA Henderson tied him to a fence & then stole his wallet.
The jury convicted aj mckinney of felony murder. RA Henderson plead guilty before the trial to testify against AJ McKinney. AJ McKinney & RA Henderson both were junkies & both men admittedly have a history of getting into fights with others (esp. Mckinney) & shortly after MW Shepard’s attack, AJ McKinney beat up another junky/ seller. AJ McKinney’s reputation did work against him with the jury & given that they robbed mw shepard, it’s understandable why the jury ruled that it was felony murder.
But even so, let’s assume that AJ McKinney’s story is true that MW Shepard grabbed his groin against his will There are no other witnesses besides he, RA Henderson & the late MW Shepard, so only they really know why it happened. AJ McKinney did way more than what he needed to do to protect himself. If he had punched MW Shepard once or twice or even broken MW Shepard’s hand(s) & then called the police to report that MW Shepard committed sex abuse, then that would be reasonable, but beating him up & tying him to a fence wasn’t reasonable force because once the danger is over you have no right to continue hitting or kill, for which he is guilty. Again don’t misunderstand, sex abuse & harassment by the victim still doesn’t justify killing him & you may only use reasonable force to protect yourself. Putting aside whatever happened in the mw shepard case, if a homos is going to harass others in public restrooms or mistreat people, then it shouldn’t be surprising if the harassee reacts violently ? It doesn’t excuse it, but it can put comprehension.
I know that I’ve added more to the discussion to repair therapy. But what it shows is the politics of this. There’s politics surrounding repair therapy where you’re condemned if you say that you believe it’s best to find a cure for homosexuality & GID. There’s also politics which surrounds ‘homophobic’ violence & the MW Shepard case has become a religion for homosexual groups. With ‘homophobic’ violence, you’re condemned if you suggest that the circumstances could be different from what has been reported in the press & that it’s possible that the victim was harassing, provoking & abusing his attacker.
Oh, I agree! It never ceases to amaze me what things humankind can come up with in the name of gratification.
= – 0
Just a note re: fistgate. Not only is it an old story (it appears that it got resurrected to go along with the ‘recommended reading lists by GLSEN’), it was dealt with. There were apologies and jobs lost. (This is something I just learned a few days ago while engaged in conversation with Jayhuck.)
Despite (or perhaps due to) being warned, I did make a sidetrip to Amazon.com. I didn’t linger long but it seems that heterosexually, they are referring to vaginal fisting while homosexually they refer to anal fisting.
While I deplore that NARTH uses the word ‘research’ far too liberally…observation and conjecture are NOT research, I also don’t know that I’d use Amazon.com as my standard for normalcy. Writers in search of a market often seek out the unusual or that which hasn’t been written about.
My personal belief is that both heterosexually and homosexually, science hasn’t delved much at all into the various sexual practices…how often they occur, who favors what, what the motivators are, what physical repercussions there might be. It’s an area of serious study that should not be overlooked but, the evidence points out, that NARTH hasn’t done ‘serious study’ either.
Ah, but it’s not just you, CW. What about the rest of us?
I meant to type, “doesn’t like”.
Yes, CW. This is true, The questions are (1) Is it efficacious — that is, does it result in orientation change? (2) Is it safe? and (3) Should we try to “repair” something just because someone does like being that way? Maybe what needs “repair” is the idea it needs to be fixed.
I think NARTH’s science speaks for itself.
NARTH is not a research organisation, it’s an openly partisan advocacy group that pretends to be “scientific”.
This sound more like most of the progay propagandist who have tried to create the myth of a gay gene for decades now, at the expense of what is really true about same-sex attraction. Talk about a lot of politics wanting at pretend to be scientific. The problem as I have stated many times before is that nothing is as black or white as we wish it to be. There may be many causes for someone experiencing SSA and therefore there may be many different ways that this manifests itself. Because of this it is no more right that some groups insist that one must attempt to change than it is right for those who want to insist that it cannot be done. Either of these instances represent more politics than truth. When will we simply be able to allow people to make their own choices of whether they wish to work towards change or not instead of generalizing that what seems right for one group must be accepted by all others.
NARTH is not a research organisation, it’s an openly partisan advocacy group that pretends to be “scientific”.
My criticism of them can be encapsulated graphically, as here.
“You don’t use science to show you’re right, you use science to become right.”
While they use Cameron and Ritters as prime sources, while concealing the fact that they’ve been revealed in court to be frauds (not to put too fine a point on it), any conclusions they draw have to be discarded.
It’s a pity: they have some diamonds amidst the dross, there are some genuinely good articles there that do support some of their positions. Had they put them in context, they would be useful. As it is… they’re as useful as a Platygean site would be for Geophysics, or the Young Earth Creation Evangelical sites are for biology.
I have no opinion regarding their work on same-sex attraction. But their “work” – and I don’t usually use scare quotes – on transsexuality is truly awful. They ignore nearly all the data from the last 40 years, essentially, basing their entire ideology (I won’t call it a theory) on one publication with n=3. Dr Sander Breiner’s views are so far out from the mainstream now that he’s gone beyond the fringe. He ignores all the biological evidence completely. He actually doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of “evidence”, though I may be doing him an injustice here.
As Endocrinologist Harry Benjamin put it:
You’ll search in vain for any of the hundreds of papers on neuro-anatomy of transsexual people on the NARTH site.
e.g. (To name a few)
Male-to-female transsexuals show sex-atypical hypothalamus activation when smelling odorous steroids by Berglund et al Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(8):1900-1908;
Male–to–female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus. Kruiver et al J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2000) 85:2034–2041
Sexual differentiation of the human brain: relevance for gender identity, transsexualism and sexual orientation. Swaab Gynecol Endocrinol (2004) 19:301–312.
A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality. by Zhou et al Nature (1995) 378:68–70.
A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity by Garcia-Falgueras et al Brain. 2008 Dec;131(Pt 12):3132-46.
Nothing whatsover on “Nature’s Experiments”, people whose apparent sex changes over the course of their lives due to 5ARD or 17BHDD.
e.g.
17?-Hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-3 deficiency: A rare endocrine cause of male-to-female sex reversal by Silvano Bertelloni; M. Cristina Maggio; Giovanni Federico; Giampiero Baroncelli; Olaf Hiort. in Gynecological Endocrinology, Volume 22, Issue 9 September 2006 , pages 488 – 494.
Gender change in 46,XY persons with 5alpha-reductase-2 deficiency and 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-3 deficiency. by Cohen-Ketternis in Arch Sex Behav. 2005 Aug;34(4):399-410.
It’s because the existence of such conditions completely refute their ideology that they omit them.
The thing is… I believe that they’re right when they say sex is immutable, and set before birth. The evidence does point that way. But they use such mutable characteristics as chromosomes (which can change in some intersex conditions, as well as due to organ transplants), or external appearance (which can change naturally or surgically), and cherry-pick or just plain fabricate data to try to coerce reality into fitting their religiously-based ideas.
Now my own ideas could be wrong. I really doubt it, I think the mountain of evidence is overwhelming. But I publish and publicise all the data, not just that that “fits”. When the facts change, I change my opinions.
P.S.: While many straights engage in oral sex, most don’t engage in sodomy & sodomy is taboo. If the only sexual behavior left between people is penis-vaginal sex between a man & woman, then that’s fine with me.
No, the APA & AMA don’t classify same sex behaviors (homo&lesbian) as a disease or disorder, but my view is that if a cure for homosexuality is eventually found, then go for it-though they say it’s not a disease. Homosexuality isn’t defined as a disease or disorder, but that copathologies are higher among people who engage in homo&lesbian activities.-esp. homosmen. Here’s the irony- most homosexual groups, along with the AMA & APA are hostile to repair therapy to cure or better treat homosexuality for those who want to be straight. Yet most of them think it’s Ok to surgically mutilate a man to make him an artificial woman (sometimes women want to be mutilated). Because most homosexual groups along with the AMA & APA support sex change mutilations, their views don’t interest me as they only agree with science when science fits their views-I see something wrong with sex changes. In 2005, my neutral view on homosexuality changed to hostile, because of the fact most homo groups are apologists for sex changes. In some cases, kids (esp. boys) who have GID have been given puberty delaying drugs before surgical mutilation.
Yes, GID & homosexuality are different topics, but in the 2000s, the term LBGT became popularized. To most homosexual groups & the American Medical Association (AMA), it’s wrong for a homoesexual to seek repair therapy to change to straight activities, but it’s Ok to surgically maim men & women to make them artficial members of the opposite sex. This position that the AMA has is rubbish.
No, the existence of homo&lesbian sexual behaviors has no positive nor negative impact on my life. Same sex behaviors have been around since time started. & will be around for some time to come. But if same sex behaviors & sex changes eventually disappear, then you should not lose sleep over it. Again, this isn’t based on any religious thinking, as I ‘m not a religious person though not an atheist. It’s based on why should you care if homosexuality were cured Repair therapy exists because there are homosexuals who want to be straight. If same sex behaviors disappeared because science discovers how to cure them, then why, is it controversial if the only sexual behavior left among people is men having sex with women ?
Reminds me that I miss reading Tristan Taormino in the Village Voice.
Then again it could be your theraputic model that is used.