I’m surprised that you would identify poor parenting because I didn’t think you believed that poor parenting (in the sense above) was one of the causes of homosexuality.

You are reading me wrong. I don’t think parenting has very much to do with homosexuality. I wanted to establish that the description you provide for the kind of parenting that you say leads to homosexuality can only be described as poor.

David Pickup also wrote:

This doesn’t necessarily mean the child receives what he needs, or enough of it. If they did, we wouldn’t be discovering deeply repressed grief, anger and identity shame. In my clinical and personal experience, most, if not all, male homosexuals do not experience an attachment to their caregivers, mentoring adults or peers that is deeply connected, only in very well intentioned but “surface” ways; ways that appear to be good to some extent but tragically are not enough or at all what a child needs.

Here is where I believe you are engaging in confirmation bias and circular reasoning. The existence of these mood states you find are assumed to be due to parental deprivation of some kind. The parenting is assumed to be surface or inadequate if the client is gay. If the client is straight then the client might be wounded but apparently (to you) not as deeply as the gay client. The depth of the wound is assumed based on the current sexual orientation of the client. Straight – deep; gay – really deep.

Over the years, I have worked with clients, gay and straight, who have been shamed and what stands out to me is how similar they are. I need to add that I once thought there might be something to reparative drive theory but came to disagree with it via research findings and my experience with clients and non-client friends who are gay or have gay children. Furthermore, I have seen clients and friends deeply shamed and wounded by reparative therapists. If I have an edge to my writing on this topic, it probably is because of my empathy for them.

David Pickup – Thanks for stopping by.

You wrote:

Also, in my opinion, the use of “poor parenting” seems to carry with it a judgmental and pejorative term that suggests parents of homosexuals are necessarily horrible people. I don’t subscribe to this view.

Then you wrote:

I believe the root causes to be a severe lack of affirmation of gender identity, lack of approval by male and female role models, and lack of emotional/physical affection, mainly experienced within the crucial developmental years in which identity is first formed,

I believe you mean well, but the attribution of poor parenting seems impossible to avoid. This surely isn’t good parenting. You are saying that the parents of homosexuals did not show love nor did they approve of their children. First of all, many parents indeed are like this and homosexuality in a child does not result. Second, many homosexuals do not have such homes.

What is your explanation for the gay men and women who have parents that loved them, showed them affection, and affirmed their gender identity? I have met and know many such people. I know families like this who have gay children. And I am not taking their word for it; these are people I know well.

I would think this would be particularly true in ridigly religious families — and families where the parents had inappropriate guilt because they believed (with the help of NARTHian “therapists”) that gayness was a disorder that they had somehow “caused”.

I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist, but I am a lifelong student of theology. From that perspective, I make a few observations:

1. It is evident that many of the members speaking for NARTH are motivated by religious beliefs rather than psychological insight. I don’t mean to compartmentalize human life, but psychology and theology are distinct disciplines. There is a problem when psychologists or psychiatrists make claims that are motivated by religious beliefs under the guise of psychology. If they wish to speak as theologians, I have no problem with that (aren’t we all theologians of some sort?). But in that case, they should step out from behind their degrees and claim to be speaking only as lay students of theology.

2. As a matter of theology, if God’s expectation has been that homosexually oriented people should become heterosexual, it seems strange that God would provide the mechanism for this (reparative therapy) only in the 20th century. Assuming that people of other ages were homosexually oriented, even if they didn’t use that psychological description, what did God expect of them? Modern psychology and psychiatry is a great blessing, but it cannot be the answer to a problem which is defined by some as sin. That is theological nonsense, bordering on blasphemy, i.e., making a savior of psychology.

3. Pickup’s statement quoted above points to what may be a problem in his thinking. I don’t want to give too much weight to a single sentence, even when placed in context. But… it appears Pickup is making a distinction between the “real change” reparative therapy offers, and the “spiritual” issues with which Exodus might concern itself. I had always thought that the sanctification spoken of in Scripture meant real change! If sanctification/holiness is not the motivation for pursuing reparative therapy, then why is Pickup writing about it on an Anglican site. Let’s get real. The main motivation for most people pursuing reparative therapy is religious. Pickup knows this. So exactly what does his distinction between spiritual matters and real change mean? Or maybe the whole sentence is sarcastic, faulting Exodus for being too “spiritual,” too ethereal to be of any earthly good.

Maybe, just maybe, orientation change is not the real change God is looking for.