Religion and sexuality – Page 195

View from the other side of the pond

Feedback from a Dutch writer, with permission. Do you think Wiskerke is correct?

Dear Warren Throckmorton,

I’ve read your article ‘Why Do I Have These Feelings’ on the internet. As an European Christian (Dutch), rather conservative, I can identify with your vision on the origins of homosexuality. I have written ‘as an European Christian’, because I’ve got the impression that American evangelicals in general emphasize over and over again that homosexuality is not a congenital orientation, as if they need that to defend that homosexual relations are wrong. In my observation (which is limited) American evangelicals are quite militant in this, with the Ted Haggard story as one of the results: he had (and has) to deny that he has an homosexual orientation, although that may be the case (but who am I to decide that), with the risk to create a virtual image of himself and the obligation to live by that image.

Am I right that your vision on the origins of homosexuality is rare amongst American evangelicals? In the Netherlands, even conservative Christians who don’t condone homosexual relationships are not afraid to see homosexuality as an orientation that has a complex origin, and probably has a congenital dimension. There are church members/elders/pastors who can say that they have a homosexual orientation, and that they expect to live with that their whole life, but they choose to abandon homosexual relationships. Is my conception right that this approach is not very known among American evangelicals?

With regards,

C. Wiskerke,

Writer

NPR reports on the Phoenix Love Won Out

NPR was in Phoenix and reported on the Love Won Out conference there. Clicking the link will begin streaming the 5 minute segment.

Here is a story based on the broadcast.

Montel Williams Show to again focus on sexual orientation

Tomorrow Alan Chambers joins a guest panel to discuss homosexuality on the The Montel Williams Show. The show will also feature Tom and Donna Cole, former homosexuals who have a ministry to Christians struggling with sexual and relational issues. I am pretty sure Richard Cohen may have some role on the program.

This comes from an Exodus News Release. Nothing is on the Montel Williams Show website about the segment as yet.

UPDATE: 2/28/07 – Unless Montel’s website is wrong, the appearance by Alan Chambers is most likely being taped today for later broadcast.

Ted Haggard’s team clarifies the situation

I missed this February 19, Denver Post article regarding clarifications in reports that Ted Haggard might see himself as being free of same-sex attractions. Frequent commenter gordo brought this to my attention on a previous post.

This quote indicates a more process view than the earlier reports: “”There should be no confusion that deliverance from habitual, life-controlling problems is a journey and not an event,” Stockstill said. “Ted will need years of accountability to demonstrate his victory over both actions and tendencies.”

It appears he may see himself as heterosexual with a homosexual problem. However, he sees himself, one thing I am impressed with is the transparency of the New Life Church.

American Psychological Association responds to “external organizations”

The American Psychological Association has issued a call for nominations titled: Call for Nominations for the Board of Director’s Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. The charge of the Task Force is threefold:

(1) To revise and update the APA resolution Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation (1997);

(2) To generate a report that includes the following:

(a) The appropriate application of affirmative therapeutic interventions for children and adolescents who present a desire to change either their sexual orientation or their behavioral expression of their sexual orientation, or both, or whose guardian expresses a desire for the minor to change;

(b) The appropriate application of affirmative therapeutic interventions for adults who present a desire to change their sexual orientation or their behavioral expression of their sexual orientation, or both;

(c) The presence of adolescent inpatient facilities that offer coercive treatment designed to change sexual orientation or the behavioral expression of sexual orientation;

(d) Education, training, and research issues as they pertain to such therapeutic interventions;

(e) Recommendations regarding treatment protocols that promote stereotyped gender normative behavior to mitigate behaviors that are perceived to be indicators that a child will develop a homosexual orientation in adolescence and adulthood;

(3) To inform the Association’s response to groups that promote treatments to change sexual orientation or its behavioral expression and to support public policy that furthers affirmative therapeutic interventions.

Why convene a task force?

The call for nominations refers to a need to revise the APA guidelines on therapeutic responses and to “research and scholarship” relating to conversion therapy. What I think is amazing is this lenghty sentence:

Several external organizations have recommended that APA update its policy, because of their concerns about the continued visibility of reparative therapy practitioners and treatment facilities and about the role of advocacy for reparative theory in attempts to shape public opinion about the nature of sexual orientation and to support an anti-gay activist role in legislative and judicial arenas.

I wonder which extermal organizations did the recommending? I wonder what they want the APA to say?

I know of several individuals that have asked the APA to consider the need for guidelines when religion and sexuality conflict. However, I do not see this issue in the call for nominations. I hope there will not be a move to prohibit sexual identity therapy.

UPDATE: 2/23/07 – Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink interviewed APA’s Clinton Anderson who identified PFLAG and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force as two groups who recommended that the APA review their policies. This was a short report and so I understand my concerns over sexual identity therapy could not be fully articulated. As any regular reader of this blog will know, I am not an apologist for reparative therapy but I am concerned that advocacy groups can move the APA to form a task force to craft scientific policy for political use.