Recently, on the Joni Show, ex-gay therapist Jerry Mungadze said his therapy helps rewire the brains of gay clients. Listen (see RWW for transcript):
If you want the full context, go to this segment on the Joni Show and hear the rest.
Mungadze did not say how he accomplished this or how he tested it. His website mentions neurotherapy but we are not given many specifics.
Being aware that Michael Bailey at Northwestern University has challenged ex-gay therapists to send clients to his lab for brain scans to assess change in sexual arousal patterns. I asked him if he was open to issuing the same challenge to Mungadze. As I expected he agreed enthusiastically. Essentially, the challenge requires that Mungadze send a client to his lab before and after therapy to see if sexual arousal patterns have changed. Mungadze can invite the press or any other observers if he wants to. Bailey and I have discussed this for several years and made these offers to others. Thus far, no one has taken him up on the offer. I wonder if Mungadze will.
Category: sexual orientation
Nigeria's House of Representatives Passes Gay Ban
Nigeria’s version of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill passed the Nigerian House of Representatives. Reports conflict over the immediate future of the bill. The AP reports that the bill goes to the President for signature, while others indicate that the bill will go to the Senate first.
According to the AP, the bill bans marriages or civil unions whether in a church or not. Any public displays of homosexuality will be punished. Penalties range from 10-14 years depending on offense. In the Muslim areas of the country, gays could face death by stoning. Human rights workers expect a court challenge.
It is difficult to say what effect the Nigerian action will have across Africa, most notably in Uganda where the Anti-Homosexuality Bill has been on the Parliament’s list of business to come for months.
Here is the text of the bill as of July, 2011. The Senate passed essentially this version in November, 2011 and, according to the AP, the version passed by the House is the same bill.
Related articles:
Nigeria moves to criminalize same-sex unions
Senate passed version of bill
American Anti-Gay Campaign in Africa Opposes “Fictitious Sexual Rights”
Christopher Doyle Misinforms Public on New Jersey Sexual Reorientation Bill
Like Matt Barber before him, Christopher Doyle is misleading his evangelical peers about a New Jersey bill which would prohibit sexual orientation change efforts for minors. Here is what Doyle told Christian Post readers:
The bill is being dubbed the Jerry Sandusky Victimization Act, because when sexually abused children are denied treatment to resolve the symptoms of trauma, criminals like convicted pedophile and former Penn State University football coach Jerry Sandusky, go undiscovered, sometimes for decades.
If this legislation becomes law, monsters like Sandusky will have more protection to victimize, because children who develop SSA as a result of abuse may never tell their parents. They may never tell their parents because organizations such as Garden State Equality, the largest gay activist group in New Jersey, are indoctrinating young people to believe that homosexuality is in-born, and if a child believes they are born gay, then the possibility of resolving homosexual feelings that result from sex abuse may never enter their mind.
Either Doyle has not read Senate Bill 2278 or he is deliberately withholding information from his readers. The New Jersey bill specifically addresses the concern about abuse. The entire bill will legislative comment is below.
SENATE, No. 2278
STATE OF NEW JERSEY, 215th LEGISLATURE
INTRODUCED OCTOBER 15, 2012
Sponsored by:
Senator RAYMOND J. LESNIAK, District 20 (Union)
Senator STEPHEN M. SWEENEY, District 3 (Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem)
Senator LORETTA WEINBERG, District 37 (Bergen)
SYNOPSIS
Protects minors by prohibiting counseling attempts to change sexual orientation.
CURRENT VERSION OF TEXT
As introduced.
AN ACT concerning the protection of minors from counseling attempts to change sexual orientation and supplementing Title 45 of the Revised Statutes.
BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:
1. a. A person who is licensed to provide professional counseling under Title 45 of the Revised Statutes, including, but not limited to, a psychiatrist, licensed practicing psychologist, certified social worker, licensed clinical social worker, licensed social worker, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified psychoanalyst, or a person who performs counseling as part of the person’s professional training for any of these professions, shall not engage in sexual orientation change efforts with a person under 18 years of age.
b. As used in this section, “sexual orientation change efforts” means the practice of seeking to change a person’s sexual persuasion, including, but not limited to, efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward a person of the same gender; except that sexual orientation change efforts shall not include counseling that:
(1) provides acceptance, support, and understanding of a person or facilitates a person’s coping, social support, and identity exploration and development, including sexual persuasion-neutral interventions to prevent or address unlawful conduct or unsafe sexual practices; and
(2) does not seek to change sexual persuasion.
2. This act shall take effect immediately.
STATEMENT
This bill prohibits counseling to change the sexual orientation of a minor.
Under the provisions of the bill, a person who is licensed to provide professional counseling, including, but not limited to, a psychiatrist, licensed practicing psychologist, certified social worker, licensed clinical social worker, licensed social worker, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified psychoanalyst, or a person who performs counseling as part of the person’s professional training, is prohibited from engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with a person under 18 years of age.
The bill defines “sexual orientation change efforts” as the practice of seeking to change a person’s sexual persuasion,including, but not limited to, efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward a person of the same gender. The term, however, does not include counseling that: provides acceptance, support, and understanding of a person or facilitates a person’s coping, social support, identity exploration and development, including sexual persuasion-neutral interventions to prevent or address unlawful conduct or unsafe sexual practices; and does not seek to change sexual persuasion.
Please note the section which addresses the issue of sexual abuse:
…except that sexual orientation change efforts shall not include counseling that:
(1) provides acceptance, support, and understanding of a person or facilitates a person’s coping, social support, and identity exploration and development, including sexual persuasion-neutral interventions to prevent or address unlawful conduct or unsafe sexual practices;
The bill correctly separates sexual abuse recovery from sexual reorientation. If a person is confused in their attractions after a trauma, then recovery from the trauma may bring some clarity to sexual attractions. This facilitation of coping and identity exploration is allowed by the law. Furthermore, the law allows therapists to discuss issues surrounding abuse (“unlawful conduct”).
In his Christian Post article, Doyle takes his opponents to task for presenting false witness. However, it seems clear that he has misrepresented the bill in his comments. Oppose the bill if you believe you should but don’t do it for false reasons.
Does the APA consider hebephilia to be normal?
That question is being asked by Ray Blanchard in a letter to the editor (read entire letter here) of the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Blanchard is the former chair of the Paraphilias Subworkgroup of the APA’s DSM V Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Workgroup. DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The new 5th edition is slated to be released any day now and has attracted much controversy for a variety of reasons.
Generally, there is no more controversial area of the DSM than the section on sexual disorders. Blanchard’s subworkgroup recommended including reference to hebephilia in the section on paraphilias in the new edition. Hebephilia is defined as primary sexual interest in children who are in early puberty (i.e., at Tanner Stages 2 and 3, often corresponding to development between ages 11 and 14). Blanchard begins his letter by noting that “on December 1, 2012, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) announced that its Board of Trustees (BOT) had voted to reject the changes to the diagnostic criteria for pedophilic disorder proposed by the Paraphilias Subworkgroup for DSM-5 and to retain the diagnostic criteria published in DSM-IV-TR [i.e., a sexual preference for prepubertal, i.e., Tanner Stage 1, children, nowadays about age 10 or younger].”
Blanchard believes the proposed change would have allowed more precise diagnosis and research of people who have sexual preferences for early pubescent children but not younger, pre-pubescent children or adults. However, for reasons that are not clear, the APA Board of Trustees did not accept the recommended changes.
The fact that the APA did not make this change raises questions. Blanchard asks if the APA wants to discourage research on hebephilia. Furthermore, Blanchard wonders if the current DSM allows for hebephilia to be diagnosed under the category “other specified paraphilic disorder.” In other words, can clinicians and researchers use the “other” category to give label to individuals with hebephilia. Ultimately, according to Blanchard, the answers to these questions may provide insight into the APA’s stance on normal sexual preferences. He writes
It remains to be seen how the BOT [board of trustees] will respond to these questions when they start to arise in real-life settings, which they will. It seems to me that there are only two possibilities. If the BOT denies that it meant to assert that the sexual preference for children in early puberty is normal, then it has to allow the diagnosis of ‘other specified paraphilic disorder (hebephilia).’ If the BOT, or someone officially speaking on behalf of the BOT or the whole APA, states or testifies that the BOT intended to prohibit the diagnosis of ‘other specified paraphilic disorder (hebephilia),’ then that is tantamount to stating that the APA’s official position is that the sexual preference for early pubertal children is normal.
Elsewhere in his letter, Blanchard states that sexual preference for early pubertal children doesn’t “square with the average layperson’s concept of sexual normalcy and probably does not square with the average clinician’s either.” I agree and believe Blanchard raises some important issues which I hope the APA will address.
Note: On May 16, I asked the APA PR dept for comment on Blanchard’s letter. No response as of today (May 17). I will post anything I get.
Based on Biased Reading of New Mortality Study, Paul Cameron Gives Sen. Portman Parenting Advice
In this month’s edition of the International Journal of Epidemiology, Morten Frisch and Jacob Simonsen reported a new study of mortality in Denmark. Paul Cameron wasted little time trotting out the study to give Senator Rob Portman advice on how to parent his gay son – tell him to get married to a woman. Apparently, any woman will do. After all, in the words of the song, what’s love got to do with it?
Cameron says he even went to Ohio to deliver his advice:
COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 24, 2013 /Christian Newswire/ — Dr. Paul Cameron, the first scientist to document the harms of secondhand smoke, went to Ohio’s capital to call upon U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) to reconsider his recently announced support for gay marriage. “Sen. Portman, gay marriage is hazardous to one’s health. For the sake of the son you love, urge him to marry a woman.”
Cameron did say at least one thing that was true in his presser:
Cameron said, “Bad science is bipartisan…”
Proven by Cameron’s own press release, bad science is indeed everywhere. And bad advice. One of the findings of the Frisch and Simonsen study is that mortality for same-sex married men is better than “unmarried, divorced and widowed men.” It is also important to note that the mortality rates for gay married men have improved since Frisch’s last study. Cameron doesn’t tell you that.
Cameron and Frisch tangled on this blog back in 2007 and 2008. Cameron made his mortality claims in a “study” presented before the Eastern Psychological Association and Frisch responded to him as a part of a nine-part series I did on gay mortality claims. Frisch’s first study on gay mortality was done in part to address Cameron’s spurious claims.
To understand more about Paul Cameron and his feelings about gays, read part 9 of the series. Disturbingly enlightening.
I have asked Morten for additional reactions and will have more reflections on the study in a coming post.