Tag: NARTH

Alan Osmond channels NARTH

One member of the very talented Osmond family has taken up homosexuality as an interest. Huffington Post today posted about an article on Osmond’s website as if the article was a recent one. However, apparently it was posted in July.  And the piece was not actually written by Osmond, but by Dean Byrd, NARTH board member and past-president in 1999.
In this article that Osmond quotes as an authority, Byrd wrote:

Other researchers note treatment success rates that exceed 50 percent, which is similar to the success rates for treating other difficulties.

Really? One of the studies that quoted a 50% cure rate was reported in 1967 by Harvey Kaye and the Society for Medical Psychoanalysis. However, Dr. Kaye recently told me that the study was wrong and discredited.
Despite dwindling influence among professionals (the recent conference in AZ only drew 70-80 people), NARTH continues to find support among lay people such as here in the case of Osmond. Since NARTH is mostly lay people, I guess that makes sense.

NARTH says Francis Collins is mistaken about his own work

Let’s start at the beginning of this story.
On April 4, 2007, Dean Byrd posted an article on the NARTH website titled, “‘Homosexuality Is Not Hardwired,’ Concludes Dr. Francis S. Collins, Head Of The Human Genome Project” In this article, Byrd quotes from Collins book, The Language of God, citing Collins views of the genetics and homosexuality. In it, Byrd wrote:

As Dr. Collins would agree, environment can influence gene expression, and free will determines the response to whatever predispositions might be present.
Dr. Collins succinctly reviewed the research on homosexuality and offers the following: “An area of particularly strong public interest is the genetic basis of homosexuality. Evidence from twin studies does in fact support the conclusion that heritable factors play a role in male homosexuality. However, the likelihood that the identical twin of a homosexual male will also be gay is about 20% (compared with 2-4 percent of males in the general population), indicating that sexual orientation is genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.”
Dr. Collins noted that environment, particularly childhood experiences as well as the role of free will choices affect all of us in profound ways. As researchers discover increasing levels of molecular detail about inherited factors that underlie our personalities, it’s critical that such data be used to illuminate, not provide support to idealogues.

On May 17, 2007, the editor of Ex-gay Watch, David Roberts, wrote an email to Collins asking him if Byrd’s article accurately represented Collins’ views. (The entire correspondence can be reviewed at this link.)
On May 20, 2007, Collins wrote back to Roberts saying about the Byrd article:

The words quoted by NARTH all come from the Appendix to my book “The Language of God” (pp. 260-263), but have been juxtaposed in a way that suggests a somewhat different conclusion that I intended. I would urge anyone who is concerned about the meaning to refer back to the original text.
The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence. But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved. That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.

On September 15, 2008, Greg Quinlan of PFOX told OneNewsNow that the human genome had been mapped and there was no genetic cause for homosexuality. Quinlan attributed this information to Francis Collins, seeming to paraphrase the NARTH article.
On September 19, 2008, Roberts again wrote to Collins to ask him to verify that the prior statement about Byrd’s misleading use of his views was indeed given by Collins.
On September 20, 2008, Collins wrote back to Roberts saying

Thanks for the heads up. I am truly sorry to hear that there is a continuing effort by Mr. Quinlan and others to distort this information about genetic factors in homosexuality. The facts have not changed since the e-mail message I sent you on May 20, 2007.
Regards, Francis Collins

On September 21, 2008, Roberts wrote back to Collins and asked him to copy me in the email exchange. Roberts did this because Quinlan accused Roberts of making fraudulent claims about Collins. Feeling I could be objective, Roberts wanted Collins to include me in the email loop given that I am not associated with any gay advocacy groups. I had also written Collins to verify the statements made on Roberts’ blog.
On September 21, 2008, Collins wrote back with the following message:

Hello David and Warren,
I am happy to confirm that these e-mail communications from May 2007 and yesterday are indeed authentic, and represent my best effort at summarzing what we know and what we don’t know about genetic factors in male homosexuality. I appreciate your continuing efforts to correct misstatements that seem to be circulating on the internet.
Regards, Francis Collins

This background is important in order to put NARTH’s response to Collins into context. Earlier this year, NARTH posted an article attacking David Roberts with the charge that Roberts misled Collins. NARTH did not like Collins response to Roberts and NARTH blamed Roberts for Collins’ response.
After the NARTH article came out, Roberts conducted a Freedom of Information Act request to find correspondence between the NARTH and Collins. As the result of his request, he received an undated letter sent from NARTH’s President Julie Hamilton to Collins. The letter is here and is summarized at XGW.
In this letter, Hamilton blames Roberts and me for Collins response to Byrd’s article. Is it really possible that Roberts and I persuaded the Director of the National Institutes of Health and one of the premiere scientists of our time to misread Byrd’s article? About NARTH’s letter, Roberts says,

In it, Collins is treated more like a doddering old man than the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  Even though we sent a link to the original article with our email to Collins, and it is clear from his reply that he read it, Hamilton encloses a copy noting “Although Warren Throckmorton [see this post to see where he comes in] and David Roberts led you to believe otherwise, your statements were not misrepresented by NARTH.”  No, Dr. Collins, regardless of what you think, you do agree with us — sheer arrogance.

What is NARTH saying about Dr. Collins when they tell him that he was persuaded to misunderstand his own book? It appears that NARTH will not accept that Collins means what he says. Counting his response to the American College of Pediatricians (several NARTH board members are affiliated with this group), he has spoken out three times about the way NARTH has characterized his views. NARTH’s response is to his continue to blame the messengers.
For more, see

Francis Collins rebukes the American College of Pediatricians: A closer look

Skip Narth, read Collins – UPDATED with NARTH statement

 

NARTH: We're not anti-gay, we just have anti-gay speakers at our conference

Julie Hamilton says NARTH is not homophobic with a straight face.

The reporter should have asked why they had non-researchers Michael Brown and Sharon Slater speak.

What if NARTH was a scientific organization?

Yesterday, I pointed out that most members of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) are not mental health professionals or scientists. Even though the name of the organization promotes research and therapy, three-fourths of the members are not trained or credentialed to do either activity.
Despite the constituency of the group, NARTH is promoted by religiously conservative groups as a scientific organization. One example of this is an appearance in July of this year by NARTH President Julie Hamilton on Washington Watch Weekly, a radio program of the Family Research Council. FRC has taken a lot of heat, from me included, about the information they disseminate about sexual orientation. Some of that criticism should also be directed at the sources of their misinformation. As this interview illustrates, one such source is NARTH.
Tony Perkins sets up the interview by referring to the then current controversy over Marcus Bachmann’s counseling clinic and the allegations that he provides reparative therapy. Then he gets to the interview:

There’s a bigger agenda here. They [gay advocates] want to discredit anything that has to do with Christianity. But there’s something even more troubling here. And what they are doing is that they are trying to discredit a type of therapy that’s based on scientific research and that’s why I’ve invited my next guest to join me. Dr. Julie Hamilton is the President of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH. NARTH is a professional scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction. They’re not a Christian organization per se, they are focused on the science to help people who want to escape the lifestyle of homosexuality. Dr. Hamilton is also featured by the FRC’s new documentary, The Problem with Same-Sex Marriage and you can find out more about that at FRCRadio.org.

After the introduction, he gets to the bottom line:

Perkins: It’s no surprise to us that faith based counseling is under attack but what does the scientific research say about sexual orientation and an individual’s ability to change it?
Hamilton: The research is clear that people are not simply born gay and that people can change in the area of their sexual orientation.

After some conversation about client self-determination, the interview returns to what research says about change therapy.

Perkins: Now in the wake of this attack on Congresswoman Bachmann and her husband Marcus, we see a number of quote-unquote experts, counselors parade out on cable networks, and I’ve not seen, it’s certainly not a debate, it’s one-sided and they’ve all said, ‘well, all of this type of counseling, the reparative therapy, the idea that people can come out of the lifestyle, that’s been disproven, it’s been rejected and that is harmful and should not be allowed.’
Hamilton: Ok, that’s simply not true. What’s missing from the discussion is what research really reveals. Recently, NARTH releases a landscape survey and an analysis of 125 years of data. So basically we looked back 125 years of case studies, reports and research studies looking to answer the question, is change possible? And what we found is that over the last 125 years, change of sexual orientation has been documented in the scientific literature. And so we know looking at that that for years it has been clear, and even in the recent studies it has been very clear, that people can and do change in the area of behavior as well as attraction. So, and the other thing that we looked at in our landscape review was whether or not change attempts were harmful. And we found very clearly that there is no established report of harm to individuals that therapy tends to be more helpful to people and that it is not a harmful thing. There’s no, and even the American Psychological Association did admit in a report in 2009 that there is not enough evidence to claim that it’s harmful.

There is a lot wrong with Hamilton’s defense of change therapy. First, she glosses over the fact that even the most charitable reading of studies of orientation change find that most participants aren’t successful. Second, she cites the NARTH review which dismisses the flaws in the studies conducted over those 125 years of research. In the NARTH review, George Rekers is cited and we now know the rest of the story about his failed research on gender variance and his own personal issues. The work of William Masters and Virginia Johnson is cited despite the fact that none of Masters’ co-workers have come forward to say they ever saw any of the conversion therapy clients claimed by Masters. Even Masters’ wife and co-author, Virginia Johnson had questions about the existence of the conversion cases.
Some therapists who produced case studies of cure simply made up the cases (e.g., Cornelia Wilbur in collaboration with journalist Flora Schreiber). Many of those old studies were aversive therapy studies where electric shock was used to provide pain in association with same-sex attraction. While some people reported changes, there is very little follow up to find out if they remained changed or simply adapted to the shocks. These methods were discontinued for ethical reasons. NARTH continues to tout studies of approaches no one uses now to bolster their claims. I could go on, but I’ll stop after I note that Hamilton did not mention the studies that find minimal or no change, like the Edification study where the same-sex attracted member of mixed orientation marriages reported no change in attraction on average.
What if NARTH’s representatives disclosed the problems with the research in their public statements? What if they were candid and reported that some of the old studies are flawed to the degree that they cannot be used? What if these representatives disclosed that many of those who report change continue to be attracted to the same sex? Or also mentioned that some studies find no change? What if the differences in results for men and women were disclosed? Or the existence of bisexuality was included in the discussion of what the reported changes mean? What if they reported data from studies discrediting reparative therapy?
Can you imagine a 125-year landscape review of autism or childhood schizophrenia produced in the manner NARTH touts its survey? NARTH reps would be on the radio bringing back cold, distant refrigerator mothers as the cause.
It is possible that groups like the Parents Action League, ACPEDS, and Defend the Family International (Scott Lively) could find some other way to promote their views, but if NARTH was a scientific organization it wouldn’t be NARTH.

NARTH is not primarily composed of mental health professionals

Last week, the Family Research Council promoted the annual conference of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, touting the group as “one of the best sources of information about homosexuality.” In the description of NARTH, the FRC claimed that NARTH is “primarily composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other professional therapists and counselors who offer ‘sexual reorientation therapy’ to help people overcome unwanted same-sex attractions.”
However, this is not accurate. NARTH is not composed primarily of mental health professionals. Actually, according to NARTH’s operations director, David Pruden, only about 250 of NARTH’s approximately 1000 members are mental health professionals. Furthermore, some of those 250 members who have mental health degrees are academics who write about sexuality but do not provide sexual reorientation therapy. Thus, the lion’s share of NARTH’s members consist of lay people, ministers, and activists who have an interest in the materials provided by NARTH but are not scientists or therapists.
By comparison, the American Psychological Association has 150,000 members. All mental health groups are by far much larger than NARTH. I suspect most, if not all, state chapters of these groups are larger than NARTH.
The influence of NARTH comes from the fact that religiously conservative groups like FRC recommend the organization and refer to it as a counterpart to the established organizations. However, in the mental health marketplace, NARTH is not attracting members or supporters. Given the fact that 75% of the members have no professional or scientific credentials, it seems more accurate to consider NARTH to be an advocacy group with some like-minded mental health professionals as members, rather than a scientific group.
This impression is reinforced by the fact that two prime speakers at next week’s convention in Phoenix are not scientists at all, but anti-gay activists. Sharon Slater will speak in a session about her work with United Nations’ countries, especially in Africa and the Middle East, which aims to keep laws on the books criminalizing homosexuality. Then, following Slater, will be Michael Brown who is a minister. Read this post for more about these individuals.
RELATED: What if NARTH was a scientific organization?