I realize that many of my blogs in the past half year have revolved around my mother's severing contact over an unwillingness to refrain from preaching her view that god hates homosexuality and that it's a lifestyle choice she merely "disagrees" with. Many conservatives now argue that they're not bigots, but merely hold a difference of opinion (though last I checked, the definition of a bigot involved differences in opinion over the value, worth, and range of autonomy of types of beings you dislike?
C'est la meme chose?).
A few years back, my mother visited me, and while I was at work began reading my back issues of Mother Jones magazine. I was pretty ecstatic about this... though I hear this wasn't always so, for the time I've read
Mother Jones this past decade I've perceived it as a philosophically left, but empirically balanced sort of news magazine that strives toward reflecting reality without obsessing over political labels (although, Stephen Colbert often lamented during the Bush Administration, reality does have a liberal bias). I bought my mother a subscription, and she has enjoyed it since... it seemed to soften her more knee jerk moments of conservatism, and she seemed a little less hateful of those different from herself. With the exception of gays and lesbians.
I learned today through a link-back to an older article that
Mother Jones hasn't exactly helped me on this one. In what was likely a column in her first subscription to
MoJo, an
article by psychologist Greg Greenberg argued, in that same balanced-seeming, resource-citing way, that sexuality was likely more a choice than fate. As I believe I've commented before, belief that non-heterosexual orientations are a choice are highly correlated with anti-gay social and political views (and vice versa) -
though there's good evidence that the prejudice comes first and this may be the most popular justification for it. My criticism is not that an article appeared I disagreed with, however, but that one appeared that mis-cited data, presented contrary opinions as political talking points, and implied that a fairly radical anti-gay group was, perhaps, worth listening to more closely.
Unskeptical Swallowing of InformationGreenberg opened with a story of a man, labeled "Aaron," who had disliked his sexual orientation and pursued "treatment" to change it. Though unsuccessful in his attempts at sex with women, he had maintained celibacy from men and avoided intimacy. The author describes him nervously flinching from inadvertent physical contact, but hedges on whether this "ex-gay" is merely suppressing his sexual attraction to men. Greenberg prints, without refutation (all of these theories of the etiology of homosexuality have failed empirical scrutiny) Aaron's recollection of his therapy:
"It turns out that I didn't have the faintest idea what love was," he says. That's not all he didn't know. He also didn't know that his same-sex attraction, far from being inborn and inescapable, was a thirst for the love that he had not received from his father, a cold and distant man prone to angry outbursts, coupled with a fear of women kindled by his intrusive and overbearing mother, all of which added up to a man who wanted to have sex with other men just so he could get some male attention. He didn't understand any of this, he tells me, until he found a reparative therapist whom he consulted by phone for nearly 10 years, attended weekend workshops, and learned how to "be a man."
I don't question Greenberg's choice as a journalist that this account and the therapy are interesting and should be reported. Greenberg has made a point of self-identifying as a clinical psychologist versed in the current research, however - leaving these statements standing without question implies that they haven't been researched and failed, both as interventions and as causes of homosexuality. Additionally, when Greenberg claims that "It wasn't a matter of ignorance—he has an advanced degree—and it really wasn't a psychopathological thing—he rejects the idea that he's ever suffered from internalized homophobia. He just didn't want to be gay, and, like millions of Americans dissatisfied with their lives, he sought professional help and reinvented himself," he should have been skeptical. First, regardless of the source of the advanced degree, it obviously included no information on sexuality or gender. Additionally, just not wanting to be gay, and seeking professional help, actually are hallmarks (and frequently, requirements) for considering whether an individual possesses internalized homophobia. When John Martin and Laura Dean at Columbia University began studying internalized homophobia in the 1980s, they actually were careful to include a desire to no longer be homosexual as central to their measure (Martin & Dean, 1987). Nungesser's (1988) popular internalized homophobia scale went further, asking if a person had ever sought treatment to change his sexuality (acknowledging yes was considered evidence of internalized homophobia). Greenberg doesn't provide this information, and leaves it up to the reader; he appears to accept this answer as good enough, however.
Later, Greenberg describes attending the annual NARTH conference. NARTH (the National Association for the Research and Treatment of Homosexuality) was formed by psychoanalytically-inclined psychiatrists angry over the removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM-III (despite
research going back to the 1950s that challenged its role as a neurotic disorder). They parrot similar views to that stated above, conflating gender and sexuality, and promoting a view that being a real man or woman and quenching same-sex desires for affection that your parents neglected to fulfill will eliminate same-sex attraction (again, all of this has failed in nearly an entire century to find support in the research).
Untruths and Half TruthsWorse than eating the propaganda of anti-gay groups and failed ex-gays whole, however, is Greenberg's sophomoric revisionism of cutting edge sexuality research, and dismissal of that research that he disagrees with. I actually agree with his contention that there are bigger and better fish to fry in the struggle for queer rights than perseverating too obsessively on defending non-heterosexual orientations as the result of biological precursors we don't fully understand. In fact, the only reference to a large body of research on biological (specifically, neo-natal) effects on the development of sexuality are presented as political talking points of the
HRC's Wayne Beson. Greenberg doesn't weigh in on the biological arguments, and forgets to mention that Wayne Beson isn't just a random man on the street, but photographed John Paulk - the ex-gay featured in a
Newsweek article that Aaron, interviewed above, says inspired him to seek treatment - leaving a gay bar in D.C. This formed the basis of Beson's book,
Anything But Straight, which documented the near universal history of the founders of ex-gay organizations to come back out of the closet, backslide, or admit to no personal change.
Greenberg also describes the excitement of NARTH conference attendees at the publication of an article by Dr. Spitzer supporting conversion therapies. He doesn't go into the extensive caveats Spitzer put in the article, the politics behind it (
Exodus International, the ex-gay ministry recently linked to the Kill Gays Bill in Uganda, had hand-picked the interviewees), and even
Dr. Spitzer had quickly distanced himself from the results of the brief phone survey after realizing he had been duped into being a pawn in a game he was unfamiliar with.
He extensively abused his quotations and interviews with Dr. Lisa Diamond, a psychologist and researcher of women's sexuality whose work I'm familiar with and fond of. While noting Diamond's comment that there's a difference between sexuality being fluid or changing over the lifespan and the concept of "choice," Greenberg moves on to the peanut gallery at NARTH to reinterpret this, adding his own perception that their views aren't "all that different." The proof is in the pudding, however. Diamond's work, as she frequently points out, outlines differences in womens' sexuality that set it apart from mens';
the point of highlighting sexual fluidity and changing attraction over the lifespan in women is that research on men doesn't support this, and seems instead to favor older models of one's sexuality as set early (or inborn), stable, and unresponsive to willful efforts to change. When NARTH glosses over this, Greenberg joins them, and a unique experience of some women is stretched to breaking in its application to all humans.
Greenberg should also be aware of the limits and rules around peer-reviewed publications. He sympathetically reports the claim of a NARTH conference attendee, Elan Karten, that, no really, he does have data that proves gays can change - his dissertation proved it! Those evil forces in charge of the research journals are blocking him from publication, however. This seems like a cute story, and getting published is tough - I can tell you from my own poor submission history that sometimes a board will agree that you have great data, interesting results, but in some way it doesn't fit their vision of what's appropriate for their journal. Good data on such a controversial topic, however, seems more, rather than less, likely to be published, despite Greenberg's frequent and bizarre claim that it's the result of an APA ban.
Shame on Mother JonesI'm a long-time fan of
Mother Jones; I realized thinking over the dates I was moving cross-country to my post-doc when this article was published, and likely had no time to read recent issues. This story is still linked back to, however (which is why I came across it today), still stands alone as the only coverage I could find
Mother Jones has committed to this topic, and it takes a professional to know the above facts that Greenberg isn't sharing. Spitzer and Diamond's work doesn't support change or the possibility of change for unhappy gays, Aaron's life sounds tragic and I would go so far as to say he was unethically mistreated by his therapists, and NARTH is still an organization of anti-gay villains with a chip on their shoulder and lies in their mouth. When will
that be worthy of coverage?