PlanetOut - News Planet Staff - Dec. 15, 1998

SUMMARY: The American Psychiatric Association's (APA) official diagnosis is that "cure" therapies, not homosexuality, are the disease.

The executive board of the APA voted unanimously on December 11 to adopt a resolution rejecting therapies which purport to change homosexual orientation to heterosexual. "All the evidence would indicate this [orientation] is the way people are born. We treat disease, not the way people are," said Nada Stotland, the APA's public affairs committee head. The move was in part a reaction to the so-called "Truth in Love" advertising campaign promoting such therapies, which was mounted by a coalition of religious right organizations earlier this year. It also mirrored a 1997 resolution by the American Psychological Association.

"The very existence of therapy that is supposed to change people's sexuality even for people who don't take it, is harmful because it implies that they have a disease. There is evidence that the belief itself can trigger depression and anxiety," Stotland said

The APA resolution says that, "The potential risks of 'reparative therapy' are great, including depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudice against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient. Many patients who have undergone 'reparative therapy' relate that they were inaccurately told that homosexuals are lonely, unhappy individuals who never achieve acceptance or satisfaction. The possibility that the person might achieve happiness and satisfying interpersonal relationships as a gay man or lesbian is not presented, nor are alternative approaches to dealing with the effects of societal stigmatization discussed...the APA opposes any psychiatric treatment, such as 'reparative' or 'conversion' therapy which is based on the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based on a prior assumption that the patient should change his/her sexual orientation." The APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973.

In applauding the resolution, David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign described conversion programs as "psychological terrorism used by religious groups as a tool to undermine fair public policy for lesbian and gay citizens." Hr.'s press statement noted that the "Truth in Love" campaign point person Janet Flogger had told the "New York Times" that her goal was to "strike at the assumption that homosexuality is an immutable trait and that gay people therefore don't need protection under anti-discrimination laws."

Reporters asked APA's Stotland if the "Truth in Love" ad campaign might have contributed to the events like the bashing death of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. Stotland's responded that spreading the notion that homosexuality was an evil or a disease might serve to make people feel less inhibited about beating up gays or not giving them jobs."

But "ex-gay" John Paulk, staff member at James Dobson's Focus on the Farnily (A sponsor of the ad campaign), rejects evidence for a biological basis for homosexuality, and also says its not proven that homosexual orientation can't be changed (although not even the conversion programs themselves can give much more than anecdotal evidence of their success). Of the APA statement, he said, "This makes it more difficult for clients who want to be treated for unwanted homosexuality."

The APA has funded a major review of research on homosexuality, to be published in 1999, by Chicago analysts Dr. Robert Galatzer-Levy and Dr. Bertam Cohler. These authors have also found evidence for a biological basis for homosexuality to be "inconclusive," but add that "homosexuality is not associated with any psycho-pathology in any way," and that, "there is no evidence that any form of therapy, including psychoanalysis and Christian therapies, can change sexual orientation." Galatzer-Levy concluded that, "We simply don't have enough good information, and one of our major points is to emphasize and to be comfortable with how much we don't know.