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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on May 22, 2012 15:40:37 GMT
Suppose researchers did find a drug that could 'cure' homosexuality and make a gay person straight. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?
Vote Good, Bad, Ugly, or Yawn
Would the FDA approve it?
On balance, would gays embrace it or oppose it?
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Post by trubble on May 24, 2012 20:57:20 GMT
I voted for ''UGLY". Did you see that Dr Robert Spitzer has bravely and humanely publicly revoked his study on the success of gay reparative therapy? This study has helped fuel the idea that homosexuality is a choice or disorder that can be rectified when in fact here's little evidence that that's the case and immense evidence that it's a natural state of being with no psychiatric overtones whatsoever. Dr Spitzer now agrees with his critics that the method of research was wholly unreliable, and has published an apology to the gay community, retracting the study. Draft of the letter: Several months ago I told you that because of my revised view of my 2001 study of reparative therapy changing sexual orientation, I was considering writing something that would acknowledge that I now judged the major critiques of the study as largely correct. After discussing my revised view of the study with Gabriel Arana, a reporter for American Prospect, and with Malcolm Ritter, an Associated Press science writer, I decided that I had to make public my current thinking about the study. Here it is.
Basic Research Question. From the beginning it was: “can some version of reparative therapy enable individuals to change their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual?” Realizing that the study design made it impossible to answer this question, I suggested that the study could be viewed as answering the question, “how do individuals undergoing reparative therapy describe changes in sexual orientation?” – a not very interesting question.
The Fatal Flaw in the Study – There was no way to judge the credibility of subject reports of change in sexual orientation. I offered several (unconvincing) reasons why it was reasonable to assume that the subject’s reports of change were credible and not self-deception or outright lying. But the simple fact is that there was no way to determine if the subject’s accounts of change were valid.
I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some “highly motivated” individuals.
Robert Spitzer. M.D. Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University Source 1: www.truthwinsout.org/news/2012/04/24542/Incidentally, Dr Spitzer was also responsible for removing the word ''homosexual'' from the official list of psychiatric disorders: Up into the 1970s, the field’s diagnostic manual classified homosexuality as an illness, calling it a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” Many therapists offered treatment, including Freudian analysts who dominated the field at the time.
Advocates for gay people objected furiously, and in 1970, one year after the landmark Stonewall protests to stop police raids at a New York bar, a team of gay rights protesters heckled a meeting of behavioral therapists in New York to discuss the topic. The meeting broke up, but not before a young Columbia University professor sat down with the protesters to hear their case.
“I’ve always been drawn to controversy, and what I was hearing made sense,” said Dr. Spitzer, in an interview at his Princeton home last week. “And I began to think, well, if it is a mental disorder, then what makes it one?”
He compared homosexuality with other conditions defined as disorders, like depression and alcohol dependence, and saw immediately that the latter caused marked distress or impairment, while homosexuality often did not.
He also saw an opportunity to do something about it. Dr. Spitzer was then a junior member of on an American Psychiatric Association committee helping to rewrite the field’s diagnostic manual, and he promptly organized a symposium to discuss the place of homosexuality.
That kicked off a series of bitter debates, pitting Dr. Spitzer against a pair of influential senior psychiatrists who would not budge. In the end, the psychiatric association in 1973 sided with Dr. Spitzer, deciding to drop homosexuality from its manual and replace it with his alternative, “sexual orientation disturbance,” to identify people whose sexual orientation, gay or straight, caused them distress.
The arcane language notwithstanding, homosexuality was no longer a “disorder.” Dr. Spitzer achieved a civil rights breakthrough in record time.
Source 2: New York Times article: www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/health/dr-robert-l-spitzer-noted-psychiatrist-apologizes-for-study-on-gay-cure.html
(I recommend reading the whole article. The New York Times is a subscription based publication but offers 10 articles for free per month.)
My own unqualified thoughts, for what it's worth, are as follows: Perhaps there are a minority of people who would like to take that pill but perhaps they would prefer if the rest of society took a pill that made it easy to be gay in society. I suspect the latter. I think, all in all, that embracing a drug that makes a ''gay person straight' would be a huge step backwards for everyone concerned. Most people in the free world are comfortable with homosexuality and don't see it as something that should be ''cured'' - by pill or anything else. And I think that Dr Spitzer is a rather remarkable man. A good one.
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Post by sadie1263 on May 24, 2012 21:24:39 GMT
Think it is ridiculous......are we going to start curing all personality traits or characteristics that "someone else" doesn't like or agree with??? Wonder who gets to decide what all the "correct" or "good" behavior is.........now that would be ugly.
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Post by Hunny on May 24, 2012 23:15:45 GMT
~ugly ~the fda would support it if their drug company bosses told them to because there's profit in it, and for no other reason ~gays would reject it. it's their identity.
And Trubble, thank you for that post. Very informative.
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♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on May 25, 2012 4:37:25 GMT
If someone doesn't want to be homosexual they should have the option to switch their orientation. I'm assuming this theoretical pill has no bad side effects.
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Post by trubble on May 25, 2012 10:08:44 GMT
And if someone doesn't want to be heterosexual? A pill for that too?
How about if someone doesn't want to fancy blond people? Or what if someone would like a pill to make them stop being attracted to tall people?
Bit barmy, right?
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Post by Hunny on May 25, 2012 12:38:33 GMT
If someone doesn't want to be homosexual they should have the option to switch their orientation. I'm assuming this theoretical pill has no bad side effects. Since being gay is a result of brain structure, not chemistry, the pill would almost have to have the usual list of nasty side effects that all types of pills come with, because it would be an invasive/unnatural ingredient added to one's blood. Side effects would probably include: sitting with legs wide open, scratching and cupping of the genital area, spitting, voting republican, passing gas openly, exclaiming "how's that grab ya' ?!" and an OCD-like interest in women's butts, (if not also a weird interest in having breasts be larger than their head)
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Post by Hunny on May 25, 2012 13:06:05 GMT
And if someone doesn't want to be heterosexual? A pill for that too? How about if someone doesn't want to fancy blond people? Or what if someone would like a pill to make them stop being attracted to tall people? Bit barmy, right? yes! And I want an anti-republican pill, because I see republicanism as the result of brainwashing, and the unwillingness to change from it as an antisocial personality disorder* * Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is described by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth edition (DSM-IV-TR), as an Axis II personality disorder characterized by "...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood."(-->I am joking guys. I joke. It's what i do. XD
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Post by Synonym on May 25, 2012 13:29:46 GMT
If it is possible I think that people should be allowed to change their sexual orientation as they are their gender, but subject to similar checks and balances.
I voted yawn because I do not consider it either good or bad, and their was no neither option.
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Post by Deleted on May 25, 2012 16:49:12 GMT
If someone doesn't want to be homosexual they should have the option to switch their orientation. I'm assuming this theoretical pill has no bad side effects. Suppose a friend tells you she is fed up with men and wants to be attracted to women; something she can't achieve now, however hard she tries . Will you support giving her a "cure" for her heterosexuality?
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♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on May 25, 2012 16:50:51 GMT
This trailer to the film "Prayers for Bobby" might not be viewable for our members in the UK. It's about a teenage boy, who tries to free himself of his homosexuality and ends up committing suicide. A pill to change his sexual orientation certainly would have been preferable.
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Post by trubble on May 25, 2012 16:53:28 GMT
But a change in how society -- or certain people in society -- view homosexuality would be even more useful. No?
As skylark says, do you think we should try to cure heterosexuality?
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Post by Deleted on May 25, 2012 16:54:39 GMT
No, I can't view that. But I would be interested to know why Bobby was so keen to change his orientation: was it, I wonder, because of lack of support and understanding from family and friends? Bullying by anti-gays?
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Post by trubble on May 25, 2012 17:01:55 GMT
Being raised to view homosexuality as a disorder? Or as wrong? Or even as weird? I wonder if any left handed people ever felt like that.
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Post by toby on May 25, 2012 18:02:38 GMT
trubble posted.;-Most people in the free world are comfortable with homosexuality and don't see it as something that should be ''cured'' - by pill or anything else.
Toby asks.:- if this were so then there would be no discussion about homosexuals, would there ?
The facts are against your hypothesis, most folk in the free world accept that they have to respect homosexuals because if they do not then the Polis would come down hard on them due to many Laws passed favouring homosexuals and their antics. Remove all these Laws and you would probably find homosexuals being persecuted, ridiculed and laughed at with the usual plethora of anti-queer jokes made as there used to be back in the good old days.
It cannot be easy being homo !
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Post by toby on May 25, 2012 18:06:01 GMT
skylark posted.;-Suppose a friend tells you she is fed up with men and wants to be attracted to women; something she can't achieve now, however hard she tries . Will you support giving her a "cure" for her heterosexuality?
Toby comments.;- Freedom of Choice is everything, I would let her take the pill.
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Post by toby on May 25, 2012 18:12:08 GMT
Trubble posted.;-Being raised to view homosexuality as a disorder? Or as wrong? Or even as weird? I wonder if any left handed people ever felt like that.
Toby's comment.:- Of course they did ! Left handedness or being a ,'Cuddy Whifter', as they say in the north East, is positively sinister. Right handedness is referred to as being Dextrous.
Not for nothing did the Romans and Greeks put labels on aberrations. I forget what they called queerness but as you all know, male homosexality originated in the city of Sodom and the inhabitants were called Sodomites. I suppose female Homosexuality originated on the Island of Lesbos.
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Post by sadie1263 on May 25, 2012 18:46:38 GMT
Ahhh....Toby.......you are entertaining. Lesbos.......that's funny.
There are so many problems in the world that are soooooo serious......I would hope scientists would spend their time on things that would be beneficial.
There will always be lifestyles or choices that someone else would not agree with........so it is not possible for everyone to be happy! If you don't like who someone else is having sex with.....either stop watching or participating....how else it effects you I have yet to figure out.
How about we concentrate on cures for war and disease..........
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Post by trubble on May 25, 2012 20:18:56 GMT
The facts are against your hypothesis, Surveys regarding attitudes to homosexuality beg to differ. In America, Canada, the UK (and Ireland) the swing is decidedly towards a more liberal and accepting attitude. (The same goes for South America and Australia, and maybe others) Across Europe, the majority of people accept/defend/feel positive about homosexuality. In Africa and Russia the majority still sees it as you do. Interestingly, (imho), the biggest divide between groups is age. Those born in the eighties and nineties show the biggest acceptance, those born in the 20s and 30s and even the start of the 40s, show the least acceptance. The world is a-changing, and not because the polis are forcing it but because we have a constant supply of new generations and each one is throwing off the older generations' fears. I'm middle-aged. I'm not as liberal as my daughter about this issue, she thinks gay people should be adopting, marrying in churches and becoming bishops. (Hey, she's not that out there because that is what they are doing). I think there should be discussion about these things but I am gradually becoming as militant as her. My father thinks it's all bizarre and doesn't really like it but when he meets someone who is gay he always finds a way to say 'but they don't count (as bizarre) because they are so nice (He might one day realise that what he's really saying is that his preconceptions and bigotry is not supported by experience). Finally, my grandfather, RIP, would be turning in his grave at the thought of gay marriage. We have discussions because we are a civilised community, but most of the nay saying (in general terms) comes from a dying breed. The future is pink.
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Post by Hunny on May 25, 2012 22:11:45 GMT
trubble posted.;-Most people in the free world are comfortable with homosexuality and don't see it as something that should be ''cured'' - by pill or anything else. Toby asks.:- if this were so then there would be no discussion about homosexuals, would there ? That is an incorrect assumption. Just the opposite is true. It is the things which don't get talked about which are kept in the dark. The facts are against your hypothesis, most folk in the free world accept that they have to respect homosexuals because if they do not then the Polis would come down hard on them due to many Laws passed favouring homosexuals and their antics. Remove all these Laws and you would probably find homosexuals being persecuted, ridiculed and laughed at with the usual plethora of anti-queer jokes made as there used to be back in the good old days. It cannot be easy being homo ! No, it actually can. And it more and moreso is. Hatred towards what is merely a naturally occurring segment of the population has been easing up for decades. It's a trend which you cannot stop. There are less and less who share your view all the time. You are a minority now. And you will stay that way. Has it not occurred to you there's a REASON for laws being passed? We pass laws against undesirable behavior. And notice it isn't being gay which laws are being passed against; it's your attitude which society has deemed bad enough to be illegal.
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