Surveys indicate as much as 70 percent of the American public is "homophobic." That misnomer suggests that people fear homosexuals; a more appropriate term would be homomisic, from the Greek term misos ("hatred"), since many Americans actually hate gays.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1977, 10:559-571, Number 3, Fall 1977
It is widely considered that cure is impossible, because autism involves aspects of brain structure that are determined very early in development. However, there are persistent claims that some individuals after diagnosis have been helped to recover.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 1974, 7:173-190; Number 2 (Summer 1974)
When a six year old boy discovers his mother's blue ball gown and begins lip synching to Judy Garland, he soon finds himself visiting a Dr. Richard Green at the U.C.L.A. Neuro Psychiatric Department with 63 other sissy boys
The claim that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people can be "cured" has more to do with the Right's political objectives and its bitter opposition to equal rights than with genuine caring.
In the past, medical researchers attempted to change sexual orientation through psychotherapy, aversion therapy, nausea producing drugs, castration, injections of estrogen, LSD, hypnosis, electric shock, brain surgery, breast amputations, etc.
'Conversion' groups promise the impossible. Years are spent in prayer, fasting, in isolation, and, in extreme cases, undergoing torturous procedures such as electro-shock therapy. Sham marriages, fake relationships, and inner pain are the only results.
A widening segment of gender non-conforming youth and adults are subject to diagnosis of psychosexual disorder, severe stigma, and loss of civil liberty.
I am an ex-gay survivor. That means a lot to me because for over 17 years of my adult life, I trapped myself in the futile quest to become straight. I wish I were the only person who put himself through such a painful experience, but there are many of us who strove to change and finally embraced ourselves for who we were created to be. There are some today still caught in the midst of the struggle.
Across the country, there are parents who have looked at their "gender-atypical" little girls and boys and decided that the kids needed psychiatric treatment.
Positive reinforcement for normal sex-typed play, normal speech pattern and gender-appropriate behavioral mannerisms has been found to be effective in the clinic, home and school.
We recognize today that trying to convert left-handers into right-handers is misguided. Left-handedness is not an illness. Neither is homosexuality. Yet, promoting so-called reparative therapy is a priority for antigay activists.
Many minority groups have seen the deliberate use of diagnosis as a tool of oppression designed to punish and control individuals who fail to conform to a dominant or controlling group’s expectations.
Dr. Paul Cameron is the man behind the false statistics used by the radical right. He is responsible for such statistics as "the average life span of a homosexual is 39 years old." However, his statistics have never been accepted by any mainstream psychological, psychiatric, epidemiological or sociological organizations.
This book review explores the experience of youth who do not conform to the stereotypical male model and, in turn, suffer severe harassment and discrimination.
Richard Green of UCLA followed into adulthood a group of effeminate boys and a control group of masculine boys. He found massive differences in the likelihood they would become homosexuals.
The past three decades have witnessed a well-publicized trend for certain vocal elements in education and the media in American culture to sharply question the legitimacy of many, if not all, sex role distinctions in the socialization of children.
Rekers and Lovaas go to great lengths to explain why it was important to behaviorally treat a child like Kraig. The first reason was that the child will be scorned by his playmates; that it is easier to change the child than the society in which he lives.
Here we have three studies said to link genes to different behaviours, but we need to remember correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Only in the first has an actual causation been shown and, even then, it was variable.
Among mental health professionals, the normal variant model of homosexuality is a relatively modern one and has proved sufficiently compelling to become the dominant clinical paradigm.
Heavily influenced by the conservative Cold War era, psychoanalysis slowly became the defender of the political and cultural status quo. This led to a plethora of bizarre 'scientific' theories about homosexuality.
This paper examines the relationship between the growing visibility of male homosexuality in Brazil’s two most important urban centers and the increase in writings about same-sex eroticism by physicians, criminologists, and jurists...
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Fall 1977, pp. 553-557
Like all students, those who are or are perceived to be lesbian, gay, or bisexual are protected by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which, among other things, requires the separation of church and state.
A non-profit, educational organization dedicated to affirming a complementary, male-female model of gender and sexuality.
As with any societal prejudice, anti-homosexual bias negatively affects mental health, contributing to an enduring sense of stigma and pervasive self-criticism in people of same-gender sexual orientation through the internalization of such prejudice.
Reparative therapies assume that homosexuality is a mental disorder, and not a fixed sexual orientation, and should thus be repathologized as such.
Not to be gay is as much a decision and a conscious choice about one's self-identity as deciding to be gay.
He has specialized in addressing the complexities involved with the anti-gay theory known both as Reparative Therapy and Sexual Conversion Therapy, which purports to prevent and cure homosexuality.
Even if no ample evidence supports such a claim (that sexual orientation is biologically determined), 'reparative' therapy on children should still be considered abuse and neglect because of its damaging effects.
What happens when a child is born, and the attending physicians look to declare, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl”, but cannot clearly decide?
The UCLA study... concentrated (its) efforts on behavioural techniques of reward and punishment to extinguish the undesirable cross gendered behaviours of nonconforming children.
Corbet talks about feminine boys -- both hetero and homo -- who should not be pathologized by GID. He argues that basically this diagnosis is being used to pathologize and then convert feminine boys back to being ordinarily gendered boys.
In personality and abnormal psychology, you might discuss the ways in which notions of pathology are rooted in sociohistorical conditions and ideologies, using illustrations that focus on many forms of diversity.
An exploration into dual citizenship (homosexuality and autism) and changing the work environment for everyone's benefit. Presented for the Out & Equal conference in Minneapolis.
Our study shows the negative consequences of defining same sex attraction as a mental illness and designing treatments to eradicate it. It serves as a warning against the use of mental health services to change aspects of human behaviour that are disapproved of on social, political, moral, or religious grounds.
Modern medical practice requires an adequate evidence base for treatments and requires that clinicians and members of government consider the adequacy and appropriateness of disease entities that originate from the interplay of scientific and social perspectives.
Beginning at age 5, Karl Bryant would make the one-hour drive with his parents to the University of California, Los Angeles, every other Saturday to see psychiatrist Richard Green.
Reparative therapy will appear to make sense and sound reasonable to people who don«t challenge the initial assumption that homosexuality is a disease or a complex. Failure to challenge that assumption is the crux of the matter.
The psychological, medical and psychiatric establishments agree that sexual orientation cannot be changed, and that so-called 'reparative therapy' aimed at altering gay peoples' orientations does not work and may, in fact, be harmful.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1977, 10:549-552, Number 3, Fall 1977