#3: Pretending They Are Cured

Everyone who is, or who has ever felt, gay knows that it feels a lot like having a disease, such as restless leg syndrome or hypothyroidism--the best thing about diseases...well, let me not get ahead of myself. MY FAVORITE thing about diseases, is that all of them have cures, especially psychological diseases--ever since that cure for depression was released to the public, no one has ever been depressed ever again and the same with herpes, which isn't psychological, but is curable, just like geighing it up. How something that is a choice also somehow needs a cure, I have no idea, but I don't question facts, not when they come from reputable sources, such as the South.

The Closets like this self-contradictory notion, because it is dumbfounding and there is no reasoning it away, and it makes no sense. That's where science comes in. Everybody knows god thinks gay guys are the gayest thing ever--but what if...WHAT IF science also thought so? What the closets have then chosen to do is construe scientific facts and theories into extra locks for their closets, but one psychologist who is a total hater and doesn't get how cures work, is trying to put a stop to this. From the Salt Lake City Tribue:

A national group that advocates "treatment" of homosexuality is being
criticized for allegedly distorting a Utah researcher's work to advance the
theory that people choose their sexual orientation - a controversial notion
rejected by mainstream psychology.

Lisa Diamond, a University of Utah psychologist whose sexual identity studies suggest a degree of "fluidity" in the sexual preferences of women, said in an interview Tuesday that the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH, misrepresents her findings. Position papers, some penned by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, an adjunct professor in the U.'s Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, point to Diamond's research as evidence that gays' sexual orientation can be straightened out through treatment - much to Diamond's dismay.


"If NARTH had read the study more carefully they would find that it
is not supported by my data at all. I bent over backward to make it difficult
for my work to be misused, and to no avail. When people are motivated to twist
something for political purposes, they'll find a way to do it," Diamond says in
a videotaped interview posted on the Internet.

"The therapists are saying, 'We can change your orientation,' when all of the data, all of the data suggest that is not the case. They say same-sex attractions can disappear - they don't," she says. Reparative therapies "do additional damage" with techniques that incorporate electroshock and nausea-inducing treatments "that leave people feeling greater shame, greater guilt, worse about themselves."

Why does this Diamond woman hate America? I'm kind of hoping she gets restless leg syndrome, so she knows how it feels...

[salt lake tribune]

[wonkette]