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04/05/2010

[Fallacies] about Youth: It's just plain reprehensible. Period.

by Jeremy Hooper

Some things that our organized opposition do in the name of the anti-gay agenda are just borderline unethical. Other efforts are downright unbelievable in their willingness to misrepresent for Jesus. The following falls to the right of that latter category.

First, here are some facts for you. Real ones. Ones that we can backed up with data and links:

All credible bodies of science are opposed to so-called "ex-gay" therapy. These include (but are not limited to)the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, National Association of Social Workers, American Counseling Association, American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and The American Academy of Physicians Assistants.

Because of this fact, the far-right social conservatives have created a stable of alternate outfits that are meant to sound and look and seem like their legitimate counterparts, in name in style in tone -- in every last way. One such organization is the American College of Pediatricians.

The American College of Pediatricians is clearly designed to confuse people into thinking its the American Academy of Pediatrics, but the truth is that it's agenda couldn't be anything close to the credible body. In fact, the organization was created to be a voice of opposition to the AAP primarily because of the topic of homosexuality, placing a specific focus on adoption by LGBT parents. One hint: "Mary and Sue would make lovely parents" is not on their talking points list.

The group has engaged in pretty humorous (read: frighteningly desperate) attempts to increase credibility. Their Wiki page was actually deleted after one of their own was caught editing the page to make the fringe group seem more mainstream. Alvin McEwen has a good take on the group's antics here.

Okay, so why are we telling you all this now? Well, because today, the Family Research Council is working to deliberately foster this anti-scientific deception. Real deception. The kind they can only back up with a noise machine filled with yes men and women willing to nod so as to keep their eyes from setting in on a tangible data set:

Two years ago, the American Psychological Association sent school superintendents a publication called "Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth." Unfortunately, it was misnamed, since what it really contained was "just the propaganda" that pro-homosexual activists want to spread. Now, a coalition of health professionals has responded by creating a resource with more objective information on the topic. Introduced to all 14,800 school district superintendents in the country with a letter from the American College of Pediatricians last week, this project went live today with a new website, www.FactsAboutYouth.com, that features valuable and factual information about sexual orientation and gender confusion for school administrators, teachers, parents, and anyone who works with youth.



For example, the project points out the danger to children and youth of encouraging them to self-identify as "gay" or "transgendered" at an early age. Research clearly shows that most children who experience gender confusion will have that confusion resolve itself as they pass through puberty, and the vast majority of young people who experience uncertainty about their sexual orientation will end up identifying as heterosexual in adulthood. Affirming young people as "gay" or "transgendered" may actually disrupt the normal developmental resolution of these issues. In addition, the earlier that a young person self-identifies as homosexual, the more likely he or she is to experience serious mental and physical health problems. Maybe FactsAboutYouth.com can help turn this year's pro-homosexual "Day of Silence" on April 16 into a "day of truth" instead.

Facts about Youth Starts with the Truth [FRC]

If one heads over to this supposedly "factual" site, one will find numerous studies from the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality and related "researchers," links to radical groups like the so-called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (itself meant to mimic the name of PFLAG), and a whole slew of "ex-gay" resources that present themselves as science even when (especially when?) they have zero credible backing. It's a truly unbelievable illusion, designed for the sole purpose --THE SOLE PURPOSE! -- of replacing research that was born in the lab with a script that was penned by politically-motivated social conservatives.

This is one of those things you really have to stop and process. We've grown so accustomed to religious right "culture war" nonsense that stuff like this can be ho-hum. But think about it. Grown adults have decided that they don't like what trained professionals think when working independently of faith motivations, so they've taken it upon themselves to alter scientific reality. A whole organization, created to send information through a predetermined anti-gay sieve, so as to tell impressionable youth (and, even more importantly, their parents) that they can "change" through the power of Jesus. And then Washington D.C. groups like FRC get in on the dangerous game, knowingly pushing a charade under the guise of "fact." Yet that cold reality doesn't stop major leaders in the Republican party, including every major GOP presidential candidate, to show up at events like the FRC's Values Voters Summit. Because this is all just politics, right? Right/left. Red/blue. Beck/Maddow. Theater, theater, theater.

Well somewhere tonight, there's a fourteen-year-old gay boy who doesn't see it that way. Hopefully when he takes to the Internet to seek scientific facts about the reality he has known his whole life, his Google will take him to this post rather than to some of the unethical machinations of a movement hellbent on "truthing" him out of his reality.

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