DanKroh

FuzzyBear, "To cast fear in the direction of those in the helping professions simply because they do not agree with ones religion makes for a dubious argument." Thank you. "I can without any reservation say the same for incest." Actually, incest is not listed, as such, as a mental disorder, either. Incest (and polygamy, for that matter) represent unique problems that many in my profession struggle with. While the basis of our social taboos for incest and polygamy are NOT based on mental health issues (birth defects for incest, and social roles for polygamy), in reality, tho

"Now this is truly priceless. Any study that I might produce that disagrees with your position is "tripe" but a study that is clearly flawed (Hooker's) but agrees with your position is "groundbreaking". Hoo hah." Yes, it was groundbreaking. And for something that is "clearly flawed", it's still used and endoresed by an awful lot of academics and researchers in psychiatry and psychology. In fact, the only people I've ever seen present "criticisms" of it are people who clearly have their own anti-gay agenda. So there. We are back to "I say, you say". You say I am biased and I say you a

"Similar studies on homosexuality could be readily found in 1973." Citations, please. Edited to add; on second thought, don't even bother. I don't really feel like looking up a bunch of biased tripe and having to refute it all. I'm sure such studies could be interpreted to say that the moon is made of cheese, for all the good it will do. "My entire point in this subthread is that the decision then was political and the decisions facing the APAs today will be political as well. They will change definitions when they think that there will be acceptance by the general public NOT when th

"I was not there. That does not mean that what I say isn't true." Actually, what that makes it is heresay and rumor. Not to mention, heresay and rummor as obviously biased as what you claim was the bias of the people involved. We could go back and forth until the cows come home exchanging heresay and rumor, since I also do not have a first hand account of what happened at the meeting. I do not hold my opinion about the "normalcy" of homosexuality because of the APA. I happen to agree with the APA because my own empirical experience has shown me that homosexuality is not a mental diso

"Hey, those were action figures, not dolls!" As an interesting aside (well, it's interesting to me) I did a paper in grad school about the gender bias of the whole doll/action figure thing. If you have two plastic figures, which are the same size, both have "real" hair, joints, and clothing that can be changed, why is the one that has breasts a doll and the one without breasts an action figure? (Barbie vs. G.I.Joe) In the absence of any context, male figures were action figures and female figures were dolls, usually. In a context of a child playing with them, whether they were

"Sure, I'll play again. Just let me point out that Spitzer is your boy. Pointing out his inconsistencies only strengthens my point that the decision was rushed and did not follow the usual practices when making this sort of change." No, Spitzer is not "my boy". He was the psychiatrist who happened to present the research to the Americal Psychiatric Association when they decided to edit the DSM. If the decision was so rushed, why did the American Psychological Association (the organization to which I belong, btw), pass a similar resolution two years later? "Spitzer didn't present

"Wouldnt that accomplish the health issue without such venom?" Yes, OGE, it might. But at what point do gays get to stop clawing their way through all thousand or so benefits that marriage automatically bestows on them, when they could get them all in one fell swoop with marriage rights? Same thing with the living will and health-care proxy argument. Why should a gay couple have to carry around those papers with them all the time (because you never know when an unfortunate circumstance might strike) just to assure that their partner's sister who doesn't like them can't swoop in and d

A little more information on Dr. Spitzer's recent work: "In 2001, Spitzer delivered a controversial paper at the 2001 annual APA meeting arguing that "highly motivated" individuals could "successfully" change their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. [1]. The APA immediately issued an official disavowal of the paper, noting that it had not been peer reviewed and bluntly stating that "There is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of reparative therapy as a treatment to change one's sexual orientation."[2] Two years later, Spitzer published the paper

"Should Gays be allowed to enter into a union recognized as equal to FOR PURPOSES OF LEGAL STANDING a heterosexual union YES! Should a Condo Association be able to exclude them from living in their community again YES." Wow, do you even realize how much this argument sounds just like the "separate but equal" arguments used to exclude blacks from housing, schools, and other organizations in the '50s and '60s? "Gays shouldnt be denied insurance, recognition of their union by various states, the right to fill joint tax returns. They also shouldnt be allowed to impose their views, custom

"The DSM was first published in 1952 and classified homosexuality as a sexual disorder. It was that way until, after several years of having their association meetings disrupted, the APA Board of Trustees voted to remove homosexuality as a disorder. This was not done thru scientific research and discussion leading to change but by a vote by a few members at the top." And where exactly did you find that "traditional values" talking point? Try this history from Psychiatric News instead: "Sabshin credited the chair of APA's Committee on Nomenclature in the early 1970s, Robert Spit

"That explains a lot, the conditions related to pedophilia are what you say they are because you say they are, theyre your findings, you and the Psychiatric profession no disrespect intended." You want me to spoon feed you passages from the research articles and textbooks that I read when I was in school? Sorry, don't have that kind of time here. I'm not the one who brought up pedophilia and tried to make it out to be something it wasn't. Do a little research yourself. I agree that a discussion about this is less than fruitful, because we are speaking different languages. I am speaki

"The excuse that Gays bring to the table that they have to be alowed to be married because of the health issues is completely false. If our gay married couple from Mass. wants to go to Florida and is afraid that other states won't recognize their union, why are hospitals always brought in the mix. Very few governmental unit hospitals exist today." What makes you think this only applies to government hospitals? "Next the visitation thing. I am not sure where people who say you must be married to visit someone in the hospital live, but it must be somewhere I havent been. I have been in

Packsaddled asked " OK, some clarification by the legal eagles, please. If a couple is married in MA, and take a driving trip to FL, and one gets sick (or something similar) on the way down. They end up in a clinic in south GA. Will this legal marriage be recognized by the state GA?" No, probably not. That is one of the big fears for gay married couples in Massachusetts. No other state has to respect their marriage. So, if they ever move out of MA, their marriage will not be recognized by their new state. If they ever have a medical problem while traveling, they will not have any protecti

Ed says "If gays marrying gays becomes the norm then our society will die out. Maybe not in two years or two decades, but it will die out. Why? Gays can't procreate." What an utterly ridiculous statement. First, gay marriage is never going to be the "norm", if by norm, you mean the majority of marriages, because gays only represent about 10% of the population. Second, gays can procreate. Just not with each other. Many gays are still managing to have their own biological children. Third, so you think being married or not is going to change whether or not gays can/do procrea

"That would be only about 70% of the US population." Actually, a poll by ABC news in June 2006 shows opposition to same sex marriage to be down to 58% nationwide. At the rate that percentage is dropping, I predict we will see it enter a minority within a decade. "Can gay couples adopt? Can they be foster parents? Are they more prone to abuse, as some studies have shown?" Excuse me? More prone to abuse? What kind of abuse? What studies? "Mass. will most likely be voting on it before long." Doubtful. After three attempts, the legislature has still not approved the ammen

"I'll give you the same courtesy of an answer you gave me - "You'd have to ask them." I don't live in Mass." Well, I do live in Mass, so since you in effect just asked me, I'll answer. There has been no effect on heterosexual marriages. There has been no sudden shortage of marriage licenses or officials to perform marriage ceremonies. There has been no sudden surge for acceptance of polygamy, marriage to children, sibling marriage, or marriage to pets or inanimate objects in Massachusetts. On the other hand, didn't one of those Midwestern states that has a no same-sex marriage law just tr

LongHaul, "You keep on about the fact that pedophiles cant form healthy relationships with other adults, that they (pedophiles) have an internal conflict. Says who?" The psychologists who have done research into the pathology and treatment of pedophilia. Including myself. "Others in this thread are talking about Douglas Smith do you consider him to be a pedophile? Where were these signs of problematic relationships which should have alerted all his associates?" Well, since I don't know much about Douglas Smith other than what I read briefly about him in the news, I'm not pr

"First you admit that you, and apparently the APA, cant separate the fantasy from the act so not only is it illegal to do it its illegal to fantasize about it!" Well, actually, first, I never said anything about the illegality of pedophilia. I talked about it as a medical condition. "In the second part you say the condition is considered detrimental because it interferes with the persons ability to form healthy relationships with other adults. Kind of like homosexuality in the 50s huh?" Um, no. Pedophiles cannot form healthy relationships (and no, that doesn't just mean sexual r

"You are going to argue that McGreevey wanted to be MARRIED so badly, that he was willing to marry a woman, even though he didn't love her. In fact, he was so enamoured with MARRIAGE that he entered into marriage contracts twice, even though he was only interested in men, and didn't love the women at all (and had children with both women). Is that why he was in sham marriages - he just loved the married life so much?" Well, I'm not Merlyn, but yes, I would be willing to argue that. Or at least that, since I haven't spoken to Mr. McGreevey to determine his mental processes, that such thing

"I wonder if Dina McGreevey, wife of James McGreevey, considers herself a victim of homosexuality?" I wonder if the myriad of heterosexuals who get divorced consider themselves to be victims of heterosexuality? Or maybe they are victims of marriage?

LongHaul: "Pedophiles are sexually attracted to children this does not mean they wish to engage in sex with them." Actually, it does. The APA definition of pedophilia is: "Pedophilia is defined as the act or fantasy of engaging in sexual activity with prepubertal children as the preferred or exclusive method of achieving sexual excitement." No, not all pedophiles will actually act on those fantasies and become child molesters. But the condition (pedophilia) is still considered detrimental because it interfers with the pedophile's ability to form healthy relationships with other adu

"We are not discussing lefties, blacks, orientals, handicapped, etc. They have no choice in their condition and no amount of discipline/fortitude/determination will change their condition. Bringing it up is a strawman argument meant to detour the conversation toward feelings instead of reason." Yellow_hammer, what you dismiss as strawman arguments, I assert are simply different instances of equivalent "deviations", but which are considered socially acceptable to you, where homosexuality obviously isn't. No amount of discipline/fortitude/determination is going to change a person's sexual o

Equating homosexual relationships/marriages with "relationships" to children, animals, and inanimate objects (like blow up dolls) is a common tactic for de-humanizing gays, relegating them to a sub-human status. And when a gay person is no longer considered really a "person", it becomes much easier to demonize them and rationalize discrimination against them. Otherwise, as hyperbole, these types of comparisons also fail, because everyone understands that a consenting adult is NOT the same thing as a child, an animal, or an inanimate object. That is the problem I have with the slipper slop

"The natural purpose of sex is for men and women to procreate and recreate as in men with women and women with mean. Anything else is clearly *deviation* from the natural and best purpose." So you mean deviant in a purely statistical fashion? Well, given that the word has a lot of negative connotations surrounding it, I think you could chose a better word if you did not intent to convey those negative connotations. Did or did you not intend to convey those negative implictions surrounding the word "deviant"? Someone who is left handed is a "deviant" in the strict sense of the word, s

"Being attracted to children is no different than being attracted to one of the same sex." Well, other than one involves two consenting adults and the other involves a child legally not capable of consent who, by the strict definition of pedophile (target being a prepubescent youth), does not even realy have an understanding of what sex is. "Pedophiles cant help being pedophiles, its in their genes. First we will be bombarded with the realization that pedophiles are not necessarily child molesters. Just because a person is attracted to children does not mean they have to act on that