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from Political News
American Psychiatric Association
Endorses Gay Marriage At Convention
May 27, 2005 - NARTH Scientific Advisory Committee Chairman Dr. A. Dean Byrd
responded recently to news that the APA had endorsed gay marriage at its Atlanta
conference.
According to Dr. Byrd, "There's just not science backing these policies. I think
organizations ought to be guided by science, not activism." Dr. Byrd was
interviewed by The Southern Voice, a gay online newspaper.
The majority of the American Psychiatric Association's 250 delegates to the
convention passed a resolution affirming gay marriage by a voice vote. The
delegates are said to represent the views of 36,000 members of the APA
nationwide.
The resolution passed stated: "In the interests of maintaining and promoting
mental health, the APA supports the legal recognition of same-sex civil marriage
with all rights, benefits and responsibilities conferred by civil marriage, and
opposes restrictions to those same rights, benefits and responsibilities."
The APA resolution now goes before the APA's board of trustees at its meeting in
July, 2005 for final consideration.
Dr. Daniel Cowell, a member of the West Virginia Psychiatrist Association was
not pleased with the APA vote. "I think the rationale [for APA approval] makes
sense only if the APA is involved in political issues--and it most certainly is
not. This strays beyond our bounds. We should stay out of it."
In 1973, the APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in the
DSM. Dr. Charles Socarides has provided a history of the events surrounding this
1973 decision in his 1992 paper, "Sexual Politics And Scientific Logic: The
Issue Of Homosexuality" published in The Journal of Psychohistory.
According to Dr. Socarides, "To some American psychiatrists this action [removal
of homosexuality as a disorder from the DSM] remains a chilling reminder that if
scientific principles are not fought for they can be lost--a disillusioning
warning that unless we make no exceptions to science, we are subject to the
snares of political factionalism and the propagation of untruths to an
unsuspecting and uninformed public, to the rest of the medical profession, and
to the behavioral sciences."
NARTH has also provided a summary of a 1999 article on the APA and homosexuality
by Dr. Irving Bieber: "The A.P.A. Normalization of Homosexuality, and the
Research Study of Irving Bieber."
Dr. Byrd's recently published paper, "Gender Complementarity and Child-rearing:
Where Tradition and Science Agree" provides some of the latest scientific data
on the negative outcomes of homosexual behavior and how children are impacted in
same-sex households.
A NARTH-published paper by Dr. George Rekers also provides background
information on the impact that same-sex parenting has on children: "Review Of
Research On Homosexual Parenting, Adoption, And Foster Parenting."
Updated: 8 February 2008
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