from Commentaries

By Dr. Joseph Berger

September 5, 2007 - Over the years I have sent a large number of letters to prominent newspapers on the topic of homosexuality. Many have been in response to wild and inaccurate claims made by people with no scientific knowledge, and many others in response to premature publication of unsubstantiated poor-quality studies purporting to show a variety of asserted innate and genetic foundations for homosexuality, none of which have ever been reliably confirmed.

And over the years I have come to expect that editors will either reject my letter, shorten it, or in many cases will publish alongside it one or more letters from ignorant lay gay activists rejoicing in triumph that their claims have now been "scientifically proven."

But recently I had the most extraordinary and totally novel experience in this matter.

An article was published in Canada's main Jewish newspaper called the Canadian Jewish News about a talk given by one Stephen Greenberg. Some readers will recognize the name, which has certainly appeared in NARTH publications in recent years.

Greenberg is a man who received a rabbinical diploma from a renowned orthodox or Jewishly-traditional institution, but who subsequently declared himself to be homosexual, was instrumental in the creation of a movie that depicted the sad state of men and women who wished to remain orthodox Jews while at the same time wishing to openly practice same-sex sex -- something that is considered unacceptable in Jewish tradition. He is also the author of a book that seeks to justify same-sex sex in Judaism by completely turning upside-down and rejecting two thousand years of traditional Jewish biblical and rabbinic texts and interpretation.

I wrote a letter to the newspaper indicating some of these facts. A letter was indeed published in the newspaper - under my name.

But it was not a letter that I had written. Not because one or two words, or lines, or even paragraphs, had been omitted. As I noted, I am quite used to that -- in fact the body that acts as a sort of ombudsman for the general public in dealing with complaints against the press here in Ontario - the Ontario Press Council -- states on its website that for a few years it has had a policy of NOT dealing with complaints against newspapers for not publishing or for shortening letters to the editor, because such complaints are so common and newspapers can only publish a small fraction of what they receive. Only extraordinary complaints regarding letters will be dealt with by the Ontario Press Council.

No. What had happened in this case was that the editor re-wrote my letter, putting in words and whole phrases entirely of the editor's own notions, and published it under my name. (I use the term "editor" here in a generic sense, as letters to newspapers and journals are traditionally addressed to "the editor" and whether it is the editor personally, or a staff member, who makes changes, the editor ultimately takes responsibility.)

The effect of those changes was, of course, to totally undermine what I had written and what were my points of contention.

It was done without consulting me, without asking for my approval.

When I wrote to the editor pointing out this blatant act of intellectual dishonesty, the editor replied with a detailed explanation of why changes 'a' 'b' 'c' etc., had been made.

I replied that those reasons were irrelevant. The issue now was the publication under my name of something that I had never written.

I demanded a retraction and apology. None, of course, was forthcoming.

As is so often the case, as we who practice psychotherapy know only too well, most extraordinary events have a background to them, they don't just arise "out of the blue."

Sure enough. On a number of occasions in recent years I had sent letters to the editor of that newspaper on topics similar to the same-sex issue, and received the responses I outlined at the beginning; of letters being rejected, shortened, or an ignorant lay response published alongside to lessen the impact of my letter.

But a few months ago I had written a longer article about the split in the very large Jewish Conservative movement over the issue of homosexuality, between the traditionalists and those who wished to do away with the traditional approach and accept homosexual rabbis and homosexual students for ordination.

In that article, I had also mentioned that the pro-gay faction had included a brief paper by a psychologist offering "scientific support" for their position. I described that brief as probably the worst I had ever seen, and noted that it mostly was a series of quotations of position statements from the American Psychological Association. NARTH readers may be interested to know that the author of that brief is in fact one of the people nominated to sit on the American Psychological Association's committee that will "review" Reparative Therapy and treatment of homosexuals.

The editor had rejected my article with the "excuse" that he had been out of town when it arrived, and by the time he saw it, the issue was no longer current.

However, that same week an article was published written by yet another ignorant lay person that expounded the well-worn "everyone knows that homosexuality is genetic..." line, even though the editor had sitting in front of him my "expert" opinion dismissing such nonsense, and a few weeks later another long article on exactly that topic of the movement split was published.

I have never had the experience before of someone publishing something in my name that I never wrote, without discussing the matter with me beforehand. I have had numerous papers published with suggestions from editors and reviewers to change words and sentences. I am the author of a standard text on Psychiatric Disability Evaluation that was very nicely edited by the publisher's professional editors -- but everything was submitted to me before anything was published.

Many years ago, when homosexuals were pleading to be treated fairly, not to be discriminated against, the general professional and public response -- mostly based upon interactions with our own colleagues -- was to recognize the humanity of these people and accept them openly and warmly. But some wise people offered words of caution, and noting the overt hostility that many gay activists had demonstrated towards traditional psychiatry and psychotherapy, suggested that the larger number of people who identified themselves as homosexual should be careful not to respond to the greater acceptance by behaving in the same discriminatory manner that they had objected to for so long. Sadly, those wise words have not been followed.