Bedfellows: NARTH and FOTF

For the first time in a decade, the American Psychological Association is reviewing its procedures on working with clients who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. NARTH is attempting to bully the APA into allowing the disreputable, pseudo-scientific practice of “ex-gay” therapy.NARTH is known for its bizarre theories, such as “non-homosexual men who experience defeat and failure may also experience homosexual fantasies or dreams.”

Last year, NARTH was embroiled in two major controversies that lead to its President, Joseph Nicolosi, stepping down from his post. In the first, a NARTH doctor wrote an essay supporting gender variant children being "ridiculed" in school so they would conform. In the second, another NARTH doctor wrote an article justifying slavery.

Upon co-founding the group, the late Dr. Charles Socarides said, “Homosexuality is a psychological and psychiatric disorder, there is no question about it.”

NARTH’s leader, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, has said factors in the causation of homosexuality include “fear of tall bridges” a “phobia of the phone” and once claimed that gay men are more likely to be “pee shy.”? He has encouraged his clients to become more masculine by drinking Gatorade and calling friends “dude.”

The organization’s methods are so peculiar and bizarre that the American Psychological Association specifically condemned NARTH by name at the APA’s annual convention in August 2006. According to the APA:

“For over three decades the consensus of the mental health community has been that homosexuality is not an illness and therefore not in need of a cure. The APA’s concern about the position espoused by the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality and so-called conversion therapy is that they are not supported by the science. There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Our further concern is that the positions espoused by NARTH and Focus on the Family create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish.”