Ex-Gay Watch

Although the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality promotes itself as a professional organization, mental health professionals make up a mere quarter of its 1,000-strong membership.

Dr Warren Throckmorton, a conservative Christian and psychology professor who has become increasingly skeptical of ex-gay “science,” obtained the figures directly from a senior NARTH official:

Actually, according to NARTH’s operations director, David Pruden, only about 250 of NARTH’s approximately 1000 members are mental health professionals. Furthermore, some of those 250 members who have mental health degrees are academics who write about sexuality but do not provide sexual reorientation therapy. Thus, the lion’s share of NARTH’s members consist of lay people, ministers, and activists who have an interest in the materials provided by NARTH but are not scientists or therapists.

Throckmorton observes the sharp contrast with the claims of the Family Research Council (FRC), who last month said NARTH was

primarily composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other professional therapists and counselors who offer ‘sexual reorientation therapy’ to help people overcome unwanted same-sex attractions.

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is once again attacking the veracity of noted geneticist Dr. Francis S. Collins.  For a review of the history of this issue, please see the summary and links in our previous post.  The original NARTH article that started this is “Homosexuality Is Not Hardwired,” Concludes Dr. Francis S. Collins, Head Of The Human Genome Project” from 2007.

This latest effort comes in the form of an article identified as submitted to the NARTH website by David C. Pruden, NARTH’s Vice-President of Operations.  We will assume from here on out that Pruden is the author unless or until we receive information to the contrary (see below).  In it, this writer is painted as having wooed Dr. Collins into making statements favorable to a pro-gay position by “misinforming” him about NARTH.  Supposedly, by not telling him what a good and wholesome organization it is (cough), we hoodwinked Dr. Collins into perverting the science in our favor.

In the US, all correspondence to and from government agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where Dr. Collins worked (and is now Director), is archived and can be obtained by making a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.  Apparently, four years after the fact, someone at NARTH got the idea to request copies of my email exchange with Dr. Collins.  While they did not quote from them, they did strategically paraphrase and then claim that I had misinformed Dr. Collins.

While all very cloak and dagger, they could have saved some effort and a stamp by simply reading the three year old post here.  We made that exchange public in its entirety, email headers and all, back in 2008.  As noted then, the original emails were not written with public consumption in mind, so they are a bit personal but nonetheless sincere and honest.

So what about the latest article? Read more…