Post a Comment On: Vigilance

On March 29, David Fishback, writing on PFLAG letterhead, sent a letter to the Maryland State Board of Education, CC'ing relevant attorneys and officials. The entire package was seventeen pages long, and I won't copy the whole thing. Here are some pertinent quotes:
Here, MCPS has chosen to discuss sexual orientation in 8th and 10th Grade Health Education classes. The curriculum revisions are important for the well-being of students and reflect the viewpoints of every mainstream medical and mental health professional association. It is certainly proper for any school system to base its health curriculum on information from, and conclusions of, mainstream medical and mental health professional associations. Indeed, MCPS relied upon experts presented by the Maryland Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in developing and reviewing its curriculum standards.
The letter then quotes passages from policy statements by the AAP, as well as the American Psychological Association.

Fishback continues:
Finally, we note that while a principal gravaman of petitioners' appeal is their assertion that the so-called "ex-gay" viewpoint -- that homosexuality is a disorder that can and should be cured -- should be included in the health curriculum. This approach is directly contrary to the official position of the American Medical Association, which "opposes the use of 'reparative' or 'conversion' therapy that is based on the a prior assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation ... The AMA recognizes the dangers of the "ex-gay" approach. MCPS should not be forced to include in its health curriculum a "perspective" that has been rejected by the AMA.
The letter includes some attachments of documents from the AMA, and AAP, and the APA, backing up these statements.

This morning I was trolling around the Internet and discovered that the CRC's attorney has sent a letter to the state board, attempting to refute Fishback's letter.

John Garza's letter starts out with the usual pleasantries, and then gets down to the business of trying to make the other letter look bad:
Mr. Fishback’s letter, while purporting to provide helpful, additional “perspective” in this matter, actually distorts the issues and incorrectly states many important facts.

Mr. Fishback, as he has done in the past with respect to the discarded Montgomery County sex-ed curriculum, continues to provide twisted interpretations of information, misrepresents the facts of organizations and paints a selective picture of what he considers the truth.
I gotta say, I'm just glad I'm not sitting in Annapolis, getting these letters in the mail, one after the other.

Garza's letter is five pages long, and I'm not going to copy the whole thing here. Let me take a few passages.
Mr. Fishback’s “viewpoints” are not “mainstream”. They are at best controversial. Non-heterosexuality is a controversial topic; there is much scientific evidence to support other viewpoints, and Mr. Fishback ignores it.
Selective viewpoints relied upon by Mr. Fishback come from only a small group of professional members of the Gay and lesbian Committee within the American Psychological Association and American Academy of Pediatrics. Mr.Fishback fails to reveal that there are a large number of professionals within these same organizations that share another viewpoint based on scientific research on the topic of non-heterosexual individuals. For instance, a large number of these members share the views of The National Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality (NARTH) (www.narth.com) and the American College of Pediatricians. (www.acp.org), both of which are respected organizations. In this highly controversial issue, there is more than one scientific viewpoint. There is no scientific research that exclusively supports one view over another.
Mr. Fishback asserts that all information for the curriculum comes from mainstream medical and mental health professionals when in fact the curriculum contains information from a non-medical gay advocacy group, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). GLSEN is the same organization that provided a workshop for children in Massachusetts on actual techniques of gay sex. This organization is not main-stream.
The new curriculum reflects the sole viewpoint of a non-medical individual who was the only author of one section used in this 10th grade curriculum. The author’s statement that sexual orientation is “innate” is refuted by all medical, psychological and psychiatric associations, U S. Supreme Court, Director of the Human Genome Project at NIH and by the mere existence of former homosexuals. This author’s views are not main-stream.
OK. Bullet Number One, nothing to address here, mere assertions that "I'm right and he's wrong." Well, it should be noted that there is no scientific evidence supporting the CRC's viewpoint, and no scientific controversy, just a conflict between religious teachings and scientific facts.

Bullet Number Two: "small group of professional members..." The two groups that Garza cites, NARTH and ACP, are tiny groups with very lax admission standards, formed to politicize the issue of homosexuality. (The URL he gives, www.acp.org, is actually that of the American Center for Physics. You'll do better if you click HERE.) Members of those groups do not conduct and publish scientific research in this field. The AMA, both APA's (Psychiatric and Psychological), and the AAP are real mainstream organizations.

Further, the statements quoted are policies of the entire organization, not some small subgroup.

Bullet Number Three: information from GLSEN. Mr. Garza must realize that scientific researchers often rely on survey data from independent survey organizations, such as Gallup, Pew, smaller polling organizations, and groups like GLSEN.

I must also point out that the pairing of GLSEN with an incident in Massachusetts is misleading. Mr. Garza knows the facts in this matter, but can't pass up a chance to smear an organization whose efforts are aimed at eliminating discrimination and prejudice.

Bullet Number Four: the "non-medical individual." What can I say? Unbelievable. A chapter is used in tenth grade, taken from a textbook published by Holt Rhinehart and Winston, one of the largest and most reputable textbook publishers in the country. The author of the chapter is a woman from the Los Angeles school district with a PhD in education. It is incredible to think that the CRC would try to challenge a curriculum on the basis of the author of a textbook chapter! Especially when this person is perfectly well qualified to produce this work.

By the way, Mark Grayson, the Executive Editor over Secondary Health and Science at Holt, has volunteered to stand up for the textbook chapter and its author. Holt doesn't take these allegations lightly.

Further, there is no refutation of the statement that sexual orientation is innate. No one has refuted it. The Human Genome Project may sound very authoritative, but that mapping of the components of human DNA has nothing at all to do with innateness of anything, or say anything about sexual orientation. A former director of the Project, now known for his speeches trying to reconcile religion with science, is quoted in an article on the NARTH web site, where he does acknowledge that there is an apparent genetic predisposition for homosexuality; he has not conducted research on the topic, however. Further, the "mere existence of former homosexuals" is still a matter of doubt.

Garza then writes:
Mr. Fishback misrepresents a Clinical report written by a few pediatricians from the American Academy of Pediatrics as representing the exclusive views of the entire American Academy of Pediatrics. However on the front page of this report, a statement reads, “The guidance in this report does not indicate an exclusive course of treatment or serve as a standard of medical care. Variations, taking into account individual circumstances, may be appropriate.”
In fact, the statement, which you can read HERE, is a policy of the American Association of Pediatrics, published in their official journal, Pediatrics.

The quote that Garza has selected, from a footnote, is not relevant to his assertions at all: of course variations are appropriate. The paper does state, on its front page, not in a footnote: Not all pediatricians may feel able to provide the type of care described in this report. Any pediatrician who is unable to care for and counsel nonheterosexual youth should refer these patients to an appropriate colleague. The report is well worth reading, and seriously undermines the CRC's position, no matter how much cherry-picking they do.

Garza further writes:
Mr. Fishback mischaracterizes the American Medical Association statement on reparative therapy by suggesting the AMA completely condemns this treatment. Actually, the AMA statement only discourages reparative therapy for people experiencing same-sex attraction if treatment is coupled with an assertion that the person’s sexual orientation must be changed. The AMA statement does not address voluntary treatment of individuals wishing to change their unwanted sexual orientation.
The AMA's statement, which Fishback submitted to the school board, says the organization opposes the use of "reparative" or "conversion" therapy that is based on the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or is based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her sexual orientation.

Can you imagine somebody wanting to change their sexual orientation? Would you ask for that? No, neither would I, and there's a reason for that. I don't think there's anything wrong with my sexual orientation. I cannot imagine a person going in for therapy to change their sexual orientation without the a priori assumption that everybody should be heterosexual. It wouldn't make sense. This whole argument is based on assumptions that are nonsense. By this reasoning the AMA would only approve changing your sexual orientation for purely cosmetic reasons, like you'd get liposuction or a nose job -- "I'd be so much more attractive if I were straight." No, people don't want it for that reason, sorry, they want to change because they think there's something wrong with them.

There's a little bit more, criticizing Fishback's choice of words etc., but you get the gist. The letter winds down with personal criticism of David Fishback and complaints about the "old new" curriculum, which was thrown out in a legal settlement in 2005.

The hard part for me is imagining this from the state school board's perspective. You get these letters from one side and the other. These messages are not dropping into a vacuum, everybody has some knowledge and some opinion on these topics. On the other hand, most people have not studied these issues in any amount of detail -- who, outside of the handful of people involved in these controversies, has ever even heard of an "ex-gay" before?

Groups like CRC try to capitalize on the fact that most people don't know about these things. You hear the phrase "ex-gay," and you might be tempted to think that there are actually "ex-gay" people walking around, you wouldn't think to guess that this is a hoax dreamed up by some conservative organizations to support their anti-gay mission. You hear about a group like NARTH, with its impressive name with the word "research" in it, and you might think it's a for-real organization, not a handful of weirdos trying to make a living convincing gay people they can become straight. Or the American College of Pediatricians -- that sounds impressive, you can't tell by the name that it is purely a political organization dedicated to the promotion of conservative policies.

These school board members have seen a lot of stuff come through their boardroom. But I can't imagine what it's like getting these letters without knowing about all the twists and turns this controversy has taken, the lies and the misconstruals, the threats and insinuations. It's gotta be hard, figuring this out.