Incredibly, it appears that one of the anonymous peer reviewers of the Regnerus study, was Professor Brad Wilcox, who was involved in the study at every level.
I’m amazed I haven’t seen more people talking about this revelation in Inside Higher Ed – although, to be fair, they buried it pretty deep in the story:
In an e-mail, Wright said he has never publicly disclosed who reviewed the articles and doesn’t plan to. But he said that both “Amato and Wilcox mentioned their prior involvement with the Regnerus study in response to my initial reviewing request. I asked, as I always do, whether this involvement precluded their writing an objective review. Both said no and so both were asked to proceed.”
That’s James Wright, editor of Social Science Review, identifying Paul Amato and Brad Wilcox as two of the three anonymous peer reviewers who vetted the scientific methodology of the Regnerus study. (The Regnerus study is the discredited “study” of gay parenting designed to smear gay parents, as you’ll recall.)1
Paul Amato had a minor role as a paid consultant on the study, and has said “In retrospect, I understand that providing a review was not a good idea, because one should avoid even the hint of impropriety in matters like this.”
Amato’s duel role doesn’t seem like a big deal. Wilcox’s role is far more unethical.
Philip Cohen provides a useful timeline of events. Wilcox was involved with the Regnerus study before Regnerus himself ever heard of it. Here is the 2010 portion of Cohen’s timeline:
September 3, 2010: Witherspoon’s Luis Tellez writes to a research company, “At the request of Brad Wilcox, I am sending you a description of ‘The New Family Structure Study.’” Later that month he writes to Regnerus, “It would be great to have this before major decisions of the Supreme Court.” September 21, 2010: Regnerus writes to Wilcox to nail down administrative details with Witherspoon, “And per your instruction, I should think of this as a planning grant, with somewhere on par of $30-$40k if needed” (Wilcox approves). October 2010: Regnerus’s $55,000 planning grant from Witherspoon begins. October – December, 2010: Regnerus attempts to recruit consultants. (“Why am I running this project, you may wonder. Good question. Pragmatically, probably because Brad Wilcox is swamped…”)
So Wilcox got the ball rolling on the study, arranged the financing with the right-wing Witherspoon foundation, and according to Regnerus, might have personally run the study if he had more time. Wilcox was also the one to suggest Social Science Review as a home for the study, and was paid $2000 as a consultant on the study.
Wilcox is obviously not an objective reviewer. To use Wilcox as a reviewer of a study that he himself all but created makes a mockery of the peer review system. Wright never should have asked Wilcox to be a peer reviewer, and Wilcox, once asked, should have had the integrity to refuse.
In October of 2012, in answer to an email I sent him, Wilcox downplayed his involvement with both Witherspoon and the Regnerus study. At the time – based on years of infrequent-but-friendly contacts with Brad Wilcox, and on Brad’s assurances that he was only peripherally involved – I defended Wilcox both in private emails and in public, writing that there was “nothing unethical” about Wilcox’s involvement.
I cannot hold that opinion today. It is plain that Brad Wilcox has abused his position of trust (both as an academic and a peer reviewer), and has deliberately deceived me and the public about his actions and his involvement with the Regnerus study. I’m sorry to say, I can’t imagine ever trusting Brad Wilcox again.
- For those interested in reading up on the matter, I recommend this post and the comments at Scatterplot, and also following the links in this post at Family Inequality. For a peer-reviewed response to Regnerus, see here. [↩]
Amp, based on Wilcox’ behavior over at Family Scholars Blog, I’m rather surprised you were defending him. He had a habit, in particular, of selectively quoting studies and reports, and then vanishing from the discussion if called out on his dishonesty.
I am shocked. Shocked! I say.
Well let me add some more LOLZ to the article, (which is spont on by the way) . Last night John Becker released a bunch of e-mails he got through open records requests. Get this. 8 days before Regnerus submitted his paper to the Journal Social Science Research he and Regenrus were e-mailing back and forth on how Regnerus should formulate the Family groups. When asked to be a peer reviewer he should have declined. I am sure that once all the e-mails are released we will find out if Brad Wilcox even told Wright about his conflicts of interest or not.
Look for the doc something like the doc out of UT on the Wilcox E-mails on this link
http://www.johnmbecker.com/2013/08/10/regnerus-doc-dump/
Amp is letting Amato off to easy if you ask me. Amato was both a Paid Consultant AND a Peer Reviewer AND he wrote a commentary that was published along with the Regenrus paper. On that same link look for a file called something like UT FOIA Amato e-mails. Although I agree that what Wilcox did was worse, what Amato did is pretty bad.
ESPECIALLY when you read the docs and realize that just 3 years prior to the start of the Wilcox/Regnerus project the Editor of the Journal Wright was shopping around his own gay parenting study, and aksing Maggie Gallagher for help with funding! Wright was trying to get funding for a research proposal that John Q Wilson (you can look him up) suggested to Steven Nock that he do. So Nock asked his buddy Wright who he had jsut finished writing a book on Covenant Marriage and Wright agreed to be Co-Principal Investigator even though he admits he doens’t knwo the subject matter at all. And GUESS WHO Wricght and Nock had recruited to be their Consultant advosprs? AMATO & WILCOX. So the circle kind of comes full circle doesn’t it? You have Amato agreeing to work on two anti gay studies even though he didn’t have any experience in it either. Is is any wonder that Wright jsut poo-poohed that Amato could be a paid consultant AND objective? 5 years earlier Wright had Amato on his own Anti gay Project.
Just look who was involved in the Wright Ci-PI Project
Steve Nock initiated the project because of John Q Wilson (and in one e-mail Nock says that he is aligned philosophically with Wilson)
and Glenn Norval.
Nock filed an affidavit in the Canada Court case that brought legal Civil Marriage for Sexual Minorities in Canada.
Glenn Norval and John Q Wilson were both avowed anti gays. I am to lazy to look up the links, I dind’t save them. I looked them up real quick when I first read this, maybe somebody else will post links.
The whole thing stinks to high heaven and it is amazing to me that James Wright doesn’t simply retract the study. No wonder he rushed to publish Regnerus, he was going to do the exact same study himself and Maggie Gallagher was trying to help them get funding. (Nock is dead, Norval is dead and so is John Q Wilson)
Check out this other article on how Regnerus was used to pass the new anti gay law in Russia
This same meeting and speech transcripts made French news as well. They were pissed about the President of French Spring saying that Russia is a Model of what Franch should be, I was interested in the leader of French Spring praising the Russian MP, the author of the bill in Russia, of the leader of French Spring Praising her (the Russian legislator) for using the Regnerus research so well in Russia, while in France she was called a homophobe for using it.
http://www.bilerico.com/2013/08/anti-gay_regnerus_study_to_russia_with_love.php
French newspaper – http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/politique/20130808.OBS2653/loi-anti-gay-la-russie-un-exemple-pour-le-printemps-francais.html
Email I got from Philip Cohen this morning (quoted with permission):
My response:
Ha-ha-ha. That’s pretty funny about having the wrong pic initially.
I am tweeting the Hell out of the Wright Regnerus issue on the #ASA13 (American Sociological Association Annual Conference) hashtag but to be honest with you, I don’t think anybody listens nor pays attention to me.
I read all these tweets about gender, and for example a talk on if a woman gets pregnant she doesn’t get promoted. All very valid issues no question. BUT sexual minorities are being tortured, imprisoned, and murdered around the world and I don’t see any tweets at all on gays. The only thig they seem interested in is Class, Gender and Race. This is the second year my watching from afar their conference and those are the big 3 at the main planery meetings and overall meeting sessions. You can be fired for being a gay man or lesbian woman in our country in 27 States but this issue does NOT make it to the top of their, “What we are interested in in Sociology, that we feature in our let’s all get together sessions”
I just do not understand them at all as an association. With everything our country is going through, our Supreme Court cases and all, WHY doesn’t Sexual Orientation & Sexual Identity make it EVER to the top of their “What we are concerned about in Sociology today list?” They don’t talk about it in the big sessions it is Class, Gender and Race. Now you can go to a little session and learn about the research on LGBT etc, but it never cracks that pink glass ceiling.
Did you see these tortures taking place in Russia?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/russians-are-using-social-media-to-lure-in-and-publicly-humi
and this
http://www.buzzfeed.com/saeedjones/76-countries-where-anti-gay-laws-are-as-bad-as-or-worse-than
I am so disgusted with the American Sociological Association that gay social science is small group, not big group discussion.
The way it works (and the reason there is no outrage other than here) is that editors can publish whatever the hell they want in their journals. And that peer reviewers role is to advise them and make suggestions to the authors about improvements that can be made. It isn’t some sort of judicial process. It is very common for people in the same research groups to review colleagues work. Hard to see how else it could work, the only neutral parties would be those who haven’t worked in that area and have no particular expertise.
Re: The way it works (and the reason there is no outrage other than here) is that editors can publish whatever the hell they want in their journals. And that peer reviewers role is to advise them and make suggestions to the authors about improvements that can be made. It isn’t some sort of judicial process. It is very common for people in the same research groups to review colleagues work.
Speaking as a biologist, who has both written and reviewed papers, that’s absolutely wrong. It would absolutely be a violation of professional standards (conflict of interest) for a reviewer to be involved in the work they are reviewing, and I’ve never heard of people in the same research groups reviewing each other’s work. At least in the hard sciences (I know little about sociology).
Alex – what is your experience with academic publishing? I definitely don’t think reviews by people in the same research group (or even the same institution) would be acceptable in any field I’m familiar with. Not to mention that peer review is very definitely a judicial process, and only secondarily a feedback mechanism. I’ve published and reviewed in both linguistics and psychology journals, and no respectable journal in either field will publish a paper if the peer reviewers said no.
That is my point! The peer reviewers did not have any expertise in the research material studies of sexual minorities or sexual minority parents.
My professional life is none of your business.
I’d moderate what I mean by research group. If it is big science; PI has funding, employs people, papers are collaborations within the group, everyones name gets added, two dozen authors type of work I’d agree. But there is a structure and hierarchy there that prevents moonlighting. Outside that environment, in looser affiliations of scholars working on the same topic with collaboration being much more fluid, I’d say it is common.
Reviewers are chosen mainly by editors scanning back issues and seeing who’s written something similar. They don’t look deeply at organisation charts, or whether you’ve had a recent job move, or who you’ve co-authored with over the last 5 years before asking you to do it.
Agree, but practically no reviewer say no, unless the research is total flawed or they’re assholes. In practice the editors role is to choose which of various accept / accept with modifications to reject.
alex, if what Wilcox did was 100% standard practice, then why lie about it?
You know this “peer review” was bullshit. Why are you arguing otherwise?
Alex, “Outside that environment, in looser affiliations of scholars working on the same topic with collaboration being much more fluid, I’d say it is common”
I agree that is probably the normal way it is done. However What about when a scholar
goes off the reservation(I was told that is insulting and not to use that phrase) what about when a scholar goes rouge and writes about something he has no experience in at all? He writes as an outsider and THEN the Editor ASKS the Scholar, “Do you have any recommendations of who would be a good peer reviewer?” The scholar responds with his Consultants on the study as being good candidates to do peer review and the Editor accepts those and sends out the paper to the peer reviewers the scholar recommended. Does this not seem a little, I don’t know off to you? You work outside your area, you recommend peer reviewers who also do not have any experience in the area, and that is who peer reviewes you.Re: They don’t look deeply at organisation charts, or whether you’ve had a recent job move, or who you’ve co-authored with over the last 5 years before asking you to do it.
Yes. Then they ask you (at least in the sciences) to specifically fill out a form asking if you have any conflicts of interest. If Wilcox said he had no conflicts of interest, then he was lying.
Re: Agree, but practically no reviewer say no, unless the research is total flawed or they’re assholes. In practice the editors role is to choose which of various accept / accept with modifications to reject.
Uh, most academics I know have absolutely gotten rejections from reviewers. Almost all of your assertions here are just wrong.
Alex, your professional life is certainly fair game to be asked about if you are asserting knowledge of a professional practice.
In my opinion, as someone who has published in peer-reviewed journals and who currently serves as a peer reviewer, that’s a load of twaddle. I have had papers rejected outright and have given “reject” feedback to editors.
If you get a anonymous paper to review how the fuck do you know if you co-authored with the guy who wrote it at some point?
To give one example, New Phytologist (which is one of the highest ranked, though not the top, journal in my field) apparently rejects about 20% without review, rejects 50-60% following review, and accepts 20-30% following some degree of review.
Sorry that should read ‘following some degree if revision’.
I like the new collage, but I admit, I’m creeped out by the two giant eyes peeping between the faces at the top.
(To those of you who hadn’t yet noticed this: You’re welcome.)
Barry — although you reach some of the right conclusions, you’re only scratching the surface of Wilcox’s conflicts of interest. When he attended the initial meeting about what became the NFSS in Washington, D.C., he attended with Tellez as Director of Witherspoon’s Program on Marriage, Family and Democracy. The Witherspoon site — and Wilcox himself in his person promotional materials — was still calling him Director of that Witherspoon program when I discovered Wilcox’s involvement in the NFSS. Witherspoon and Wilcox then did their best to try to scrub away all evidence of Wilcox’s association with Witherspoon — but it had simply been too well documented.
The devious thing that Wilcox did in his “For the Record” post at FamilyScholars was this. He stated that he had been involved with the NFSS starting in October, 2010, and that as one of a number of consultants, he attended an initial meeting about the NFSS in Austin. There, he was trying to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes. The real initial meeting about the NFSS did not take place in Austin. The Austin meeting didn’t happen until January, 2011. Wilcox was not just one among many consultants in the very early phases of this; he was a Witherspoon Program Director; Witherspoon’s 2010 IRS 990 form calls the NFSS a major accomplishment of Wilcox’s Witherspoon Program. A September 21, 2010 e-mail between Regnerus and Wilcox has Wilcox giving Regnerus official financial information about how Witherspoon will fund the NFSS. And, Regnerus tells Wilcox that he wants to know more about Tellez’s and Maggie’s hopes “For what emerges from this project” — because Maggie Gallagher was at the initial D.C. meeting about the upcoming NFSS. The devious way that Wilcox worded his “For the Record” post, a reader could think that he never functioned as a Witherspoon Program Director vis-a-vis the NFSS — but he DID. Adding to Wilcox’s conflicts of interest is that his U.Va. programs receive Witherspoon funding. And, in August, 2011 – -before data collection occurred — Regnerus and Wilcox, funded by Witherspoon, traveled to Colorado where for a full day they discussed NFSS media and P.R. promotions in anti-gay-rights contexts. Before data collection occurred!
Wilcox told Regnerus that getting Amato on board the NFSS was a major accomplishment — even though Amato has no training or experience in LGBT-sciences generally and still less in the esoteric field of gay parenting.
Whatever Amato’s non-scientific, ulterior motives, he absolutely bullshitted in his commentary published alongside Regnerus’s article. Although the NFSS sample is not even representative of young adult children who say that a parent had a same-sex romantic relationship while the respondent was growing up — Amato sought to bolster the perceived scientific legitimacy of the paper by calculating effect sizes. Put Amato’s tuchus under oath in a court of law and let a skilled person cross-examine him about his B.S. in that commentary. He is a corrupt duplicitous dishonest jerk.
Alex,
They often aren’t anonymous. Even if this one was, if you consulted on the methodology of a study I’d think you would recognize it.
I’ve also given ‘reject’ recommendations, just earlier this week actually.
PS — through FOIA documents we know that in early February, 2012, Regnerus sent Amato a gushing e-mail, praising his skills and telling him that he had recommended him to James Wright as a peer review and hoped that he would take the assignment if it was offered to him. Earlier, when Regnerus had told Amato that he would pay for his wife’s passage to and stay in Austin, Amato responded by saying “Were you serious about the offer of that second ticket?” He explained that his wife used to live in Austin and would love to return to visit. Telling Amato why he didn’t see anything wrong with the email he was sending him, Regnerus said of the SSR peer review “It’s only single blind anyway.” One problematic thing in this is that by accepting to do the peer review in these circumstances — (and never mind his fiduciary conflicts of interest) — he created the appearance that he was paying Regnerus back for Regnerus having paid Amato’s wife’s way to Austin.
Alex – you are making a whole series of claims about peer review that directly conflict with my experience with the process. I have stated what my experience is, as has Hector, and he and I seem to have similar experiences. I think it’s fair to ask what experience or knowledge you base your claims on.
To answer your question – in linguistics, most manuscripts are anonymous, but A – I find it hard to believe I wouldn’t recognise work I contributed to. B – If I’m not sure if I have a personal connection to an author (which has happened to me once – I got a manuscript that looked very similar to a project I knew a recent student of mine was working on and planning to submit, but some details didn’t fit with what I expected from that person), I write the editor and asked them “is this person X, because if it is I have a potential conflict of interest” (it wasn’t, it was a case where two groups were simultaneously working on the same problem unawares)
Also, reviewers certainly do give “reject” recommendations. I have gotten my share, and I have given my share – in fact, I’d estimate that about 75% of the reviews I’ve written we’re either “reject” or “only accept with significant revision” which most editors interpret as “reject”.
I know I should bow out of the rejections discussion, cos it is unproductive and there isn’t any objective evidence either way that could be quoted and convince anyone. But … these rejections you have had, just to be clear they are reviewer driven rejections (ie majority referees recommend reject) rather that editor driven rejections (ie lots of choice, all things considered you don’t make the cut)?
And why are you getting/giving these rejections? If the work isn’t fundamentally flawed or you’re being an asshole and blocking competing work from publication? (Actually I would add inappropriate for the journal, but in this context the complaint is the work was published, rather than published in the wrong place).
This is a comment Dr. Philip Cohen made under a Regnerus-themed post on the “Inside Higher Ed” site:
“There is no perfect formula for choosing reviewers. The choices in this case produced a perfect storm of failure that included bad reviews written by non-experts with conflicts of interest. Had any one of those elements not been present the outcome might have been different.”
And here is Dr. Cohen’s explanation of why he is boycotting the journal that published Regnerus:
“Taking for granted the unethical behavior of Regnerus, and Brad Wilcox, on whose behalf Regnerus acted, the real failure here is by Wright. Instead of seriously reviewing the paper, he essentially whispered into an echo chamber of backers and consultants, “We should publish this, right?”
I believe the paper should be retracted because the conclusions are demonstrably wrong, because the author lied in the paper about the involvement of the institute that funded it, and because the peer review process was compromised by conflicts of interest. As long as this remains uncorrected, and James Wright remains editor, the integrity of the journal is indelibly tarnished.
While Wright is editor, I will no longer review for or submit to Social Science Research. I hope others will join me in that decision.”
Dr. Tony N. Brown is editor of the American Sociological Assocation’s journal. When I asked him about the Regnerus peer review situation, he told me that editors must always pick reviewers who have no conflicts of interest with either the author or the author’s funders.
Yes it is fair to ask. I am still not going to answer.
Well, I’ve given plenty of accept with major revisions – and yes it doesn’t help publication prospects, but that’s not an actual reject. It is essentially giving someone a shot at improving and getting over the hurdle (charitable interpretation) or passing the buck to the editor for saying no (uncharitable interpretation). There is a huge difference between that and personally saying there is no shot of turning work into something publishable.
If we’re including not publishable in present form as rejects, then I doubt there is even an argument between us.
I give straight rejects too. And I have received reviewer comments for my own papers where the reviewer’s recommendation was included and in some of those cases the reviewer said “reject” (in which case, the papers were invariably rejected).
Whether a journal has a category of “revise and resubmit” that is independent from “reject” differs from case to case. I have submitted to, and reviewed for, journals where the only options were “accept as is” and “reject”.
I’m not trying to imply that the peer review process is problem-free – it most certainly is not – but in my experience of a decade submitting and reviewing it was pretty clear what is *supposed* to happen, and I don’t think anyone can reasonably claim that the review process undergone by the Regenus study confirmed to how peer review is supposed to work, or even to the imperfect norm that most researchers work within.
Readers must remember that the Regnerus paper did not reach SSR editor James Wright either unexpected or on its own. It reached him with the Loren Marks paper, and through Wilcox he had advanced knowledge that both papers were going to be submitted to him. Marks had pulled a similar stunt as the one he pulls in this paper, in a court in a California on the Prop 8 case there; under cross-examination he confessed that he had cherry-picked from studies he hadn’t read through, and that he knows nothing about same-sex parenting sciences. Wright very deliberately did not give the papers to LGBT-sciences experts for review. The peer review for both papers was gamed, in expectation of a bigot stampede to the SSR website and the resulting rise in the journal’s impact factor. Wright himself knew at first sight all of the scientific failings of the papers. He is a callous opportunist who will tell you he supports gay rights but doesn’t give a damn about the negative impact of the junk science he published on its gay victims.
Here I found the List of Peer Reviewers direct in Scribd
http://www.scribd.com/doc/159217871/UT-FOIA-March-13-2013-FOIAofSherkatFOIA
Paul Amato (Penn State , Under grad degrees in Sociology and PhD in Behavioral Science, teaches Demography & Family Sociology)
David Eggebeen(Penn State, he at least has a degree in Sociology but is an Assistant Prof of Family Studies, he signed the Amicus Brief WITH Regnerus to the Supreme Court)Christopher G Ellison (Univ Of Texas San Antonio, expert in Religious Studies and is a Journal Advisory Board Member. He worked together with Regnerus I forget like 7 to 10 years at UT Austin before he moved to San Antonio in 2010 )
Robert Enright (This has GOT to be the Psychologist Robert Enright, teaches Educational Psychology Madison WI, he was most likely chosen to review the Loren Marks paper because most of the research that Marks discusses is not Sociology Research but Psychology Research. Oh and this on Dr. Enright
“The study of forgiveness has nevertheless ended up nurturing Enright’s own faith, ultimately bringing him back to the Roman Catholic Church of his youth. He is now preparing, for the first time, to make that faith explicit in his work.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/news/2011/02/forgiveness-scholar-opens-up-o.php
)
Glen Firebaugh (Penn State, expert on Statistical Methods and global inequality)
Alan Hawkins (Brigham Young, he doesn’t even have a Sociology Degree he is a Family Studies Professor, he ALSO signed the Amicus Brief with Regnerus, )
Loren MarksBrad Wilcox (University of Virginia, well we all know anti gay Brad Wilcox he shows up at a slew of right wing organizations)
James WrightI scratch off Eggebeen, I figure he is on the list because he wrote a commentary in the same issue when they published Regnerus so Sherkat the auditor threw his name in there as a diversion, likewise Loren Marks & James Wright are diversions to hide the real reviewers, it is very unlikely they peer reviewed the papers. That leaves the 6 showing and Sherkat said that there were 6 Peer Reviewers. (Wouldn’t it be just wild though if Sherkat was trying to fuzz it up in his published audit and Eggebeen was also a peer reviewer?)
There isn’t anybody on this list who have any experience in the research on sexual minorities, nor the children of sexual minorities.
Ding, Ding, Ding! Of course all these people said, publish, publish, publish. And did you notice the little Penn State Cult that is going on? I bolded them.
I’ll tell you what makes me mad. It makes me mad that gay rights activists and reporters have to file Freedom of Information Act requests because literally, nobody in Sociology IS investigating. There should have been an investigation done by real Sociologists right from the get go, from their professional organization. I shouldn’t have to wait for documents to be released to Scott Rose & John Becker and that reporter Sofia Resneck to find out what really was going on. The Professional Sociological Associations should have investigated. It’s ridiculous the way the information is dribbling out.
Here you can read the Document Dump by John Becker on Scribd here, there is all kinds of stuff in there
http://www.scribd.com/JohnMBecker/documents
Enright is an catholic anti-gay quack. He supports NARTH member Richard Fitzgibbons who is utterly vile – he believes gays are child molestors and can be healed through prayer, etc. They both share a common right wing catholic viewpoint, which fits in perfectly with Regnerus’s worldview…
http://wakingupnow.com/blog/the-outrageous-immorality-of-the-anti-gay-movement
http://wthrockmorton.com/2012/01/sirotafitzgibbons/
(I normally do not cite to throckmorton because he still believes gays are sinners and he counsels gay men to stay in the closet and marry women but he occasionally has some good information since he opposes the full on ex-gay crowd).
—Jimmy Green
Well as you might have noticed from the article on Throckmorton’s site it was me who contacted Dr. Sirota to have her validate what Fitzgibbons was saying was true about her work. Firzgibbons was also misstating Dr. Abbie Goldberg as well, I have that on e-mail.
Thorckmorton actually does NOT practice a therapy of telling gay men to stay in the closet or marry a woman. You have that incorrect. A perfect valid outcome of his therapy with a client is for them to embrace and be comfortable being gay. Same with Yarhouse. Their therapy is called sift or something like that. You have to remember their clients are ppl who are gay and not okay with that because of their religion. A valid outcome under Yarhouse or Throckmorton is that people stay gay and change religions for example. Now if the client wants to stay celibate they counsel them on that and how to be gay and celibate, remember they are psychologists, so their counseling is psychological counseling not religious counseling. They only help the client sort through his world view they do NOT push any particular outcome.
That’s all well and good in theory but it doesn’t work that way in practice. And I fundamentally disagree that there is any value in counselling a gay man to try to live a straight life no matter what his religion says. You can change religion – you can’t change your sexual orientation.
You give way to much credit to the likes of Yarhouse and Throckmorton. Yarhouse is a quack our of Pat Robertson’s university and his “study” of ex-gays that he pimps around has been discredited (it has never been published in a reputable journal). See http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2007/09/17/785
I’m sorry – I believe in science and equality and hate religious repression in all its guises. Repression leads to bad mental health outcomes and suicide. Most of those mixed orientation marriages end in trauma for both spouses because the husband ends up giving into temptation and screws around on the poor wife. Nothing good comes of it. Both Yarhouse and Throckmorton downplay the negatives of repression and play up the so-called value of autonomy and religion. Since when would we let a patient decide to not eat if they were beulemic? There is no absolute right to patient autonomy.
The only people pushing this line of BS is the religious right – no secular therapist is going to go along with it. The APA recommends gay affirmative therapy and that should be the gold standard.
I totally agree with you here,
The thing is not every man IS 100% gay, sexual orientation is on a spectrum. BUT for the, what is that called, Gold Star Gay man, yeah absolutely do NOT try and counsel them to go for a mixed sexual orientation marriage. Did you ever read a forum called the Straight Spouse Network? Oh those stories are horrible, just horrible. And actually according to that Yarhouse study they actually become MOTE gay the longer they are married. Throckmorton pointed that out.
All I know is this, it can’t be one size fits all. Whereas I agree with you, stay gay & change your religion, the fact of the matter is, some gay men and lesbian women don’t want to do that. And they need psychological help to sort through their issues. As long as a therapy program is NOT pushing you towards suppression and repression, I’m okay with it. It is a free country and one size does not fit all. Throckmorton has come a long way since his dark days of reparative therapy.
I think we pretty much agree on the big picture – my point was everything you mentioned is covered by traditional gay affirmative therapy. It certainly allows for bisexuality and it deals with religion like it would any conflicting value. The main difference is that a gay affirmative therapist would attempt to move the patient to a more affirming brand of christianity rather than “respecting” the anti-gay portions of religion.
I just don’t trust the religious therapists who would be administering this ex-gay pseudo- therapy to be neutral arbiters. You have to remember this framework is being developed for use by christian therapists who already have an anti-gay worldview – they are not held to the same standards as secular therapists.
Yarhouse in particular is not an honest broker or academic and as much as he tries to insinuate himself into secular studies (he constantly describes himself as a sexual minority expert which is just laughable – no one outside of right wing evangelicalism knows who he is or respects him). Throckmorton is a little more progressive than Yarhouse but he still is biased towards religion. I do respect him for coming as far as he has and for being outspoken against the ex-gay crazies.
PS – Yes, I have read the Straight Spouse network site – it breaks my heart everytime.
PPS – I didn’t mean to pick a fight with you str8grandmother – I love you and everything you do. You and Scott Rose have been the best on Regnerus when many others in both Sociology and gay activism have been very disappointing to say the least. You two have been key to exposing just how deep the rot is – especially that two-faced James Wright. He really is a stinker and I will never forgive Sherkat for letting his friendship with Wright cloud his judgment. The release of these private emails have really exposed this nasty right wing group of sociologists who scratch each others backs. It’s like you say – its an old boys club that just hate to have to justify themselves to the rest of us.
Keep up the good work!
—Jimmy Green
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