Personal Aside: American Psychological Association’s Caving into Gay Lobby Right Out of the “Politically Correct” File.

As soon as you think the paper has reached its bottom trough, the Chicago Sun-Times…bankrupt…comes up with a subterranean new level. Last week the paper printed an article from the Associated Press in the form of an editorial, issuing kudos…has that word ever been used except in tabloid headlines?...to the American Psychological Association for declaring that mental health professionals should not advise their homosexual clients that they can become heterosexuals through therapy or other treatments. The fact is there has long been warfare within the organization led by militant homosexuals and the 136-page document is the result. It is political warfare similar to other left-wing extremist groups which stealthily gained control first of the American Bar Association and converted it to radicality…and next, recently, the American Medical Association, leading it to endorse the Obama health proposal. So now we have three cultural leftwing fronts: the ABA, AMA and APA.

Of these only the APA departs from its professionalism and enters the field of theology where it has no place. As such it has no business whatever criticizing spiritual leaders who rightly advise on moral questions because it itself intrudes on these. If theologians intruded to postulate on the issues of emotional psychosis, the APA would be first to object on the basis that the theologians are unqualified to discuss scientific matters. But the APA has arrogated unto itself the right to contradict basic lessons of religion built up during the past 2000 plus years and call it science. That is inherently duplicitous.

Basic Christianity, centered in the teachings of my own Catholic church as well as evangelical Christian congregations has faced homosexuality…at least until rupture within the Episcopalians and Lutherans, without compromise. There is a continuingly clever but misleading challenge of gay rights activists that nowhere can be found in Scripture a definitive condemnation of homosexuality is specious. First it is hideously inaccurate. Homosexuality is condemned in the story of Sodom as described in Genesis 19:1-11 and Leviticus 18:22, 20:13. It is condemned by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (6:9), in his letter to the Romans (1:18-32) and in the first chapter of his first letter to Timothy. Still liberal biblical and pro-gay rights scholars strive to make the passages applicable to other sins.

But the moral law is not strictly rooted in the Bible—as least not in my own Catholic church. We claim a living Tradition that is the revealed, though unwritten, word of God which was completed toward the end of the apostolic age. Then we Catholics have a teaching magisterium by which we believe God’s revealed word will be preserved free from error to the end of the world. That is why the pompous writing of the APA attempts to transgress and smother Christian teaching. And indeed not all psychiatrists, psychologists are in their camp. The finest explanation has been written by Jeffrey Satinover, M. D. in his landmark book “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth.” It is fully described in the very fine evangelical magazine “World” to which I subscribe in an interview conducted with Dr. Satinover by the journalistic scholar Marvin Olasky, himself born a Jew who converted to the evangelical Protestant faith.

“One gutsy psychiatrist has spoken out about homosexuality but social and professional pressure has silenced others,” writes Olasky, himself a supporter of faith-based policies that are in line with constitutional guarantees. The Amazon.com website includes 70 customer reviews, and 33 readers giving it the highest rating of 5-stars. “I became upset at the bamboozlement about this whole topic that was prevalent in the mental health profession and the propagation of a point of view that is at the very least debatable if not outright mistaken,” he told Olasky. “…It was 95% ideology. Often, if I would give public talks on this subject, I would throw up overheads showing public statements of reporters and scientists all saying `It’s genetics, science shows this” etc. Then I would show quotations from the research articles that were being used to support these statements and the research articles themselves contradicted these statements in the most flatly obvious way.”

You should get a copy of this month’s “World.” Better still, subscribe. Satinover: “When it was considered kosher to treat homosexuality as a changeable condition, homosexuality was treated as potentially reversible. Not universally reversible. There’s no such things as 100% success in any kind of therapy—but a very significant success rate. Then it became increasingly politically incorrect to hold that point of view. We like to think of professionals as a cut above the man on the street in terms of their fiduciary responsibility and independence of thought—but sadly it’s often the opposite. Professionals tend to be on average very influenced by social trends and fashions, especially if those fashions influence their ability to continue practicing and be a respected member of the community.”

I continue to address the willful intrusion of these windsocks who want to run fashionable practices to destroy the teachings of the major Christian churches—indeed Judeo-Christianity. Mine teaches that in creating the human race, God wants men and women to cooperate with Him in the generation of life by mutual donation of the self to one another.

How outrageous that a group of fashionable Park Avenue cynics have intruded on these timeless teachings! But I cannot include the Sun-Times editorial in this category. It is worse because it is cravenly subordinating what at least the editorial page editor knows is truth to the mercenary exploitation of readers to allow his disreputable paper to continue its worthless life.

There I said it.