Ragbag Headliners

Gay Cure Therapy Is ‘Quackery Fueled By Bias’

The American Pshycoanalytic Association, writing to Rachel Maddow’s team to praise last weeks segment on the history of the “ex-gay” idea, has said that any such attempts at a cure are “quackery” fueled by bias.

Following last Wednesday’s segment the Maddow blog reports the show was sent the following comment from the American Psychoanalytic Association:

This issue deserves coverage in the news as long as individuals and the “ex-gay movement” use faulty science and bias to advance their agenda. APsaA states in its 1999 position statement on reparative therapy that efforts to “convert” or “repair” an individual’s sexual orientation are against the fundamental principles of psychoanalytic treatment and often result in substantial psychological pain by reinforcing damaging internalized homophobic attitudes. We emphasize that anti-homosexual bias, just like any other societal prejudice, negatively affects mental health and contributes to feelings of stigma and low self-worth. Reparative therapy is nothing more than quackery fueled by bias.

Maddow’s chief aim in running the segment was to publicize the fact that Dr Robert Spitzer had asked to withdraw his 2001 study that had been used as proof that gay people can change their sexual orientation. The study was widely criticized for allowing the pre-selected 200 patients to self-report change and for not following them over a number of years to see if that so-called change persisted.

Spitzer, in an interview with Gabriel Arana for his piece in The American Prospect called “My So-Called Ex-Gay Life”, said he wished to withdraw that study and cited the potential harms its unsubstantiated claims might have caused the gay community, the very same community Spitzer had worked hard to depathologize just a few decades before.

In last week’s segment Rachel Maddow said she hoped that, just as mainstream media had been complicit in spreading news of the Spitzer study the first time around, they would similarly state Spitzer’s desire to retract the suspect findings and make it known that ex-gay therapy remains scientifically groundless and potentially damaging. –Care2

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‘Islamic Police’: Islamists ‘Invade’ Mali & Ban Traditional Music, Alcohol, Unveiled Women & More

In one town in northern Mali a man has been whipped for drinking alcohol. In another, pictures of unveiled women have been torn down. In a third, traditional music is no longer heard in the streets. It’s evident that the Islamist “invasion,” influence — and rule — is overtaking the West African nation.

While government soldiers were fighting each other this week for control of the capital in Mali’s southwest corner, Islamist fighters were asserting control over the Texas-sized northern half of the country. The Islamists, some of whom are foreigners, are imposing strict religious law, setting up a possible showdown with Tuareg nationalist rebels who say they want a secular state and who seized northern Mali in March alongside the Islamists.

In the fabled city of Timbuktu, whose winding alleyways lined with mud homes fill with sand blown in from the Sahara, pictures of unveiled women have either been torn down or covered over with black paint, according to El Hadj Baba Haidara, a member of the Malian parliament for the city. The Islamists have also cut the signal for national TV broadcasts to the city because they consider the women not properly covered and don’t approve of the music the station plays, Haidara said. –The Blaze

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Taxpayers Funding Employment Discrimination By Religious Groups

Listen to the Catholic Bishops and there’s an all out assault on religious liberty and freedom in this country. But if that’s the case, what’s with all the tax payer dollars going to support organizations that discriminate by hiring only Christians?

Crisis Pregnancy Centers can legally refuse to hire non-Christians if they are privately funded. But in some cases, they do so and  receive federal funds. And as Sophia Resnick reports, these are not isolated incidents.

Thanks to a Bush-era rule, and one that remains in place thanks to the Obama administration, recipients of federal funds can discriminate in hiring staff based on religion in a practice spun by supporters as “co-religionist hiring.” Candidate Obama had promised to do away with that rule but caved after political pressure from evangelical leaders.

Still think President Obama is anti-religion?

The attacks launched against Planned Parenthood and the contraception mandate depend on embracing an idea that taxpayer dollars should not go to support those programs even though funding streams are kept segregating. But crisis pregnancy centers, which offer spiritual counseling are entirely religious and do not segregate funding. And they promote an agenda that is squarely antagonist to democratic principles of equality of opportunity.

So that means that for the time being there is no way to guarantee that taxpayer dollars are not going to fund sectarian religious activity and that the rights of those who receive services from those taxpayer-funded organizations aren’t violated in the process. –Care2