Reparative therapy: Dobson's view

A rather lengthy (and somewhat amusing) article by Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson is rippling through the portion of the blogosphere I read—Matthew Yglesias, on The American Prospect's TAPPED blog, got to it through Bradford Plumer, who in turn credits two others.

The article, dated June 2002 and titled "Can Homosexuality Be Treated and Prevented?" claims no less than to provide "a definitive explanation…regarding the origins of homosexuality." Dobson explains that homosexuality is a disorder that generally isn't chosen; on the other hand, he dismisses the notion that there's a genetic component. If there were, he claims, no one could ever change their orientation, but in reality "there are eight hundred known former gay and lesbian individuals today who have escaped from the homosexual lifestyle and found wholeness in their newfound heterosexuality."

(Golly, a whole eight hundred? Out of how many? Hmm, a little less than 400 million people in the US and Canada…let's be reeeaal conservative and say no more than two percent are gay or lesbian, giving us 8 million. So that's, um, a hundredth of one percent, if my arithmetic is correct. Not the best odds.)

Anyway, if it's not chosen or genetic, that leaves what? Well, Dobson relies on the word of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, a clinical psychologist who, Dobson believes, is "the foremost authority on the prevention and treatment of homosexuality today." Dobson quotes from Dr. Nicolosi's book A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality at considerable length. Turns out, it's the old distant father, smothering mother thing:

In 15 years, I have spoken with hundreds of homosexual men. I have never met one who said he had a loving, respectful relationship with his father.

(Not ever? What about the zillions of straight guys who'd say the same thing about their dads? Where do they fit in this?)

Elsewhere, Nicolosi says,

If [a father] wants his son to grow up straight, he has to break the mother-son connection that is proper to infancy but not in the boy's interest after the age of three. In this way, the father has to be a model, demonstrating that it is possible for his son to maintain a loving relationship with this woman, his mom, while maintaining his own independence. In this way, the father is a healthy buffer between mother and son.

Nicolosi errs by conflating masculinity and straightness (lesbians are scarcely mentioned in the material Dobson excerpts). Also, he's awfully, awfully therapy-centric:

Recalling the words of psychologist Robert Stoller, he said, "Masculinity is an achievement." [He] meant that growing up straight isn't something that happens. It requires good parenting. It requires societal support. And it takes time. The crucial years are from one and a half to three years old, but the optimal time is before age twelve. Once mothers and fathers recognize the problems their children face, agree to work together to help resolve them, and seek the guidance and expertise of a psychotherapist who believes change is possible, there is great hope.

That's pretty compressed; maybe Nicolosi doesn't really mean to suggest that your kid's apt to grow up gay unless you really work hard to make him straight, with generous applications of therapy to ensure the desired result.

For a guy who unquestioningly accepts that homosexuality is intrinsically wrong, Dobson is surprisingly sympathetic; I hardly expected him to say that homosexuality isn't chosen: "Homosexuals deeply resent being told that they selected this same-sex inclination in pursuit of sexual excitement or some other motive. It is unfair, and I don't blame them for being irritated by that assumption. "

Nor did I expect Dobson to grasp that gay people often have to deal with common life issues such as "loneliness, rejection, affirmation, intimacy, identity, relationships, parenting, self-hatred, gender confusion, and a search for belonging" in ways that straight people don't (though he's patently wrong to say that those issues are what homosexuality's really all about), and goes on: "This explains why the homosexual experience is so intense—and why there is such anger expressed against those who are perceived as disrespecting gays and lesbians or making their experience more painful. I suppose if we who are straight had walked in the shoes of those in that 'other world,' we would be angry too."