In her article ‘Do you have the Ex-Factor?’ Labour Party candidate for the European Parliament elections Josianne Cutajar takes Matthew Grech to task, among other things, for his latest venture into cinematography that will see him starring in a movie titled Once gay: Matthew and Friends (March 4). She opines that it is incredibly homophobic to continue promoting the fundamentally incorrect notion that a gay individual can simply cease to be gay.
Cutajar’s opinion is grounded upon a process of faulty, partial, or misinterpreted scientific research which, when repeated and misrepresented so often, becomes widely accepted as true.
That scientific literature does not support sexual orientation as being genetically or biologically determined is well documented.
No member of the LGBTIQ community in Malta, or elsewhere, has ever come close to proving the genetic nature of sexual orientation. Not one study, claiming results favourable to the “gay gene” theory, has ever been replicated under the scrutiny of rigorous experimental controls.
The American Psychological Association clearly states: “There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors.”
Lisa Diamond is a co-editor-in-chief of the APA’s ‘authoritative’ Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology. She is a self-avowed lesbian and a highly respected member of the APA.
In her lecture for an LGBT audience at Cornell University (2014), Diamond asserted that excellent and abundant research has now established that sexual orientation, including attraction, behaviour, and identity self-label, is fluid for both adolescents and adults from both genders, and exceptions for LGB individuals are a minority.
The APA Handbook negates conventional wisdom that holds the immutability of same-sex attraction. It claims that research in sexual minorities has long documented that many persons recall having undergone notable shifts in their pattern of sexual attraction behaviours, or identities over time.
Therapy that is open to sexual variation change is more in synch with the process of sexual orientation than gay-affirmative therapy
Professor Camille Paglia identifies herself as a lesbian. She is an American academic and a social critic. The following is one of her pertinent comments on homosexuality, taken from her book Vamps and Tramps: New Essays (1994): “We should be aware of the potentially intermingling of gay activism with science, which produces more propaganda than truth. Gay scientists must be scientists first, gays second.”
Nicholas Cummings served as president of the APA for several years. He was also for 20 years Chief of Mental Health of Kaiser Permanente HMO. During this time he oversaw the treatment of 18,000 gay and lesbian clients with conflicts over their homosexuality.
He personally treated 2,000 patients, his staff thousands more. Of the persons he personally treated, hundreds were successful. He is the man who had led the movement to have homosexuality declassified as a mental illness.
There are numerous psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and counsellors who have reported remarkable success in treating members of the LGBTIQ community, who either had been sexually abused as children or adolescents, or undergone other traumas.
At the end of her article, Cutajar hails Malta’s 2016 Affirmation of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression Act as another shining example of how the Maltese government is committed to the full protection of every individual’s right to self-determination, and every individual’s right to live free from hatred and discrimination.
While I concur with Cutajar that the Act gives protection to the entire LGBTIQ community from hatred and discrimination, I firmly believe it fails to protect the best interests of every minor’s and adult’s right to self-determination in seeking a therapist of their own choice to help them resolve unwanted sexual attractions, behaviours, and feelings that do not align with their deeply held personal needs and beliefs.
Moreover, the Act perpetrates a grave injustice to therapists in denying them a useful tool they can use to assist persons, particularly with a history of sexual abuse, who are most in need of compassion and are subject to potentially ending up clinically depressed and at times riddled with suicidal thoughts.
The Act rightly criminalises anyone found guilty of trying “to change, repress or eliminate a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression”. However, it discriminates against long-established therapies that are client-centred and carried out by well-respected and ethically-oriented licensed therapists.
Therapy that is open to sexual variation change is more in synch with the process of sexual orientation than gay-affirmative therapy.
In brief, the Act is an affront to truth and freedom. It is dishonest and discriminatory.
I firmly dissociate myself from Grech in saying in a Malta Independent In-depth debate that homosexuality is a psychological disorder, and that a gay person cannot be Christian and gay at the same time.
I concur with the Malta Chamber of Psychologists’ declaration that homosexuality is neither a pathological mental anomaly nor a psychological disorder.
Frank Muscat is a retired Guardian-ad-litem and Reporting Officers and Law Society Child Care Panel interviewer (London).
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece