A Tuesday To Remember (Queer Sighted)

Jul 17th 3:03 PM: Your report of the pending APA re-evaluation of "curative treatment" of gays I found valuable, and your comments on the American perpetuation of Nazi-initiated persecution was especially interesting. Certainly, as a physician and life long advocat of a rational attitude towrad sexuality and gender, and bitter foe of homophobic and related bigots, I hope the APA takes this next step.

However, I found your article's analysis to be ignorant and naieve.

The APA does not lead in any respect. It follows public and mass pressure. It DOES NOT change public awareness. Public awareness changes it. Do you think it was co-incidental that the removal of homosexuality form the DSM as a mental "disorder" in the early 1970's (an event I remember well... I was in medical school at the time) was co-incidentally related to the aftermath of Stonewall??!!!

More ominous, ignorant, and outright dangerous was the implication of your comment: "And last, but not at all least, an official APA ban would effectively provide the first official support by a major and respected scientific body that sexual orientation is nature, not nurture.". Do you honestly believe the "nature vs nurture" question regarding homosexuality is... or should be... of one iota of significance to how society should deal with normal variation in human sexuality and gender identity and/or orientation? Would you support persecution of queers IF it could be shown one choose to be queer, as opposed to being driven by genes? Pushing the "gays are that way because they can't help it" argument only plays into the hands of vile homophobic bigots.

For the record, good research (including identical twin studies of such twins where one is homosexaual and the other is not) into such things continues to show that there is an interaction between nature and nurture, and it is ignorant and simply wrong to categorically state, as you do, that homosexuality is entirely or mostly determined by genes. Note that current scientific evidence suggests to many that transexuality may not be much influenced by genes at all, but rather certain changes in hormones during development in-utero that do not appear to be inheritable situations. IF this is confirmed, would you oppose the same sorts of rights for transgender folks you advocate for gays?

Your fine talk about "a bloody stain on the Hippocratic oath and the American practice of health care" was also especially ignorant and naieve. For one thing, the Hippocratic oath contains vile "crap" (to use a favorite word of yours) enjoining a physician to swear to never help a patient with birth control. My medical school class voted to REMOVE that part from the oath WE swore to. And the "American practice of health care" is a repugnant discrace: America provides some of the poorest and lowest quality and least widely avialable health care of any industrialized nation. The health of its popluation reflects this. Certainly to the extent homobphobic bigotry taints American health care, that's a very bad thing... but just one wreteched thing among hundreds of others.

That said, I certainly do hope the APA does take the steps it is considering.

Martin H. Goodman MD