Extraordinary Affidavit from Former APA President
Nicholas Cummings, a former President of the American Psychological Association, has contributed a highly challenging affidavit as part of a legal case against JONAH, a Jewish organisation that supports orientation change. In it he claims that he and his professional team have counselled thousands of homosexuals and that included many who successfully sought orientation change. He writes,
I believe that our rate of success with reorientation was relatively high because we were selective in recommending therapeutic change efforts only to those who identified themselves as highly motivated and were clinically assessed as having a high probability of success.
The role of psychotherapy and counseling in sexual orientation change efforts has become highly politicized. Gay and lesbian rights activists appear to be succeeding in their efforts to convince the public that homosexuality is one identical, unitary, unvarying and inherited characteristic.
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Persons who identify as homosexual fall along a very broad spectrum of personalities, ranging from shy young men who are so frightened of girls that they fear they must be gay to boys who preferred to play with dolls and wear girls’ clothing and everything in between. Contending that all same-sex attraction is an unchangeable or immutable characteristic like race is a distortion of reality.
Attempting to characterize all sexual reorientation therapy as “unethical” violates patient choice and makes a third party de facto determiner of therapeutic goals.
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Accusing professionals who provide treatment for fully informed persons seeking to change their sexual orientation of perpetuating a fraud is not accurate. Such a tactic serves only to stigmatize the professional and shame the patient. A political agenda should not be permitted to prevent gays and lesbians who desire to undertake sexual orientation change efforts from exercising their right to self-determination.
The whole affidavit is below.
[gview file=”https://www.peter-ould.net/wp-content/uploads/Nicholas_Cummings_Declaration.pdf”]
Great. I have for a long time been thinking of opening a highly lucrative counselling service for straight people who wish to change their orientation to gay. I have always argued that people should have that choice as well.
Go for it. Let us know how it works for you.
I’d be one of your first customers. The pill has awful side effects. Pregnancy even worse. I’m seriously thinking of taking up lesbianism.
Sorry. I would love to help you but, unfortunately, I don’t really subscribe to the theories of Josef Mengele. Unlike Christians I do have some ethical boundaries.
Racial characteristics do not predicate behaviour. For one, those he subjected to his barbarous experiments had no choice or desire for change.
There is no comparison between a free person volunteering for behavioural modification and a child in a concentration camp being forcibly subjected to eye colour injection and amputation without anaesthesia.
The Mengele comparison plumbs new depths of inanity, but, for you, that’s just par for the course of a weak, distorted lack of coherent argument.
I’m sorry. What does Mengele have to do with homosexuality?
Racial characteristics do not predicate behaviour. For one, those he subjected to his barbarous experiments had no choice or desire for change.
There is no comparison between a free person volunteering for behavioural modification and a child in a concentration camp being forcibly subjected to eye colour injection and amputation without anaesthesia.
The Mengele comparison plumbs new depths of inanity, but, for you, that’s just par for the course of a weak, distorted lack of coherent argument.
Really? Or is that you are being highly selective in your history? Mengele believed gay people could be cured and performed many experiments to prove his hypothesis. No different to what is being preached under the guise of “Christianity” here.
Oddly enough Mengele also stated that he didn’t force anybody to partake in the experiments ” they knew that if they volunteered they would get extra food rations.”
Not that we should be surprised, of course, given the record of Evangelical Christians in Germany in the 1930’s:
http://jewishquarterly.org/issuearchive/article6524.html?articleid=452
Or Scott Lively declaring the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda to be courageous (though he,himself, does not support it of course. Having been over there telling everybody that all gay people are rampantly promiscuous disease carrying child rapists he washes his hands of the logical outcome of such holy teaching. Again, typical Christian behavior.):
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2012/11/scott-lively-i-support-ugandas-life.html
The study of history is a fascinating enterprise. You should try it some time.
P.S. Was amused to hear that Rick Warren is being told by various of his christian brethren that his son Matthew is now burning in hell for committing suicide. A taste of his own poison and well deserved.
So are you suggesting that ALL Evangelical Christians supported the Nazis? Are you suggesting that modern SOCE are the same as Mengele’s experiments?
Yes or no? No more comments until you answer.
The evidence speaks for itself. They certainly did not oppose them. The Nazis held that gay people could be cured through hormonal injections, your kind just think they can be cured by other means. Same destination, different routes.
Now why would anybody WANT to cure gay people? That is the big question.
Particularly heretical sodomites who wave boxes of condoms around while ranting about “unnatural sex”.
Alan,
You are talking to the grandson of an Evangelical Lutheran pastor who narrowly avoided a KZ because his friend was willing to put his life on the line for him (click on link below). Your broad-brush assertions just show that you are as bigoted as the people you accuse. Please apologise or take your hatred somewhere else.
https://www.peter-ould.net/media/choices.wmv
I’d love to see one of these sermons with people waving around boxes of condoms. The vision is quite surreal.
Mengele was evil. He also believed that the gangrenous disease of the mouth, noma, was caused by unsanitary conditions and malnutrition. According to your empty-headed excuse for reason, anyone who believes that noma is caused by poor hygiene and malnutrition (including doctors working tirelessly at the Noma Children Hospital Sokoto in Nigeria) is a few short steps away from the medical butchery of Auschwitz.
Since you base your ideas on finding any level of coincidence, let’s try it against euthanasia. Harold Shipman, the convicted serial killer, believed in euthanasia for the aged. Ignore the difference in how he acted upon it compared to those debating in Parliament. Ergo, (according to your strained ‘logic’), every MP who supports euthanasia has a proven capacity to commit serial murder.
I know it’s the weekend, but really try hard to keep up with intelligent debate…or leave!
I have seen this man’s claims before, NARTH has promoted them. The key to understanding the claims comes when we read the criteria for selection.
It does not surprise me that the group he describes should supply the reported outcomes.
There are some very powerful tools in the therapists box, it must be remembered that some of these technique are emplyed as highly effective weapons in warfare and in skilled hands can be as traumatic as a scalpel.
I have met many people who have been through this process, in the long term, I believe it does more harm to already damaged souls.