Showing posts with label homosexuals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homosexuals. Show all posts
Thursday, March 26, 2009
YAHOO! NEWS (UK & IRELAND): A significant number of psychiatrists and therapists are trying to help lesbian or gay patients become heterosexual, according to research.
This is despite a lack of evidence that such treatments can be beneficial or even safe, the study in the journal BMC Psychiatry said.
The research found that one in six of the 1,400 mental health professionals surveyed reported having helped at least one patient curtail their gay, lesbian or bisexual feelings.
One in 25 psychiatrists or therapists said they would try to treat someone who was having such emotions if asked today.
Professor Michael King, from University College London, who worked on the study, said: "There is very little evidence to show that attempting to treat a person's homosexual feelings is effective and, in fact, it can actually be harmful. So it is surprising that a significant minority of practitioners still offer this help to their clients."
One anonymous professional who took part in the study said they would help a patient if they held a religious belief that forbade homosexuality. Another said: "The individuals I have worked with have all been very unhappy about their sexuality and wish they were heterosexual."
Professor King now wants to raise awareness amongst those trying to treat homosexuality.
He added: "The best approach is to help people adjust to their situation, to value them as people and show them that there is nothing whatever pathological about their sexual orientation. Both mental health practitioners and society at large must help them to confront prejudice in themselves and in others." >>> Press Association | Thursday, March 26, 2009
THE INDEPENDENT: One in Six Psychiatrists Has Tried to 'Turn Gays Straight'
Therapists admit using harmful practices to 'cure' homosexuals despite evidence they do not work
Psychotherapists are offering to help "cure" gays and lesbians of their homosexuality without any evidence that such treatment is beneficial or safe. One in six said they had tried to turn gays straight, or reduce their gay or lesbian feelings, even though the mainstream medical view is that this is impossible.
The idea that homosexuality can be cured has a long and dubious history and the disclosure that a significant minority of therapists and doctors still think it is possible is "worrying", Professor Michael King, of the University College Medical School, said. "Heaven knows what they do. We didn't attempt to ask them because there is no evidence that anything works. We didn't expect it to be happening at this rate and we are really rather concerned. It ought to stop. It is distressing and harmful and there is absolutely no evidence it works," he said.
A study of more than 1,400 psychiatrists and therapists in BMC Psychiatry found that 222 (17 per cent) said they had treated at least one client to alter their homosexual feelings at some point. The researchers expected the cases to be concentrated in the past, but the 400 to 500 cases recorded were distributed evenly across the decades. "It is happening up to the present moment," Professor King said. It might only be the "tip of the iceberg".
Many therapists seemed uncomfortable with giving treatment, or admitting to it. When asked if they would attempt to change someone's sexual orientation if requested, only one in 25 (4 per cent) said they would – far fewer than the one in six who reported actually doing so. Pressure from clients demanding help because of bullying or discrimination or family pressures may have pushed the therapists into delivering it, the professor said.
The idea that homosexuality is an aberration from the norm which can be "corrected", rather than a natural state, was current for most of the last century. Everyone was thought to be basically heterosexual and homosexuality was regarded as a deviation from the norm, the result of "faulty learning" in childhood.
During the 1950s and 1960s, when belief in psychological behaviourism was at its height, aversion therapy was used to "cure" homosexuals. Male patients were given a slide show which included pictures of sexually attractive men and women and a lever that allowed them to change the slides. If they lingered too long over the pictures of the men, and did not move on swiftly enough to the pictures of the women, they received an electric shock. A variation of this treatment involved a drug that would make them vomit.
Aversion therapy, famously employed in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange to cure Alex, the leader of the Droogs gang, of his obsession with violence, was used up to the 1980s, but has since been discredited.
Other treatments included advice to masturbate to a homosexual fantasy and then switch to a heterosexual one near orgasm. Covert sensitisation was a method which required patients to counter homosexual thoughts with shameful fantasies of arrest by the police or discovery by their family. Hypnotherapy and psychoanalysis were also used. >>> By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor | Thursday, March 26, 2009
Monday, October 06, 2008
THE GUARDIAN: Rev Peter Mullen joked about homosexuals and Islam on an internet blog
A Church of England vicar could face disciplinary action for saying gay men should have "sodomy" warnings tattooed on their bodies.
The Rev Peter Mullen, the chaplain to the London Stock Exchange, made the remarks on his blog, which has since been removed from the web under an agreement with diocesan officials.
Mullen, 66, wrote it was time for religious believers to recommend the discouragement of homosexual practices in the style of cigarette packet warnings.
"Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan sodomy can seriously damage your health and their chins with fellatio kills."
In a previous posting Mullen anticipated an "agreeable carnage" at the start of the annual Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
"They usually manage to stampede and slaughter quite a few hundred of their co-religionists. Just imagine for a moment what a field day the BBC and the leftwing press in England would have if anything even remotely as bad as that happened in Vatican Square at Christmas or Easter."
Mullen criticised the lack of jokes about Islam in the media, remarking that adherents "certainly lend themselves to ridicule: sticking their arses in the air five times a day. How about a few little choruses, 'Randy Muslims when they die/Find 70 virgins in the sky'?" Vicar Could Be Disciplined for Blog Slurs against Gays and Muslims >>> Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent | October 6, 2008
THEINDEPENDENT:
Clergyman Apologises over Call to Tattoo Gay People: A Church of England clergyman who wrote that gay men should be forced to have "sodomy" warnings tattooed on their bodies issued a "full and complete" apology for his remarks today.
The Rev Peter Mullen said his remarks were "injudicious" and had caused offence.
"I did not intend to cause any upset but I realise that the remarks were injudicious and I have caused offence. I want to issue an apology," he said.
In a statement, he said: "I did not intend to cause offence when I made some joking remarks about homosexuals.
"I was not actually meaning to criticise individual homosexual persons, but the promoters of gay culture.
"However, my remarks have caused offence and for this I am sorry and make a full and complete apology." >>> PA | October 7, 2008
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
Sunday, August 31, 2008
PAJAMAS MEDIA: One of the pillars of the future totalitarian state in 1984 is the practice of doublethink, which Orwell defined as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. … To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.”
As it happens, this is a precise description of exactly what’s been going on in many parts of Europe in recent years, as multicultural ideology has been confronted by realities about Islam that, in a doublethink-free world, would send that ideology crashing to the ground in flames.
For a case in point, I will refer the reader to an episode I’ve mentioned previously in this space — an Oslo debate last November at which the deputy chairman of Norway’s Islamic Council, Asghar Ali, refused to reject the death penalty for gays. When Senaid Kobilica, the head of the Islamic Council (which represents 60,000 Muslims), was asked where he stood on the question, he replied that he couldn’t give a definitive answer until he got a ruling from the European Fatwa Council. This week it was reported that he’s still waiting.
But not to worry! Kobilica added that he’s “100 percent certain that the fatwa council will not come out in favor of something which conflicts with European law.” Meaning that while the death penalty for homosexuals is, indeed, an orthodox Islamic position — one about which the Fatwa Council’s head, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has himself written sympathetically — Western Muslim leaders, in accordance with the Koran (and with good strategy), prefer in such controversial cases not to challenge infidel law. (There will, after all, be time enough to execute gays in the coming decades, as the Muslim population attains critical balance in one country after another — first, most likely, in France and Sweden and the Netherlands, and in Norway some time after that.) European Muslims Debate: Should Gays Be Executed? >>>By Bruce Bawer
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
Monday, April 21, 2008
NIS: HILVERSUM, 18/04/08 - If only homosexuals were to vote, Proud of the Netherlands (TON) would be the biggest party in the Lower House. Conservative parties are more favoured among them than progressive ones, a poll by TV programme NOVA reveals.
NOVA carried out the survey in cooperation with gay publications Gaykrant and Gay.nl. TON pulled in the votes of 19 percent of the readers of Gaykrant. From Gay.nl, the party of Rita Verdonk won as much as 33 percent. Among all of the Dutch, 13 percent would vote for TON, according to NOVA.
The centre-left D66 party scored best with Gaykrant readers: 22 percent. With Gay.nl, it scored 14 percent. Together, this makes D66 the second party for homosexuals. Among all of the Dutch, only 3 percent would vote D66.
NOVA said this was the first time a survey has been carried out on such a large scale of the gay vote. It did say that compared with a Gaykrant survey from 1997, leftwing parties have dropped out of favour. TON and the Party for Freedom (PVV) of anti-Islam champion Geert Wilders have prompted strong growth towards the right.
In 2007, the Socialist Party (SP), Labour (PvdA) and the leftwing Greens (GroenLinks) together captured 40 percent of the gay vote, compared with just 25 percent now. Together with TON and PVV, the conservatives (VVD) and Christian democrats (CDA) would now win a combined 45 percent, up from 35 percent in 1997. TON's Verdonk and Wilders' PVV have emerged from the VVD.
In the NOVA poll, PvdA scores 7 percent on average among the gays. GroenLinks does better with 10 percent, while the SP gets 7 percent of the gay vote. The VVD would win 9 percent of the votes and PVV, 8 percent. CDA, the biggest Lower House party, traditionally has a very low score among homosexuals (4 percent). [Source: Dutch Gays Prefer Conservative to Leftwing Parties]
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)
Friday, March 07, 2008
THE INDEPENDENT: An Iranian lesbian who fled to Britain after her girlfriend was arrested and sentenced to death faces being forcibly returned after losing the latest round in her battle to be granted asylum.
The case of Pegah Emambakhsh, 40, comes a day after The Independent reported on the growing public outcry over the plight of a gay Iranian teenager who fears he will be executed if he is deported to Iran.
Both cases have provoked international protests against Britain and led to calls for an immediate moratorium on the deportation of gay and lesbian asylum-seekers who fear they will be persecuted in Iran.
More than 60 MEPs have signed a petition asking Gordon Brown to reverse the decision on Mehdi Kazemi, 19, who escaped to the Netherlands after the Home Office refused him asylum last year. His case is still before Dutch judges who will decide this month whether he should return to Britain where he faces deportation to a country which has already executed his boyfriend.
Gay rights group claim there are dozens more cases of gay and lesbian asylum-seekers living in Britain in fear of persecution and facing harsh punishments if forced to return to Iran.
Ms Emambakhsh came to the UK in 2005 fearing for her life after her partner had been arrested by Tehran police. Iranian gay rights groups have reported that that partner is in custody under sentence of death by stoning. Speaking through her asylum representative in Sheffield yesterday, Ms Emambakhsh said: "I will never, never go back. If I do I know I will die."
Under the Iranian Islamic Punishment Act, lesbians found guilty of sexual relations can be sentenced to 100 lashes. But, for a third offence, the punishment is execution. Now Iranian lesbian who fled to Britain faces deportation >>> By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
THE INDEPENDENT:
Simon Hughes: No gay person should be sent back to Iran
THE INDEPENDENT:
Leading article: Squalid priorities
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
THE TELEGRAPH: Germany is going through an unprecedented wave of self-recrimination as it marks the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
Despite the rapidly decreasing number of people who were alive during the Nazi era, this week, Bernd Neumann, the German minister of culture, announced that building would start on two new memorials.
One will honour the gipsies deported to their deaths. The other, costing £400,000, will feature a video of gay men and lesbians kissing, in a commemoration of the thousands of homosexuals eliminated by a regime that considered them an aberration.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in central Berlin, consisting of 2,711 grey pillars, is in need of repair which will cost several hundred thousands pounds.
As Germany marks the anniversary today of Hitler and the Nazi party taking power in Germany, some have questioned whether so many memorials cloud personal remembrance. Germany still wrestles with Adolf Hitler's legacy >>> By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
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