Barack Obama has said something that will make him even more unpopular with the so called Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. He has called for an end to ‘gay conversion therapies’. The so called therapy, based on no scientific or empirical evidence whatsoever, seeks to “repair gay, lesbian and transgender youth.”
You would think such quack ‘therapy’ would be practised by a few demented nut jobs but you’d be wrong: it’s practised and supported by a lot of demented nut jobs, including the husband of former US presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann, as well as a number of other right wing politicians and, unsurprisingly, Godwhackers.
The suggestion, belief even, is that homosexuality is an illness that can be cured. If you have ever seen Bill Maher’s brilliant movie “Religulous”, he interviews Pastor John Westcott who runs the Exchange Ministry and was himself ‘cured’ of his homosexuality. Moreover, he married a woman who was ‘cured’ of her lesbianism and they have subsequently had three children together. Westcott firmly believes that no one is born gay and everyone can be cured. He is the walking, talking evidence. Except that he isn’t. He is as camp as a row of tents. He is what he has always been. The very obvious conclusion, which Westcott doesn’t deny as both he and Maher dissolve into laughter, is that he is of course gay. This is a somewhat clod-hopping description on my part but the essential point of the interview, put forward by Maher, is that if you are gay, that’s how you are born and nothing is going to change it. Westcott, almost pitifully, thinks you can and because of his deep faith – you somehow knew that bit was coming – he said he was cured. Some years after the movie was released, Westcott and his wife divorced and he left the ministry. make of that what you will.
I suppose Obama is beyond caring now. He’s been a decent enough president, politically somewhere in the centre of the UK Conservative Party, and has done a lot of good things. And he’s off in a couple of years anyway. I wonder if in his pre president’s guise he would have been so bold, in a country where 78% of Americans believe that the Bible is either the actual or inspired Word of God. He would probably had to duck the subject.
“We believe that change is still possible. People go to therapy because they can change, because it really does work,” David Pickup, a family therapist in California and Texas, told the New York Times. “We help people grow into their authentic selves.”
This is the sort of pseudo-science and quackery that we are up against. You can’t be cured of who you are. As American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it”. You can’t say the same thing about religion.
