I think you put too much stock in the authority of a professional guild. Professional-practitioner associations are not scientific associations but are professional guilds that are not only amenable to political influence, but express political opinions, thinly veiled as science, and act as political organizations. A professional guild requires consensus, particularly on issues that could have an effect on their funding, research, or practice. Western science is becoming thin on objectivity and very intolerant of dissent.

Removing homosexuality from the diagnostic manual was entirely due to homosexual activism - not science. The vote was neither unanimous nor comprehensive and the only “science” presented was a frankly biased study from 1957!

As for the ability to alter one's sexual orientation: Without any intervention whatsoever, three out of four boys who think they're gay at age l6 aren't by 25. This, according to data from the comprehensive study of sexuality by the National Health and Social Life Survey completed in 1994.

It seems to me that “reparative therapy” for homosexuals is akin to changing anyone’s individual and highly eclectic masturbatory fantasies. The high rate of recidivism for pedophiles tells us that therapy and aversive punishments rarely work for people who are driven to seek sexual relief through behaviors that are illegal, immoral, and even dangerous.

Sexual behaviors may be somewhat controllable, but our sexual imaginations are not.

More important than reparative therapy would be prevention. I think every parent would rather work on preventing homosexual orientation than have to deal with it after it is manifest.

We are abandoning parents and children by allowing the promoters of alienated sex of all kinds to control the media, research, and public discussion.