The seven-member panel that spearheaded the American Psychological Association’s controversial endorsement of homosexual “marriage” consists of “gay activists,” according to one organization – including the deaf lesbian who incited a national firestorm of protest when she and her lesbian partner, also deaf, used artificial insemination to intentionally produce deaf children.
Last Wednesday at its annual convention in Honolulu, the APA, which claims it’s “the largest association of psychologists worldwide” with more than 150,000 members, followed the lead of its appointed seven-member “Working Group on Same-Sex Families and Relationships” and announced it was endorsing homosexual “marriage.”
“Prohibiting civil marriage for same-sex couples is discriminatory and unfairly denies such couples, their children and other members of their families the legal, financial and social advantages of civil marriage,” the APA announced in its resolution. “The APA also opposed discrimination against lesbian or gay parents adoption, child custody and visitation, foster care and reproductive health services.”
The controversial resolution by the organization that claims it “represents psychology in the United States” was predictably criticized by religious and family-values groups. But a look at the composition of the “working group” sheds light on why and how the APA decided to embrace the radical redefinition of marriage.
The “working group” of psychologists, appointed by the APA Council of Representatives in February, include: Armand Cerbone, Ph.D., Chicago; Beverly Greene, Ph.D., St. John’s University; Kristin Hancock, Ph.D., Graduate School of Professional Psychology at John F. Kennedy University; Lawrence A. Kurdek, Ph.D., Wright State University; Candace A. McCullough, Ph.D., Bethesda, Md.; and Letitia Anne Peplau, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles.
The APA’s published qualifications for the working group members are “a combination of both scientific expertise in family and couple relations and professional expertise with lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations.”
What sort of “expertise”? According to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH, the psychologist association’s “Working Group on Same-Sex Families and Relationships” is made up of “gay activists.”
For instance, reports NARTH:
- “Dr. Armand Cerbone, who was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2003 and was awarded an award for distinguished service to the gay movement by the Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues, which is Division 44 of the APA.
- “Dr. Beverly Green, who served as editor of Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Issues, published by Sage Publications in 2000.
- “Dr. Kristin Hancock, who developed the APA’s ‘Guidelines for Psychotherapy with Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Clients,’ and is a founding member of APA’s Division 44, a group focusing on gay issues.
- “Dr. Lawrence A. Kurdek, who serves on the editorial board of Contemporary Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Psychology.”
Possibly most controversial of all is the presence on the APA’s working group of Dr. Candace A. McCullough, a lesbian who attempted in 2002 to produce, for the second time, a deaf child by artificial insemination, using sperm from a deaf donor. Both McCullough and her lesbian partner, Sharon Duchesneau, are deaf. Their attempt to create a second deaf baby was profiled by the Washington Post on March 31, 2002.
“It would be nice to have a deaf child who is the same as us,” Duchesneau, who carried the baby to term, told the Post two months before the baby boy, named Gauvin, was born. “I think that would be a wonderful experience. You know, if we can have that chance, why not take it?”
They succeeded, according to the Advocate (“The National Gay & Lesbian Newsmagazine”), which disclosed in 2002 that Duchesneau and McCullough had earlier sought a deaf sperm donor to father their daughter, Jehanne, as well as later for their son, Gauvin, focus of the Post article.
“As a result,” says the Advocate report, “Jehanne is deaf, and Gauvin is deaf in one ear and has severe hearing loss in the other. And that’s what both mothers – who consider their deafness an identity, not a disability – intended.”
Ken Connor, former president of the Washington-based Family Research Council, echoed the sentiments of many: “To intentionally give a child a disability, in addition to all the disadvantages that come as a result of being raised in a homosexual household, is incredibly selfish,” he told Agence France Presse.
McCullough and Duchesneau “are taking the idea of creating so-called ‘designer babies’ to a horrible new level,” he added. “One can only hope that this practice of intentionally manufacturing disabled children in order to fit the lifestyles of the parents will not progress any further.”
Explaining the APA’s resolution blessing same-sex marriage, NARTH president Dr. Joseph Nicolosi said the psychologist organization has “let political activists take over the APA in this particular area, and these activists are giving us their own, values-laden ‘take’ on the issues.”
NARTH, an organization of psychiatrists, psychologists, certified social workers and others focused on therapeutically helping homosexuals become heterosexual, was founded in 1992.
Because the APA starts out “with the foundational belief that there’s no real difference between the genders, then mothers and fathers start to look interchangeable,” said Nicolosi. “With such a worldview, gay and straight relationships look the same; then gay marriage starts to look as if it were no different from the natural, biological family. And, when the research comes in – as indeed it has – showing gays and lesbians to be less psychologically healthy than straights, then the APA simply dismisses it, saying that the psychological problems are due solely to society’s homophobia.”
Bill Maier, vice president of Focus on the Family and himself a clinical psychologist, told the Baptist Press: “Every responsible psychologist in the APA should be ashamed; the organization is obviously more concerned with appeasing its powerful gay lobby than it is with retaining any semblance of moral and ethical duty.”
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