Is lousy driving the outcome of a genetically determined learning disability? A new study at the University of California, Irvine, says: Maybe.

The study may eventually raise broader questions of social, religious, and political ignorance which leads to bigotry — and whether such ignorance might one day be medically treatable.

According to the Booster Shots health blog at the Los Angeles Times:

Seven in 10 of us carry genetic instructions to flood certain regions of the brain with a neurochemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor — or BDNF — when we’re challenged to learn a new aerobics routine, land a plane or navigate a tricky patch of road. It seems to help us learn to do new things.

But 30% of humans have a small variant in their genetic code that results in the release of smaller doses of BDNF when they’re trying to master a new skill that involves physical coordination. These people have brains that are smaller in some key regions. Researchers have observed that when people with this genetic variant suffer a stroke with loss of motor function, they recover more slowly and less completely than those without the variant.

As a result, these people poorly retain learned information:

In the driving challenge — learning to steer down a simulated winding road without drifting off the center line — the group with the genetic variant made 20% more errors than the larger group, were slower to learn and, when tested again four days later, forgot more of what they had learned than had their peers without the variant in the BDNF gene.

A story last month in Science News indicated that deficiencies in BDNF may eventually be treatable.

The ramifications of these findings may reach far wider than the daily commute, and I wish the news media had asked and explored broader questions:

Do people with this or similar deficiencies suffer from increased difficulty or resistance to learning, especially in regard to difficult or challenging facts, no matter how obvious these facts may be?

Does this deficiency, or others like it, correlate to political and religious affiliation? Does it correlate, in particular, to persons who stubbornly resist the ideas and values of others, or to persons who act out their own learning disability through bigoted statements and actions against others?

As far as I know, none of these questions have been explored — but it seems to me that they are well worth further research.

In a brazen effort to preempt an American Psychological Association report on human sexuality, scheduled for release in August, an anti-gay organization unveiled its own report, which amounts to rubbish in the guise of research.

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality’s (NARTH) “new” study, “What the Research Shows: NARTH’s Response to the American Psychological Association’s Claims on Homosexuality”, is so embarrassingly slipshod that no scientist would take it seriously.

But, the goal, of course, is not to impress researchers who would cackle at the kookiness. The real aim, according to Dr. Jack Drescher, a renowned psychiatrist and author, is to confuse the public and gullible media into believing the APA and NARTH are equally credentialed scientific bodies engaged in a legitimate dispute over homosexuality.

The truth, however, is that NARTH is a fringe group held in ill repute by anyone who has even a rudimentary knowledge of science. The organization is best known for encouraging male clients to drink Gatorade and call friends “dude” to increase masculinity.

The first clue that this study was utter trash was the fact that NARTH and Focus on the Family referred to it as “new”. Indeed, not one iota of fresh research took place. Not one moment was spent in the lab, nor were any subjects recruited to broaden the base of knowledge on the etiology of sexual orientation.

The study was basically a compilation of everything negative ever written about gay people, no matter how invalid, idiotic or biased the conclusion. NARTH essentially blasted sh** out of a cannon, hoping at least some would stick to the wall. (Read More)

Anti-Gay Organization Drew False Link Between Sexual Abuse and Homosexuality

NEW YORK – In a letter made available to Truth Wins Out, the authors of a book on the health of gay men have accused Focus on the Family of distorting their research. The researchers publicly repudiated an article written by “ex-gay” activist Jeff Johnston in Focus on the Family’s web magazine, Citizen Link, which falsely linked homosexuality to childhood sexual abuse. This letter marks the tenth researcher in two years who has claimed that Focus on the Family misrepresented their work.

“Focus on the Family has zero credibility when it comes to interpreting or analyzing scientific research,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “This group has serially distorted legitimate studies on human sexuality to score political points and demean gay and lesbian people. We thank these researchers for having the courage to come forward and set the record straight.”

In the article, “Childhood Sexual Abuse and Male Homosexuality”, Johnston wrote, “Many pro-gay researchers, activists and theorists deny that there could be a connection between child sexual abuse and adult homosexuality.” As proof of a supposed connection, he cited a 2008 book, “Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States”, edited by Professors Richard J. Wolitski, Ron Stall (pictured), and Ronald O. Valdiserri.

When approached by Truth Wins Out, the researchers were surprised by the manipulation of their data and agreed to respond.

“We want to respond to a recent Focus on the Family characterization of scientific findings reported in our book, ‘Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States’ that misrepresented findings in the book to suggest that childhood sexual abuse causes male homosexuality,” Stall and Valdiseri wrote in their letter. “The Focus on the Family description of the findings reported in Unequal Opportunity is inaccurate and, in our opinion, a distortion of the scientific literature.”

Focus on the Family has made a habit out of twisting science to back its anti-gay agenda. Melissa Fryrear, a Love Won Out speaker, has also repeated the phony link between abuse and homosexuality.

“I never met one woman who had not been sexually violated or sexually threatened in her life,” said Fryrear at a 2007 Love Won Out conference in Phoenix. “I never met one woman. And I never met one man either, that had not been sexually violated or sexually seduced in his life.”

“We call on the media to stop quoting an organization on gay issues which has proven to be untrustworthy and unethical in its use of research,” said Besen. “It is abundantly clear that this organization will do and say anything in its effort to misrepresent the lives of gay and lesbian people.”

The editors of the book have released the following statement to Truth Wins Out regarding Focus’ portrayal of their publication’s research:

We want to respond to a recent Focus on the Family characterization of scientific findings reported in our book, Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States (Oxford University Press) that misrepresented findings in the book to suggest that childhood sexual abuse causes male homosexuality. The Focus on the Family description of the findings reported in Unequal Opportunity is inaccurate and, in our opinion, a distortion of the scientific literature. (Read More)

The notion that a single gene might determine sexual orientation was briefly proposed and swiftly rejected in the early 1990s.

That hasn’t stopped antigay activists from circulating the myth that, because numerous researchers in the past decade have found a mix of biological factors and possibly other unknown factors in the formation of sexual orientation, therefore these experts must believe in the existence of a single “gay gene.”

After spending more than a decade hearing and repeating their self-generated lies about a “gay gene,” this week several evolution-denying religious-right groups are crowing over a year-old reiteration of well-known facts by the American Psychological Association.

WorldNetDaily, LifeSiteNews, Virtue Online, and Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth all parroted A. Dean Byrd of NARTH, who repeated his previous false assertions that “activist researchers” have contended anytime in the past decade that there is a gay gene.

The antigay activists (Byrd included) illogically contend that, because there is no single gene that determines sexual orientation, therefore sexual orientation is caused entirely by the environment — lousy parents, in particular — and therefore, they insist, anyone can “change” their sexual orientation with sufficient right-wing Christian brainwashing.

Not so, said the APA last year:

Many [researchers] think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.

Byrd falsely cites three limited studies as proof that anyone can change and that ex-gay therapy causes no harm, even though at least two of the cited studies — by Dr. Robert Spitzer and Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse — excluded potential subjects who reported being harmed or who reported that the ex-gay program failed to change them.

Spitzer, in particular, has repudiated the mischaracterization of his study by NARTH and other ex-gay activist groups, saying that he believes change of attraction and orientation are exceedingly rare and that most people cannot “change” their orientation.

More about Dr. Robert Spitzer here at Truth Wins Out.
Hat tip: Good As You

Why, exactly, does Exodus International — the world’s largest ex-gay organization — allow scientifically inept writers to make the organization’s outreach to youth appear ignorant and irrational?

And why does Exodus commit research fraud just a few months after the reparative-therapy lobbying group NARTH was publicly exposed and criticized for committing fraud with the same research?

I wondered this, again, after reading Emproph’s latest dissection of a new Exodus Youth article that claims to educate readers about the science of sexual orientation.

Exodus cites 16-year-old research as if it were current; ignores research that has occurred since 1993; mischaracterizes studies regarding the biology of sexual orientation; and overlooks the antigay politics and discredited claims of its main source, reparative therapist Jeffrey Satinover.

Exodus also mischaracterizes the research of Dr. Lisa Diamond, who publicly discredited NARTH last year for mischaracterizing her research regarding sexual fluidity and bisexuality in the same manner.

Exodus concludes by misrepresenting the research of Dr. Robert Spitzer, who in a 2001 study found that few people appear capable of changing their sexual orientation — and that of those who claim to be successful, many remain mostly or fully same-sex-attracted despite their claim to be heterosexual.

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is known for distorting research about gay and lesbian people. Critics have long claimed that NARTH’s goal is to twist science to make it fit anti-gay religious beliefs. Today, this was confirmed by an e-mail obtained by Truth Wins Out that was sent to a potential client who asked NARTH about its methods. The “therapy” group responded with this reply:

“As an organization we are trying to maintain the ability for counselors to continue to be able to help those struggling with same sex attraction, the American Psychological Association will not listen to religious reasons so we have taken a stance to have scientific proof as to how and why we should be able to help those live a heterosexual lifestyle.”

This is precisely why NARTH cannot be trusted. NARTH cherry-picks research and dishonestly call it “proof” that their religion is backed by research. They disregard anything that does not back their agenda.

On Sept. 28, Truth Wins Out protested a Baptist Press article by ex-gay activist and longtime Exodus member Bob Stith. While mourning the sexual honesty of Christian contemporary singer Ray Boltz, the article unnecessarily and falsely quoted Human Genome Project former director Francis Collins as saying:

Homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.

Collins never said that; ex-gay political activist Greg Quinlan did. Good As You made the same observation.

Collins had said almost the opposite: He told Ex-Gay Watch:

The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence.  But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved.  That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.

Collins added:

No one has yet identified an actual gene that contributes to the hereditary component (the reports about a gene on the X chromosome from the 1990s have not held up), but it is likely that such genes will be found in the next few years.

Ten days later, Baptist Press finally changed the wording of the article — without acknowledging to readers the nature of the falsehoods that had previously been conveyed, without apparent effort to correct syndicated copies of the article that were circulated around the Internet, without apology to Dr. Collins, and — most importantly — without apparent reforms necessary to prevent future errors.

The only hint of the two-week deception appears at the top the article with this brief note:

REVISED: October 8, 2008 to reflect more accurate wording from “The Language of God” by Dr. Francis Collins.

Stith’s article now accurately conveys what Collins said — but the damage has already been done among readers who walked away from the article (and more than a dozen syndicated copies) believing that a leading geneticist had declared homosexuality a purely environmental choice.

Thus far, it seems Stith might walk away from the damage with nothing more than a quiet admission of fault to one web site, Ex-Gay Watch, which his regular audience never reads. Meanwhile, Quinlan has not acknowledged any deception whatsoever. We have asked Stith for assurances of complete remedial action; he has declined to respond.

Stith’s peers say that he is a man of good character; at one time I believed that, but I became very doubtful 10 days ago and now I am nearly convinced otherwise. True accountability, transparency, and penitence require more effort and integrity than I’m seeing, at present, from a prominent Exodus speaker and policy wonk for the Southern Baptist Convention.

Longtime Exodus International member “minister” and speaker Bob Stith on Sept. 25 became the third ex-gay activist entity in recent times to falsely imply that the Human Genome Project or its director support ex-gay ideology.

In April 2007, A. Dean Byrd of the ex-gay advocacy group National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality cherry-picked partial statements by Francis Collins, Ph.D, of the Human Genome Project, for an article which falsely implied that Collins supported NARTH’s ideological position opposing the existence of sexual orientation as a biological phenomenon.

Collins told Ex-Gay Watch the following month (and repeated this on Sept. 21, 2008):

It troubles me greatly to learn that anything I have written would cause anguish for you or others who are seeking answers to the basis of homosexuality. The words quoted by NARTH all come from the Appendix to my book “The Language of God” (pp. 260-263), but have been juxtaposed in a way that suggests a somewhat different conclusion that I intended. I would urge anyone who is concerned about the meaning to refer back to the original text.

The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence. But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved. That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.

[Ex-Gay Watch’s] note indicated that your real interest is in the truth. And this is about all that we really know. No one has yet identified an actual gene that contributes to the hereditary component (the reports about a gene on the X chromosome from the 1990s have not held up), but it is likely that such genes will be found in the next few years.

Earlier this month, New Jersey ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan and the American Family Association ignored Collins’ warning against NARTH’s interpretation — and further distorted Collins’ position. Quinlan said:

When [gay Christian contemporary singer Ray Boltz] says he’s born that way, we know now for a fact that that’s false. In fact, just last year in March, the director of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins, said this: homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.

Collins said nothing of the sort, and a few days after Quinlan’s article, Collins repeated his earlier assertion that NARTH had distorted his position. Quinlan refused to retract his claim — turning it from a mere falsehood into an outright lie.

Despite those events, Stith repeated Quinlan’s lie to his Baptist Press audience on Sept. 25:

For example, in 2003, the International Human Genome Consortium announced the successful completion of the Human Genome Project, which, among other things, identified each of the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA. The press release read: “The human genome is complete and the Human Genome Project is over.”

While this accomplishment was widely reported, almost no one reported the words of Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the project. Collins, arguably the nation’s most influential geneticist, said, “Homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.”

Somehow the major media missed that little tidbit. Collins and others
acknowledge that genetics can predispose but not predetermine. This supports other studies that clearly document the possibility of change for people who struggle with unwanted homosexual desire.

Stith is now the Southern Baptist Convention’s “National Strategist for Gender Issues.” That SBC “gender” panel is actually an ex-gay policy group within the SBC administration. It is dominated by Exodus member activists.

In other words, Stith is no longer a spiritual minister; he has become a professional spin artist.

Stith not only parrots the exposed lie of Quinlan, but also connects that untruth to an illogical assertion that if one bisexual person can “change” their behavior, then any homosexual person can “change” their orientation.

If anything good is to come from all of this ex-gay truthlessness and spin, perhaps it’s that Stith, Exodus, NARTH, Quinlan, and the AFA have become so untruthful that many concerned families of gay people are leaving Exodus and NARTH behind, and seeking help from trustworthy sources of information in mainstream therapeutic and gay-tolerant religious communities.

I invite Stith to apologize, to distribute a retraction to the same media outlets that received his original statement, and to condemn the stubborn untruthfulness of Quinlan and NARTH.

Addendum:

In 1998, Stith spoke the following in his Sunday sermon as an apology to a gay man who attended the church that day:

We have not lived in transparency. We have often cloaked our own weakness and pointed instead at the sins of others. We have settled for a form of godliness which manifests respectability but has no power to change the core of our being.

We do humbly ask forgiveness.

We have manifested more of an interest in being right than in being loving and often succeeded in being neither.

We do humbly ask forgiveness.

Forgiveness requires true repentance, and repentance requires actual change — not merely a token expression of regret followed by more of the same misconduct.

If Stith is truly penitent, then why did he not bother to factcheck — and why does he continue to abuse the word “change”?

The second researcher in less than a week has confirmed that the religious-right American Family Association and its allies lied about research regarding sexual orientation.

Earlier today, Truth Wins Out reported that Francis Collins, Ph.D, of the Human Genome Project has again repudiated falsehoods being spread about his research by ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan and the American Family Association. We also pointed out that a recent article by Kathleen Gilbert, published by the American Family Association and LifeSiteNews, appeared to have falsely reported the results of a British paper by professor Michael King.

In a followup story, Box Turtle Bulletin today said it checked the original British paper and found little resemblance between it and the claims of AFA and LSN. The Bulletin asked King for his reaction. King replied:

LifeSiteNews and OneNewsNow have misinterpreted our review.  Evidence from around the world identifies the main stressors leading to mental distress in gay and lesbian people as discrimination, prejudice, bullying in schools and colleges, and the consequent need for many LGB people to keep their homosexual identity secret, even from their families.

Our review did not examine links between mental disorder and homosexual “behaviour” or “lifestyle”.  Our work reviewed studies of the mental health of lesbian, gay and bisexual people, and sadly, those studies showed that it is people (not behaviour) that are discriminated against, and not least by religious groups and organisations.

Discrimination on the grounds of sexuality is even more devastating than other forms of discrimination such as racism, as it reaches right into families and leaves no refuge for its victims.

Box Turtle Bulletin adds:

To throw more confusion into the mix, Gilbert tossed in a discredited 2007 study by Nazi-apologist Paul Cameron which supposedly demonstrated that “that the lifespan of a homosexual is on average 24 years shorter than that of a heterosexual.” She also used Cameron’s study to claim that discrimination hat nothing to do with it, saying that, “Homosexuals in the United States and Denmark – the latter of which is acknowledged to be highly tolerant of homosexuality – both die on average in their early 50’s, or in their 40’s if AIDS is the cause of death.”

We have already examined glaring flaws in Cameron’s study, as has Danish epidemiologist Morton Frisch who described his study as “humorous example of agenda-driven, pseudo-scientific gobbledygook.” Cameron’s false claims of presenting this “study” before the Eastern Psychological Association earned him an official condemnation from EPA president Phile Hineline in April 2007.

Exodus International seems eager for such misinformation to continue to confuse the ex-gay movement and its allied churches and political groups: Since April 2007, the organization has declined to publicly warn the antigay and ex-gay movements about the lies, nor has the organization challenged AFA, LSN, NARTH, or Quinlan to correct themselves.

Truth Wins Out reported Sept. 15 that the American Family Association and New Jersey ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan lied earlier this month when they claimed that Francis Collins, Ph.D, of the Human Genome Project, supported a core myth of ex-gay ideology. Quinlan said:

When he says he’s born that way, we know now for a fact that that’s false. In fact, just last year in March, the director of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins, said this: homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.

That claim about Collins apparently originated in April 2007 from the ex-gay think tank NARTH. It was repudiated by Collins in May of that year, via Ex-Gay Watch. Collins wrote:

The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence. But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved. That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.

[Ex-Gay Watch's] note indicated that your real interest is in the truth. And this is about all that we really know. No one has yet identified an actual gene that contributes to the hereditary component (the reports about a gene on the X chromosome from the 1990s have not held up), but it is likely that such genes will be found in the next few years.

But NARTH didn’t retract its deception then — thereby making the claim an intentional lie. Quinlan and the AFA then proceeded to parrot the lie.

Late last week, Quinlan retaliated against the exposure of his lie, accusing Ex-Gay Watch of fabricating its 2007 interview with Collins. Ex-Gay Watch responded early this week with hard proof and confirmation from Collins that the interview took place. Collins said:

I am happy to confirm that these e-mail communications from May 2007 and yesterday are indeed authentic, and represent my best effort at summarzing what we know and what we don’t know about genetic factors in male homosexuality. I appreciate your continuing efforts to correct misstatements that seem to be circulating on the internet.

Quinlan, AFA, and NARTH still refuse to retract and apologize for their lie.