Dr. Gary Remafedi Says Conservative Group Guilty of “Gross Misrepresentation” And Questions If Focus Actually Read His Article Before Misquoting It

NEW YORK – TruthWinsOut.org published a letter today from a researcher who claims Focus on the Family twisted his work. In the letter, Gary Remafedi, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, asked Focus on the Family’s leader James Dobson to stop misrepresenting his findings from a key 1992 study.

“I want to draw your attention to a gross misrepresentation of our research at the website of Focus on the Family,” Remafedi wrote in his letter to Dobson. “More important, had the authors of “Myths and Facts” actually read the article, they would have found no support for their contention that ‘many children experience a period of sexual-identity confusion when they can be influenced in either direction.’”

(Full Text of Letter Below)

Remafedi’s report was published in Pediatrics in 1992. The study explored patterns of sexual orientation in a representative sample of more than 34,000 Minnesota students in grades 7 to 12. Focus on the Family distorted his findings to make the case that young people should not learn about homosexuality because they were sexually confused, and could thus be influenced by educational material.

“Focus on the Family has engaged in a disturbing pattern of misrepresenting the work of legitimate researchers to further their anti-gay agenda,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of TruthWinsOut.org. “We call on Focus on the Family to immediately expunge all falsehoods and fallacies presented as‘facts’ from their past and present literature.” (Read More)

The cynically named “Day of Truth,” organized by the antigay Alliance Defense Fund and planned for April 28, is little more than an excuse to inject “ex-gay” propaganda and a disruptive dose of antigay prejudice in public schools.

Ex-gay survivor Daniel Gonzales, who was inappropriately treated by famed reparative therapist Joseph Nicolosi, has released a new video that itemizes the untruths and prejudices that are promoted by the DOT. Check it out:

The Maryland pro-tolerance parent-faculty group Teach The Facts launches a thoughtful discussion of research into sexual fluidity among some women.

Various researchers, among them Dr. Lisa Diamond in Sexual Fluidity - Understanding Women’s Love and Desire, have asserted that sexual orientation in some women naturally drifts in both directions: from heterosexual to homosexual or vice versa. In other words, some women are naturally attracted to attributes other than a given person’s gender characteristics. Such fluidity appears to be extremely uncommon among men.

The TTF blog compares intelligent analysis of sexual fluidity and bisexuality with the ideological rigidity and deception of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, an advocacy group which baselessly asserts that same-gender attraction is rooted in bad parenting or abuse rather than natural impulses; that all people can change; that change occurs by choice, not nature; and that change only occurs one way — from homosexual to heterosexual.

Focus on the Family falsely claimed on Friday that the American Psychological Association believes sexual orientation “is likely developmental in nature.” Focus downplays emphasis by the APA and researchers on biological factors including birth order, genes, and hormones.

The following family-friendly cartoon — appropriate for schools — refutes the ex-gay myth with humor as well as fact.

Compare that presentation to antigay reparative-therapy advocates Julie Harren Hamilton and David Blakeslee, whose ex-gay video presentation peddles the unfounded myth that bad parenting, bad perceptions of parenting, and sexual abuse play a significant role in the development of sexual orientation in most gay individuals. PFOX promoted this ex-gay video via official e-mail this week.

Why might these particular antigay Christians be so antifamily — so desperate to blame family members — and so eager to believe the ignorant guesswork of one particular 19th-century secular psychotherapist named Sigmund Freud?