When Exodus International and Focus on the Family need to quote a medical doctor who is willing to blame fathers for family members’ homosexuality, they sometimes go to Paul Meier.
In an undated article that Exodus promoted this week in its electronic newsletter, Meier boasts that “I have given compassionate care to many hundreds of men and women who have had struggles with their sexual identities and cravings.”
That’s where Meier’s compassion ends. The remainder of his article blames fathers, and expectations of fathers, for homosexuality.
Meier’s article offers no sound clinical basis for his teaching; the proof for his philosophy rests upon a single anonymous man named “Jim.”
Gay people and former ex-gays have witnessed for decades the damage that people like Meier do — deliberately, arrogantly, recklessly — to families. Meier’s science-free advice turns mothers against fathers and sons against parents, while fathers are subjected to self-blame and denied the truths about sexual orientation that they will need to reconcile with gay family members.
