The American College of Pediatricians (ACP) has dumped George “rent boy” Rekers from its “Pediatric Psychosocial Development Committee”. Until now, the organization was one of the few anti-gay groups to stick by the disgraced charlatan.
This is an important development because The American College of Pediatricians recently launched an anti-gay website, Facts About Youth, that was bereft of basic truth and objective reality. The ACP also sent letters promoting their propaganda to more than 10,000 school superintendents across America. According to a ACP press release:
The College reminds school superintendents that it is not uncommon for adolescents to experience transient confusion about their sexual orientation and that most students will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged.
For this reason, schools should not seek to develop policy which “affirms” or encourages these non-heterosexual attractions among students who may merely be experimenting or experiencing temporary sexual confusion. Such premature labeling can lead some adolescents to engage in homosexual behaviors that carry serious physical and mental health risks.
For the unacquainted, the ACP is a small, mostly southern anti-gay advocacy group consisting of notorious activists and angry doctors who have an axe to grind with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). They are upset because the group has a pro-gay (and scientific) stance that claims:
Therapy directed specifically at changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation.
In contrast to the small and controversial ACP, the AAP has 60,000 members who conduct genuine studies that are subject to peer review. The average person, however, may not know the difference between the two groups. This transparent form of identity theft is the likely intention of the ACP, which hopes to confuse people in order to siphon off the credibility of the real pediatric group.
The ACP’ new anti-gay website essentially replaces facts with quacks. It is packed with members of the discredited reparative therapy organization, The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH).
This organization pushes the canard that all gay men have distant fathers and making friends with straight men can turn one heterosexual. NARTH encourages male clients to become more masculine by drinking Gatorade and calling friends “dude”.
Remarkably, former NARTH officer Arthur Abba Goldberg sits on the ACP’ Pediatric Psychosocial Development Committee. In late February, Truth Wins Out and South Florida Gay News revealed that Goldberg was a disbarred Wall Street con-artist who served hard time in prison for massive bond fraud. His presence as a putative “expert” on the Facts About Youth site is all you need to know about the group’ “integrity.”
One researcher has already spoken out against the site, claiming the ACP’ work is shoddy and that his study had been misapplied. In a blistering letter to the American College of Pediatricians, University of Minnesota researcher, Dr. Gary Remafedi, M.D., M.P.H., (pictured) wrote:
Knowingly misrepresenting research findings for material or personal gain is a flagrant violation of this code of conduct. Implicating me in this chicanery is doubly damaging to my professional reputation and career by holding me accountable for misstatements and by associating me with a cause that most ethical Pediatricians will recognize as misguided and hurtful to an entire class of children and families.
The Minnesota City Pages has an article about Ramafedi’s tremendous efforts and courage to stop habitual right wing distortions of his work. The researcher is so frustrated by the dishonest tactics from groups such as the ACP, that he has contemplated lawsuits.
“I’ve considered litigation,” he says. “It was libelous. On a personal level, when I’m dead and buried, I don’t want my work to be associated with these types of organizations and ideas.”
More on this issue from Dr. Warren Throckmorton, who continues to do superb work holding members of NARTH and the ACP accountable for their actions.
