As researchers continue to challenge and discredit right-wing claims that gays and lesbians can be transformed by reparative therapy and are harmful to children, anti-gay activists simply deny the validity of the science. For example, when the journal Pediatrics found that children with same-sex parents “were psychologically well-adjusted and had fewer behavioral problems than their peers,” then-president of Concerned Women for America Wendy Wright said that the study must be wrong simply because their finding “just defies common sense and reality.”
Today on Faith & Freedom, Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver and Matt Barber similarly attacked the American Psychological Association because the group’s research on sexual orientation and same-sex parenting didn’t comport to their anti-gay views. Staver and Barber were provoked by a recent 157-0 vote by the APA on a resolution endorsing marriage equality and condemning attacks on gay rights, which was bolstered by numerous studies showing that “homosexuality is a normal expression of human sexual orientation” and that gays and lesbians face harmful discrimination.
Although the APA used a trove of scientific research to show that gays and lesbians deserve equal rights and shouldn’t experience unfair treatment, Barber concluded that the APA has become “a pseudo-scientific organization” and is now “purely a politician organization”:
Staver: You know, we’ve known for many years about the APA’s liberal background and their bent since 1973, but this 157-0 vote shows that it is clearly a political organization that is hopelessly embroiled in politics and not in science.
Barber: Clearly and purely a political organization, a pseudo-scientific organization that the left looks to a great deal to affirm many of their radical leftist political policies to try to get that quasi-scientific support.
