George McCartney is usually right on in his cultural analyses of current films, but he made a couple of statements in his review of Boy Erased (“Mortal Coils,” In the Dark, January) that must be addressed.  “If homosexuality is innate, as recent research suggests,” he wrote, “then what right do heterosexuals have to deride people who manifest its characteristics?”

About 12 years ago, the Culture and Family Institute of Concerned Women for America published a paper entitled “Born or Bred?” which analyzed all of the extant studies that allegedly showed a genetic cause for homosexuality.  In every case, the studies were loaded, written by people seeking to advance the notion that homosexuality is inborn.  None had been replicated, which is essential for scientific reliability.  They amounted to scientific fraud, just as the old Evelyn Hooker psychological studies from the 1950’s were misreported as the opposite of what she actually found, and the Kinsey reports of 1948 and 1953 have been exposed as ideologically driven and fundamentally false.  I know of no recent studies that are scientifically rigorous which validate the theory that some people are “born gay.”

Further, Prof. McCartney wrote concerning reparative therapy that helps clients recover the sexuality of their birth, “Further reading, however, has persuaded me to doubt the widespread efficacy of any such therapy.”

Again, what sources is he relying upon?  I know and work with many people who have benefited from counseling to reduce or reverse homosexual inclinations.  The left has recast traditional counseling for unwanted same-sex desires as “conversion therapy,” falsely implying that it involves electric shock and other techniques that psychologists abandoned decades ago.  Lawmakers in 15 states, having been given a false picture, have banned such counseling, mostly for minors.  New York became the latest on January 25, following that state’s enactment of a law allowing abortion right up to a baby’s due date.  The culture of death loves abortion, along with the idea that people—including children—can be steered toward homosexual behavior or transgenderism, but never away from either.

The left is working hard to create the impression that our God-given, male-female complementarity is optional and even a matter of bigotry.  The ultimate goal of Cultural Marxists is to create a system whereby sexual chaos reigns, the family and religion are weakened, and the state steps in to pick up the pieces.  A new study shows that two percent of schoolchildren now identify as the opposite sex.  Does anyone believe that this has nothing to do with the fierce promotion of transgenderism in our culture today?

Prof. McCartney writes thoughtful reviews.  Thus, I hope that he considers broadening his knowledge of this issue to include materials from the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity (ATCSI), the Restored Hope Network (an umbrella group of ex-gay and ex-trans ministries), Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), and other non-p.c. sources.

        —Regina Griggs
Executive Director, PFOX

Prof. McCartney Replies:

I suppose sexuality of any sort will remain a contested subject as long as people insist on taking sides in the great hetero-homo-trans debate.  (Am I leaving anything out?)  Mrs. Griggs comes down on the hetero side, which endears her to me since that’s my side also, the others seeming to me excessively unpleasant, not to mention indelicate.  She’s right to call me out on having referenced my further readings on the subject.  In truth, once my grown children gave evidence of their normal inclinations by having ten children (so far), I haven’t much concerned myself with the relative merits of the various persuasions.  However, I confess I continue to bridle at reports of parents who trumpet their approval of the gay lifestyle their kids have embraced.  Astonishingly, there have been quite a few of these folk.  They seem to think it enlightened to say so, which they do at every opportunity in a kind of tone one usually reserves for high-minded sermons.  Sexual attraction in any of its variant forms seems to me more a matter of comedy than a breathless concern.