Just two weeks after the Texas Republican Party adopted its 2014 platform, the state party’s own chairman is trashing that platform’s support for so-called “reparative therapy” to “cure” gay people by turning them straight. Texas Public Radio quotes Texas GOP Chairman Steve Munisteri about the controversial anti-gay plank in the platform:
“I just make the point for anybody that thinks that may be the possibility: Do they think they can take a straight person to a psychiatrist and turn them gay?”
Medical experts and professional associations have condemned “reparative therapy” as abusive quackery that seriously endangers the mental health and physical well-being of those who suffer through it. Munisteri says emails and phone calls to his office are “overwhelmingly opposed” to the “reparative therapy” plank in the platform. He went on to blame Cathie Adams, the head of the right-wing Texas Eagle Forum, for getting it in the platform. Adams has been one of the most viciously anti-gay activists in Texas. Munisteri unseated Adams as Texas GOP chairperson in 2010.
Nevertheless, the Texas GOP has remained openly hostile to LGBT people, even as polls show most Americans support LGBT equality, including marriage equality. In fact, the party this year once again refused — as it has in the past — to allow Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay conservatives. to have a booth at its state convention. In addition, State Rep. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, recently supported the platform’s “reparative therapy” plank in an appearance on CNN, calling homosexuality a “mistake.” Gov. Rick Perry has also been promoting his anti-gay views, including comparing gay people to alcoholics.
So it will be interesting to see what far-right politicians and activists in Texas have to say about Munisteri’s apostasy on this issue.
It is pretty obvious when even the Chairman Munisteri has enough sanity left to see how this sham approach is not the answer to their quest for new Republican voter.
History is replete with efforts to excuse cowardice by claiming some sort of “sanity’. The United States of America as well as the state of Texas did not rise to their present status of influence and leadership by avoiding truth and referencing their actions as “sanity”. True sanity is having the courage to try to fix or solve a problem rather than bowing to political popularity.
It is a lot easier to fold and be popular than to seek and teach the truth. It is easy to be a coward because the suffering is passed down to posterity.
Okay. Exactly which Biblical scripture says that “reparative therapy” will make a gay person nongay? I have never seen the reparative therapy verses.
Most of us are NOT 100% heterosexual or 100% homosexual.
If someone is bi-sexual, say 60% homosexual and 40% heterosexual, then I can see where therapy can be used in either direction..
Speaking for yourself Joe?
But, Joe, what if a person is 58.25% homosexual, 40.75% heterosexual, and 1% other?
How does it work in that case? For the 1% that is.
“Reparative Therapy” would be a good subtitle for the Bible. Humanity is the ultimate of God’s creation, but He included in the freedom of human life the option and challenge of immorality. He also allowed Satan to roam the earth as an advocate of immorality and Satan quickly began to destroy the human life and what better ways than by homosexuality and abortion so that humanity could not reproduce and please the Creator. The writing of the Bible was inspired specifically to “repair” humanity to the Creator’s original purpose. All of us need reparation but it is not simple and is not easy. Just because some efforts of reparation have failed, it doesn’t mean that we should give up. There is documentation that thousands have succeeded, but one has to take the whole Bible, cover to cover.
Significant verses include: Prov. 28:13, Luke 19:10, John 3:20-21, Acts 26:16-20, Rom 10:8-11, 1Cor 6:9-11, 1Tim 1:8-11, John 15:7 and Psalm 119:9.
“The writing of the Bible was inspired specifically to “repair” humanity to the Creator’s original purpose.”
You need to do some historical research on how the Bible came into being. The Old Testament law was not given to make men moral or to save them in this world or in the next world. It was given so men would try to obey it and find out that they cannot obey it no matter how hard they try—leaving Jesus and grace through him as the only route.
I have always said, and I reaffirm it here. If Christian fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals acquired God’s special permission to remove just one book they universally dislike from the Bible, they would choose the Book of Galatians. It is certainly the one they ignore the most.
You are absolutely correct, Charles, and that is why I suggest studying the whole Bible, cover to cover, and not just picking bits and pieces. When I’m walking down the street and notice a neighbor trying to repair something, like any other nosy neighbor, I try to act knowledgeable and ask him, “Have you tried this and have you tried that?” The book of Galatians and the subject of “grace” seems a lot more significant if you read the Old Testament to see what has already been tried.
I think most Christian Conservatives would agree that the truth of Galatians is of utmost importance, but in politics, fighting crime, rearing kids and fighting a real war with dead bodies lying around, some form of punishment is often necessary. And if I were going to have heart, brain or any other kind of surgery, I would want a fundamentalist doctor in a fundamentalist hospital where every employee was thoroughly trained and every instrument was thoroughly cleaned. Grace is necessary in the salvation of the human spirit because none of us is perfect.
Hang on a second there, Jim.
I’m perfect.
It says so right there on the bottom of my foot: 100% Grade FDA inspected.
100% is perfect. I don’t know where you get this “none of us is perfect” stuff, but it sounds really weird.
Doc, you may have been born perfect, but if you are aging (senescence), you are losing your perfection.
For example, if your hair was brown as a young man, and is now turning gray, this means genetic errors are taking place and your Genome is disintegrating (genetic entropy). By the way, your BRAIN CELLS disintegrate at the slowest rate among all your cells.
Joe, if Doc has a stamp on his bottom showing 100% FDA inspected, that means that he is all lean meat and NO brain cells.
If I were going to have some kind of major surgery, I would want a Hindu, Muslim, animist, Jewish, Shinto, Christian, atheist, or random-belief surgeon that studied hard in med school. And my preference would be that the hospital didn’t also treat elk with Chronic Wasting Disease.
Remember, a fundamentalist transplanted a baboon heart into that little girl a couple of decades ago, because baboons are God’s creatures, too. That didn’t work out well.
I was not talking about a theological fundamentalist in a house of religion, I was referring to a medical fundamentalist in a hospital. I was contrasting a fundamentalist Christian who knows and tries to practice the truth of Christianity with the casual “Christian” who checks the Christian box on surveys and attends church only at Christmas and Easter, or whenever it is politically correct.
There are different types and different degrees associated with SEXUAL ORIENTATION (heterosexuality, homosexuality, bi-sexuality, pedophilia, bestiality, paraphilia, etc).
As a society, we demand that people control their sexual desires in many ways. For example, we demand that adults who are sexually attracted to children (pedophilia), NOT have sexual relations with children.
What’s your point Joe? Therefore,…
It’s a COMMUNITARIAN IDEA. Our Society decides what limits to put on our behavior. If we love our society, we behave accordingly.
Many very young men and women have given up their lives in wars to protect their societies. When a person who is 17 or 18 years of age, dies in a war, he or she gives up his or her sex life out of love for others.