The Neverending Convention, Part II

I’m still (maybe just beginning) to debrief the Texas State Republican Convention. Part I is here.

On Monday, July 13^th, temporary committees began meeting, in person, in downtown Houston. I was serving as an editor for the Platform Committee, and my duty that day was to type up the material in the Health and Human Services Subcommittee. One of the committee members kept minutes, so I wasn’t doing that.

Serious work got underway shortly after noon. It took us until around 9:30 PM to finish up and get out of there. Then I went home and cleaned up the file and began formatting that one and the work of one or two other subcommittees. I got to bed about 4:30 AM (a schedule I repeated again the next two nights).

The HHS Subcommittee of the Platform Committee, plus me,
doing battle, with words, to protect our freedom.

While I didn’t get to have input into what went into the state party platform, I did get to hear discussion and testimony. There were a couple of people testifying that day that I’d like to share with you today. Both of these were on controversial topics—but not actually controversial in that room. We already had wording that I think satisfied them. Still, I found the testimonies enlightening.

Reintegrative Therapy

My very unofficial record shows the HHS subcommittee heard testimony from 16 people. The first was David Pickup, a licensed marriage and family therapist from here in Houston. He was speaking in favor of planks related to counseling and therapy, homosexuality, and parental consent. He shared with us the versions coming out of Collin County, around McKinney and Plano. While we didn’t end up with the same wording, I think the platform covers all the ideas he brought.

Different planks accomplish different things. But the ideas emphasize the purpose of giving freedom—to therapists, and to those seeking therapy. And beyond that, there is wording to prevent giving special legal status to people based on their LGBT identity.

Dr. Pickup talked a bit about the type of therapy he does, called Reintegrative Therapy. I wrote about this in September 2018. I learned about it from hearing Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Jr. He discussed it only in reference to people with unwanted same-sex attraction. It isn’t designed as “change therapy,” although it can have that outcome. The concept is that there is a high likelihood that same-sex attraction is a reaction to a childhood trauma, causing—in my lay terms and probably not fully accurate—a sort of dissociative disorder, a separation from a reality that seems unacceptable in the child’s mind.

As I wrote in 2018,

The term reintegrative refers to the idea that, when the young person is developing thought patterns, he (or she) separates out parts of the self, can’t see their own gender in a healthy way, and in a way dissociates from their wholeness. The therapy helps them reintegrate, or bring back together those hidden or buried parts of themselves, making it safe for them to be wholly who they are.

The therapy deals with healing for the childhood trauma. After that, the results can range from an easing of multiple mental health symptoms, on up to and including the lessening of same-sex attraction, or even the alleviation of those symptoms. You resolve the trauma, and the issues caused by the trauma are resolved. The goal is mental health, not necessarily ridding a person of unwanted same-sex attraction, which is why this therapy hasn’t undergone as much attack as other “change” therapies.

To repeat Dr. Nicolosi,

In the work that we do, in Reintegrative Therapy, the client is in the driver’s seat. The licensed psychotherapist uses evidence-based mainstream treatment approaches, the same treatment approaches used in other clinics throughout the world to treat trauma and sexual addiction. And as those underlying dynamics are resolved, the sexuality changes as a byproduct. Our clients notice significant and lasting decreases in their same-sex attractions and increases in their heterosexual attractions.

At the time I wrote about it, I thought the description of how the therapy worked made it very likely to be helpful to people with gender dysphoria. Dr. Pickup is the first validation I’ve heard that that is true. He talked about his experience dealing with both people with same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria. He said it was his experience, without exception, that every person with same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria has an underlying trauma to deal with. When they heal from the trauma, their brain heals, and the issues are resolved.

This is not something that can be forced on someone who does not want it. Always, this is intended as an option for someone seeking the treatment. As public policy, we just have to keep government from interfering with that voluntary therapist/patient relationship.

The difficulty in the world today is not just an attack on our beliefs, but an attack on our ability to act on our beliefs, even when the facts back us up. As I said before,

In a sensible society, the obvious answer would always have been, “Let’s help you heal, and then we’ll see what you want to do,” rather than, “Let’s indulge your delusion and change the world and its reactions to you.”

But, as is increasingly clear, we do not live in a sensible society.

I have believed all along, the kinder and more accepting approach to people with same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria is to recognize that they are functioning with damage. Some are doing well enough, regardless of their issues, that they see no need for treatment. But many want relief. Allowing freedom in that search is better than insisting there is no relief to be had.

While I had known about Dr. Nicolosi, I hadn't known where one would go to find another such therapist. I'm not sure how one would find the nearest such therapist, but I was pleased to know that there is one in Houston, so I assume Reintegrative Therapy is available in a growing number of places. 

Vaccination Choice

The other testimony I wanted to mention today was from a woman named Jackie. She was speaking in favor of a plank calling for informed consent concerning vaccines. Informed parental consent is a big issue in several areas; healthcare issues such as vaccines is only one part. So we were on the same page. Not anti-vaccine; rather, pro-freedom of choice following plenty of accurate information.

Vaccine reactions are rare. But Jackie’s daughter is one of those rare vaccine injured. She has been living a severely disabled life since that vaccine reaction, and her family, including parents and siblings, must dedicate their lives to caring for her. It is a labor of love, but it is not the choice Jackie would have chosen for her daughter had she known the outcome of simply getting the standard list of vaccines.

One of Jackie’s concerns—and this was also the concern of several others who testified in that subcommittee—was that, once there is a vaccine for this coronavirus, that the entire public would be forced to get it.

I’ve been thinking through the math. I don’t have all the numbers I need to verify this, but I think the rare vaccine reaction, such as Jackie’s daughter suffered, is less rare than, or on par with, children dying of the coronavirus.

graphic from here

A Canadian report this month showed that Canada has had only one death in a coronavirus patient under age 20, and there wasn’t data to show whether the patient actually died of coronavirus or some other reason. Numbers in the US, China, and Italy are similar. Children rarely contract the disease. I don’t have an accurate number for that. But if you accumulate 10,000 of these rare children who get it, 1 is likely to die—but that child will have an underlying condition such as asthma, cardiovascular disease, or immunosuppression such as in cancer patients undergoing treatment. And with that one casualty, it will be uncertain whether COVID-19 was the cause of death or simply an additional or possibly contributing factor. 

A piece I found concerning vaccine injury, from 2017, noted that in the previous year 48,000 Americans reported adverse reactions and side effects to vaccinations. Most were mild. These include things like soreness at the injection site and fever.

A vaccine injury, as opposed to a reaction, is more rare and more serious. I don’t remember which type Jackie’s daughter had, but my guess would be Transverse Myelitis. Other serious injuries might be Guillain-Barré Syndrome, Encephalitis, Anaphylaxis, Chronic Arthritis, shoulder injury ranging from temporary ache to complete loss of use. Most sources simply refer to the risk of these injuries as “rare.” But I did find one estimate as “on the order of one per thousands to one per millions of doses.”

A parent is to be faced with balancing two risks:

1.     a child contracting COVID-19, which is relatively rare compared to adults contracting it, and then getting a severe case, which is much more rare, and then dying of the disease—a disease for which we’re getting better treatments—let’s call this a likelihood of 1/10,000 (which is probably higher than actual).

2.     a child reacting to a vaccine to prevent an illness that is both rare for the child and even much less likely to cause severe illness or death. 

image from here

Add to this the lack of data concerning the vaccine’s efficacy at preventing the disease, and lack of data on how frequent vaccine injuries might occur from it. That will be the situation when a new vaccine for this coronavirus comes out. Its effectiveness is likely to be in the range of the annual flu vaccine, which is not exactly a guarantee of protection.

You can argue for the vaccine or against it. But if you’re that parent, do you want the decision about what risk to take on behalf of your child to be in your hands or in the hands of your government?

If you’re a free Texan, you want to be the one making that decision.

One thing we’ve learned during this pandemic is that government officials aren’t all that good at gathering data and wisely interpreting it in order to make the best healthcare decisions for all of us.

There may be a theme related to this Republican platform discussion: Decisions about our lives ought to be in our hands, not the government’s. I think I can share a part III with more planks on that.

Change Is Possible

I was listening to/semi-watching the Michael Knowles show last Friday, when he announced a guest that caught my attention: Dr. Nicolosi. I knew that name from research on same-sex attraction. When I saw Dr. Nicolosi, I was surprised how young he looked, since I’ve been citing studies for close to twenty years. It turns out the interview was with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Jr., the son of the Dr. Joseph Nicolosi I’ve cited.[i] But they are in the same field—researching and helping people with same-sex attraction.

Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Jr. (left) and Michael Knowles
screen shot from the Michael Knowles Show, September 21, 2018
See video below.

The interview was about reintegrative therapy. That’s a new word to me. It isn’t reparative therapy, or conversion therapy. But the eventual outcomes sometimes have an effect of change in sexual orientation, when that is the desire of the client.

Michael Knowles introduced the segment by pointing out that the left, including Hollywood, portrays gay conversion therapy in very negative ways. There’s a new movie called Boy Erased, with Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, that shows it as horrifyingly abusive. And Vice-President Mike Pence, who is a religious person who favors traditional marriage, as I do, is accused of promoting electroshock therapy, which he has not. And that negative side would include reintegrative therapy as if it were those abusive horrors. So Knowles gives Dr. Nicolosi the opportunity to explain and clarify what it really is:

We need to differentiate between two things. One term is conversion therapy. Now, conversion therapy is a term that’s broad. It’s ill-defined. There’s no ethics code, no governing body. And it’s practiced by unlicensed individuals. This is the stuff that we’re seeing from Hollywood. Right.

In the work that we do, in reintegrative therapy, the client is in the driver’s seat. The licensed psychotherapist uses evidence-based mainstream treatment approaches, the same treatment approaches used in other clinics throughout the world to treat trauma and sexual addiction. And as those underlying dynamics are resolved, the sexuality changes as a byproduct. Our clients notice significant and lasting decreases in their same-sex attractions and increases in their heterosexual attractions.

Dr. Nicolosi goes on to talk about neuroplasticity of the brain, something that I have long thought should be important in dealing with unwanted LGBT issues:

There’s no so-called “gay gene.” But that’s science fiction. Here’s the science. We know that the brain is capable of something that we call neuroplasticity. It’s like, there’s a new study released basically every week demonstrating that the brain has this neuroplastic capability. Neuroplasticity is the idea that the brain can wire and re-wire itself based on our life experience. And with neuroplasticity in mind, why would everybody’s sexuality be set in stone? So, we see that there’s further and further evidence for this, and we also know that the regions of the brain that are responsible for sexual preference are the same regions of the brain that we know change over time.

The brain is changeable, but it requires creating new neural pathways with enough frequency, intensity, and duration that they become strong enough to be the chosen pathways. The difficulty has been with identifying the exercises that would create the new pathways. But identifying where the pathways began going wrong seems like a good starting point.

Dr. Nicolosi has observed a pattern:

I can tell you this. The hundreds of men that I’ve worked with, in our clinic, they tell me very remarkably similar patterns in their childhood experiences that they believe relate to their same-sex attraction.

He later talks a little more about those similar childhood experiences:

You know, so many of my clients who have never met one another, they describe remarkably similar backgrounds in their childhoods—things that are not being addressed by Hollywood. My clients consistently report having distant, detached, critical fathers; higher anxiety, sometimes intrusive mothers; and they themselves who were temperamentally sensitive. If you put these factors together, it seems to increase the probability that the boy will have difficulty making that gender identity shift away from the mother and toward the father that’s typical in young childhood. Oftentimes my clients had a bullying older brother. If you put these factors together, it makes it harder.

These individuals, my clients, when they were growing up, girls were their closest friends. They knew girls like the back of their hands. But boys, and roughhousing—my clients felt scared. They felt intimidated by these kinds of behaviors. They didn’t know how to connect with other guys. And their childhoods were filled with getting female attention, affection, approval, but no male attention, affection, approval. Eventually, in puberty, those underlying desires became sexual. This story is happening again, and again, and again.

I read a study offering this family dynamic causal suggestion almost twenty years ago. It seemed plausible, but it covered only a certain percentage—though pretty high—of those with same-sex attraction. What about the others? Another large percentage—and there was overlap—were boys who were sexually abused by older males[ii]. Some don’t claim this as abuse, because they saw themselves as willing, but if we were looking at adult males having sex with young females, we would call that statutory rape, at the very least. There are reasons young people are considered incapable of giving consent in such situations.

It appears that same-sex attraction, then, is a wiring problem. Sometimes the mis-wiring happens so early in life that the person doesn’t remember a time before thinking that way—hence the claim that they were born that way. Sometimes we can see that having an experience wires the brain in a certain way, deepening pathways that were only possibilities if the person remained celibate.

Any way you look at it, we’ve been right for a long time when we say it’s a mental issue, not a physiological fact, and it is changeable.

The term reintegrative refers to the idea that, when the young person is developing thought patterns, he (or she) separates out parts of the self, can’t see their own gender in a healthy way, and in a way dissociates from their wholeness. The therapy helps them reintegrate, or bring back together those hidden or buried parts of themselves, making it safe for them to be wholly who they are.

Some don’t want to change. Fine. This therapy—as most psychotherapy—is intended for clients who perceive a problem that they want to work on and change.

For those that want that change, there are good reasons. Dr. Nicolosi sees three categories:

One: Individuals that were sexually abused by someone of the same sex when they were young, resulting in conflict and confusion, and lingering effects of the abuse. And these are individuals who, as adults, say they want to resolve this. And we see that with standard trauma therapy, when we focus on treating the sexual abuse memories, these adults often describe their sexuality changing on its own.

The second is individuals, because of their closely held beliefs—maybe they’re Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists. These are all people who say, “I believe I was designed heterosexual.”

And the last is individuals who, they’re not religious—they’re not dealing with a deeply held belief. They’re not traumatized. But they’re here for pragmatic reasons. They say, “Look, I tried homosexuality. I came out ten years ago. I find homosexuality, homosexual relationships compelling, but at the end, not really fulfilling.” And they wish to explore heterosexuality. And I believe no one should interfere with that. That’s their right to pursue if they choose.

Ironically, the movement that says everyone ought to be able to choose the lifestyle they want to live is very hostile to anyone who chooses to leave.

Dr. Nicolosi was one of many who testified against a bill in California, AB 2943, designed to prohibit any and all treatments that could possibly lead to changes in sexual orientation. As it turned out AB 2943 was pulled by the assemblyman who sponsored it, on the very last day. Dr. Nicolosi said we might never know exactly why:

But it probably had a lot to do with a lot of individuals saying, “Look, I was sexually abused when I was young. Don’t take my right away to walk away from homosexuality. I don’t want to be kept in homosexuality against my will.” Or other individuals who say, “Well, wait a second, the client should be in the driver’s seat of their own psychotherapy, not the government.” And this is not the kind of legislation that would pass, I think, in court. I think it would get torn to shreds.

So, despite activism against options, there’s hope for change, for those who want to. In my religion that isn’t uncommon for young people with same-sex attraction. They sincerely pray for release from it. They don’t know where to turn. Not sure whether their parents or peers will understand their struggle—at a time when almost all the media says they can’t change, and shouldn’t.

Screen shot from the documentary Free to Love,
available at FreeToLoveMovie.com/documentary

There have always been ways. But I’m glad to see this particular approach—the same used for healing trauma or sexual addiction, which is a pretty good description of what same-sex attraction is, explaining why those in that lifestyle have manifold more sexual partners than healthy heterosexuals. And also it explains the co-morbidity, the existence of additional mental problems. Dealing with the underlying problems means healing, and then there’s an opportunity to choose.

I’m thinking this might be a better approach for gender dysphoria as well, because those underlying issues are still there after reassignment hormonal treatments and surgeries. In a sensible society, the obvious answer would always have been, “Let’s help you heal, and then we’ll see what you want to do,” rather than, “Let’s indulge your delusion and change the world and its reactions to you.”

If you’d like to know more about reintegrative therapy, I suggest skipping any and all Hollywood versions. There’s a documentary, available online, called Free to Love, that Dr. Nicolosi helped produce. You can find it at freetolovemovie.com/documentary. 

Here is the video of the Michael Knowles Show. The 15-minute interview with Dr. Nicolosi begins at about 17 minutes.

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[i] Here are some of the Nicolosi references I have used:

·         Lack of long-term fidelity in same-sex males: Joseph Nicolosi, Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality, (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1991), p. 111.

·         Pro-homosexual writers claim fidelity is a heterosexual norm and should not be expected of homosexuals: Ibid., p. 140.

·         The level of promiscuity amongst the gay population is also very different from mainstream society.  The Kinsey Institute published a study showing that 28 percent of male homosexuals have had sexual encounters with one thousand or more partners with over half having more than 500 different sexual partners in a lifetime: Ibid. p. 124.

·         Successful homosexual partnerships have embraced infidelity: Ibid., p. 125.

·         Evidence concerning change from homosexual lifestyle is abundant. Study concludes that “20% to 30% of the participants [in voluntary conversion therapy] said they shifted from a homosexual orientation to an exclusively or almost exclusively heterosexual orientation,” belying any assertion that homosexual orientation is “immutable”: Joseph Nicolosi, A. Dean Byrd, Richard W. Potts, “Retrospective Self-Reports of Changes in Homosexual Orientation:  A Consumer Survey of Conversion Therapy Clients,” 86 Psychological Reports 1071, 1083 (June 2000). 

·         Change therapy: Joseph. Nicolosi, “Belief and Practices of Therapists Who Practice Sexual Reorientation Psychotherapy,” 86 Psychological Reports 689-702 (2000).

[ii] Bill Watkins and Arnon Bentovim, "The Sexual Abuse of Male Children and Adolescents: A Review of Current Research," Journal of Child Psychiatry 33 (1992); in Byrgen Finkelman, Sexual Abuse (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995), p. 316. Also, a Child Abuse and Neglect study found that 59 percent of male child sex offenders had been victims of contact sexual abuse as a child." Michele Elliott, "Child Sexual Abuse Prevention: What Offenders Tell Us," Child Abuse and Neglect 19 (1995): 582.