From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
Subject: Re: AIDS, homosexuality
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 11:44:44 GMT

In article <C0z922.9A9@umassd.edu> pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU writes:
}In article <1993Jan16.080028.11794@genie.slhs.udel.edu>, starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
}>In article <C0x02H.I4E@umassd.edu> pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU writes:
}>}In article <1993Jan15.103816.17505@genie.slhs.udel.edu>, starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
}>}>In article <C0tvKv.7z6@umassd.edu> pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU writes:
}>}>}
}>}>}_Science_, in 1973, I believe, published an article, with no editorial comment, 
}>}>}about the APA's claim that homosexuality is psychologically healthy. They said 
}>}>}the claim was a response to political pressure by homosexual activists.
}>}>
}>}>I should hope so!  Suppose the APA claimed that being an Objectivist was a
}>}>mental illness; if Objectivist activists got this changed, would that make
}>}>the change any less warranted?
}>}
}>}	Yes, it would make the change unwarranted. Political correctness is 
}>}irrational and Objectivism is a pro-reason philosophy. I.e., destroying science 
}>}for a relatively narrow good (theories of human nature derive from wider, more 
}>}basic concerns) is destroying that wider good, ie, science.
}>
}>"Political pressure" is vague.  What sanctions were being threatened?
}
}SG	Picketing, leafleting, disrupting of lectures, threats, denunciations, 
}physical interference with professional meetings, violence, insults, rage, 
}invective, forged credentials to get into meetings, pressuring the APA to put 
}the issue to a vote and then writing to members as if it were a regular 
}political campaign. See "Inventing the Homosexual-Marjorie Rosenberg, 
}_Commentary_, Dec. 1987 and _Homosexuality and Amer. Society_-Ron Bayer. Some 
}psychiatrists were frightened and sought Pragmatic accomodation with activists. 
}Many, however, simply accepted the fashionable ethos of freedom for 
}discriminated-against minoritiy groups.

Thank you for elaborating, but I still see the issue as analogous to the
abolitionists anti-slavery activism, and such actions justifiable, given
the fact that homosexuals were involuntarily committed to mental hospitals
merely for their sexual orientation.

}>Furthermore, you keep begging the question of whether or not psychiatry is
}>a science.  As yet, it ain't.  It can be.  You're granting the claim that
}>homosexuality is a "mental illness" too much credit.
}>
}SG	I have never begged the question since the issue was the APA acceptance 
}of homosexuality, not the earlier APA rejection. The public has been led to 
}believe that the APA acceptance was science rather than politics. That is the 
}issue. 
}	As an Objectivist, I am painfully aware of the absurd condition of the 
}human or behavioral sciences. Nathaniel Branden, as a colleague of Rand, wrote 
}the still excellent _Psy. of Self-Esteem_, a systematic philosophy of 
}psychology which, in its negative aspect, radically refuted Freud and 
}behaviorism.

I've read most of Branden's books.  Have you read Szazs?

I spent many hours arguing against the quacks and hacks who 
}infested the psy. dept. of my former university. Yes, psychiatry is not yet a 
}science but merely in the fact-gathering stage. They have isolated facts for 
}which they have no theory of human nature which could integrate them into a 
}science. But, still, they do have those facts. In all my study and debating in 
}psychology i never came accross even the hint of politics until the 
}APA/homosexuality issue.

It was there from Freud on.  See Szazs' book on Karl Kraus, a contemporary
Viennese critic of Freud's, or George Walsh's mention of marxism in the
German psychoanalitic assiciation during the 1930s in his pieces on Herbert
Marcuse that were published in the Objectivist newsletter.

Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! - Think Universally, Act Selfishly
starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu

"True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
oneself and others." - Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire