At this stage in the debate, you would think that reparative therapy would be dead as a kipper on a cracker.
It has been denounced by all the major psychological, psychiatric, and medical organizations in the U.S. California, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. have passed laws forbidding its use on minors, and they have held up in court. Exodus international has folded, and the "ex-gay" movement is a pathetic and little-noticed side show.
However, there's one Ph.D.-level psychologist out there pushing a brand of reparative therapy that skirts the ethical guidelines of all the professional organizations that have come out against it. He is still cited as an "expert" in the media, and especially by those with an anti-LGBT ideology.
It would be easy to dismiss this person if he were some crackpot that no one listened to or was poorly regarded by his peers. Unfortunately, he isn't. In fact, he's one of the most influential psychologists in the field.
Meet Dr. Kenneth Zucker. He's a professor at the University of Toronto; editor-in-chief of Archives of Sexual Behavior for the last 12 years; a member of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Gender Identity, Gender Variance, and Intersex Conditions; and chairman of the American Psychiatric Association working group on "Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders" for the 2013 edition of the DSM-5.
He's also one of the leading proponents of a school of thought which describes the vast majority children who exhibit gender non-conforming behaviors as just juvenile gay men and lesbians who need to be prevented from growing up to be transgender. He even hints to their parents his methods might prevent them from being gay, too.
The treatment these children receive should be familiar; it is nearly indistinguishable from the methods used by George "Rent Boy" Rekers in the 1970's.
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Someone might wonder how Dr. Zucker escapes the label of sexual orientation change effort (SOCE) with his "Drop the doll!" methodologies, when his techniques and goals seem so similar. There is one semantic difference: Zucker does not claim to be trying to make gender non-conforming kids straight, he just claims to make them straight-acting. Somehow this nuance has mostly inured him from mainstream criticism.
image: http://cdn.bilerico.net/assets_c/2015/01/blue-pink-baby-shoes-thumb-250xauto-41627.jpg
blue-pink-baby-shoes.jpgIt hasn't gone completely unnoticed, though: a 2003 report in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry called his techniques "something disturbingly close to reparative therapy for homosexuals."
Dr. Zucker attributes gender non-conformance (what he calls "pre-homosexuality") to the same things "ex-gay" activists say cause homosexuality:
"[Zucker] urges parents to steer their children toward gender-typical toys, clothes and playmates and advises them to prohibit behaviors associated with the other sex. Zucker's academic articles assert that while biology may predispose some children to gender nonconformity, other factors -- like trauma and emotional disorders -- often play a role. Other contributing causes he cites include overprotective mothers, emotionally absent fathers or mothers who are hostile toward men." [Emphasis in original.]
Meet the Last 'Respectable' Reparative Therapist | The Bilerico Project
