Professors don’t always see eye to eye, and sometimes this crosses over into professional battles.
U professor Lisa Diamond said that an adjunct professor’s organization skewed her sexual identity research, which she said is typical in the battle between those in support of and opposition to homosexuality.
Diamond published studies from 2000 to 2008 about female sexuality and concluded that a woman’s sexual self-identity can be fluid and changing.
A. Dean Byrd, a family therapy professor and president of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, cited Diamond’s studies to support the idea of changing a gay person’s orientation through treatment.
Diamond said she was devastated to find that her research was used to further therapy that has hurt people she knows. Primarily, NARTH interpreted the term “fluidity” in papers published last month to mean that gay people’s orientation can change, not just their self-identity.
“I take great care to spell out that (my research) does not mean that reparative therapy would work or that sexuality is a matter of choice,” she said.
Diamond said that students in her gender studies courses have undergone the therapy, which is not recognized by the American Psychological Association, and walked away harmed and ashamed.
Byrd could not be reached for comment.
Diamond said Byrd, whom she has never met, did not contact her about her research before the papers were published. There is little to no communication between the competing camps on homosexuality, she said.
NARTH is based in California where the controversial Proposition 8 banning gay marriage passed last week, but also has an office in downtown Salt Lake City. The only other office in the same building is Evergreen International, a reparative therapy group which offers services to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but is not affiliated with the church, which was a major donor in California’s pro-proposition ad campaign. The neighbor groups do not claim any association on their Web sites.
Representatives of NARTH and Evergreen International did not respond to calls.
Diamond said she worries that the published papers aren’t held accountable for misquoting and that they seem to hold more sway over the law.
“Is it possible they misinterpreted the studies?” Diamond said. “It’s possible, but my issue there is how potentially controversial it can be when misinterpreted.”
Cathy Martinez, director of the U’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, said she is familiar with Diamond’s research and isn’t surprised that it was misquoted. It’s not the first time LGBT research has been misused by the opposition, she said.
Kyle Pruett, a Yale child psychologist, accused an anti-gay marriage group in Oregon of misinterpreting his research. Michael King, a child psychologist in London, said that his research was misrepresented by OneNewsNow, a fundamentalist Christian news source.
That gay people’s orientation is brought into question, when a heterosexual’s isn’t, is evidence enough of the unfair bias that still exists against the minority, Martinez said.