A lesson for therapists: don’t give people what they ask for

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A man goes to see a counsellor because he is afraid of spiders. The councillor asks the man if he would like to be cured of his fear of spiders; the man says, “Yes”; the doctor asks the man if he was frightened by a spider as a child; the counsellor prays for the man.

After the session, the man, who had been recording everything, complained to the General Medical Council because the counsellor had done what he had asked him to do. The counsellor had failed to take into account that, in the land of the loonies, arachnophobia is a preferred lifestyle choice, a protected human right – and, anyway, there is an arachnophobia gene. The man won and the counsellor was roundly condemned, sanctioned and suspended: the verdict was unanimous.

Preposterous? Of course.

From here:

Two years ago, Patrick Strudwick began challenging therapists who claimed they could change a patient’s sexuality. This week he won his battle against one.

They described her as “reckless”, “disrespectful”, “dogmatic” and “unprofessional”. They said she showed “no empathy” towards her client. Why? Psychotherapist Lesley Pilkington had tried to turn a gay person straight.

In a landmark ruling this week, Pilkington, 60, was found guilty of “treating” a patient for his homosexuality. A hearing of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy – the largest professional body for therapists – concluded that the treatment she gave constituted “professional malpractice”.

The unanimous verdict came with heavy sanctions. Pilkington’s accreditation to the organisation was suspended. She was ordered to complete extensive training and professional development. If she does not file a report in six to 12 months, satisfying the board that she has complied, she will have her membership fully revoked: she will be struck off.

The report concluded: “Mrs Pilkington had allowed her personal preconceived views about gay lifestyle and sexual orientation to affect her professional relationship in a way that was prejudicial.”

The client Pilkington tried to cure was me. I am an out, happily gay man. I was undercover, investigating therapists who practise this so-called conversion therapy (also known as reparative therapy) – who try to “pray away the gay”. I asked her to make me straight. Her attempts to do so flout the advice of every major mental-health body in Britain.

 

The Ed Snow

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Job. Ed grovels to keep it – his job that is, not his dignity. In a characteristic celebrity apology, Ed the talking head emoted effusively over his verbal faux pas – complete with carefully rehearsed suppressed tears – over what he said: namely that Laura Ingram is a ‘‘right-wing slut’”. He made no mention that he had changed his mind, just that he should not have spoken his mind.

I expect Ed’s bosses are possessive, wanting to retain the epithet of “slut” for exclusive application to the left.

Here he is in all his insincerity:

Clerical Temper Tantrums in High Places

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Rowan Williams and John Sentamu engaging in shouting matches with the opposition, bishops sulking in the lavatory and onlookers bursting into tears sounds like an episode of a TV reality show:  The Bachelor Bishop, perhaps. But no, it’s just another humdrum bishop’s selection committee meeting.

From here:

Church of England tied in knots over allowing gay men to become bishops.

The fraught divisions have been laid bare in the leak of an anguished and devastating memorandum written by the Very Rev Colin Slee, the former dean of Southwark Cathedral, shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer last November. Dr Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, vetoed candidates from becoming bishops of the south London diocese.

The document reveals shouting matches and arm-twisting by the archbishops to keep out the diocese’s preferred choices as bishop: Jeffrey John, the gay dean of St Albans, and Nicholas Holtam, rector of St Martin-in-the-Fields in central London, whose wife was divorced many years ago. Eventually Christopher Chessun, then an assistant bishop, was chosen.

[……]

“The archbishop of Canterbury was bad tempered throughout. When it came to voting, certainly two – possibly three – members were in tears and [Williams] made no acknowledgement but carried on regardless. At a critical point Archbishop Sentamu and three other members simultaneously went to the lavatory, after which the voting patterns changed.”

What an extraordinary mess – one created by the ambiguous attitude of the Anglican Church to the nature of homosexuality, an attitude that is unlikely to come down definitively on one side or the other of the issue any time soon.

So, at critical moments,  we can look forward to many more archbishops retreating to the toilet to powder their noses as the church continues to fracture, the pews empty and the Indaba groups multiply like maggots on a corpse.

Christians and credulity

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Anyone who thinks that Christians have cornered the market on gullibility should look here where you will find predictions by eminent prognosticators – many of them scientists – along the lines of:

What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?

Democracy will be dead by 1950. (John Langdon-Davies, A Short History of The Future, 1936)

The light bulb: Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure. (Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison’s light bulb, 1880.)

The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad. (The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.)

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible (Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist).

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? (H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Bros)

Rockets are too far-fetched to be considered. (Editor of Scientific American)

The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. (Ernest Rutherford, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time.)

Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years. (1955)

X-rays will prove to be a hoax. (Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883)

And I haven’t even started on failed global warming predictions. Take heart Harold Camping, compared to this bunch, you look pretty rational.

 

 

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Redux

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Yes, it’s back, but this time those who are reluctant to tell are military personnel who are opposed to homosexual activity. They are seeking reassurances that they will not be punished for “telling”.

When does the US military find the time to actually fight?

From here:

Military chaplains are calling for reassurances that troops will not be punished if they speak out about their opposition to homosexuality.

According to Associated Press, a joint letter from retired chaplains from 21 religious groups to the lead chaplains of the Army, Navy and Air Force says that troops may be unable to speak openly if they fear punishment.

Douglas E Lee, a former military chaplain who signed the letter, said that the lifting of the ban on openly gay soldiers was “already an assault and a challenge on individual conscience and some soldiers may think it’s forcing them to abandon their religious beliefs or being marginalised for holding to those beliefs”.

 

The liberalising of Harold Camping

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It took the Anglican Church centuries to get from a belief in the literal bodily resurrection of Christ to the liberal – some would say wishy-washy – belief in a “spiritual” resurrection.

Harold Camping made the journey in just one day: not on behalf of the resurrection, but the rapture. Apparently, all appearances to the contrary, the rapture did occur on May 21st – spiritually:

He continued: ‘We were convinced that on May 21 God would return here in a very physical way by bringing a great earthquake and ushering in the final five months of the day of judgement and the fact is when we look at it spiritually, we find he did come.

According to him, the world is still going to end on October 21st, although Harold now seems to have a way out if it doesn’t.

Also, according to Camping, “In May 21 1988 Christ left the churches and installed Satan there”, which is definitely off, since John Bothwell became Bishop of Niagara in 1973.

 

 

Church of Scotland votes to allow homosexual ministers

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And the church will blossom as the hordes of Scots who were shunning the church for the sole reason that there were no homosexual clergy will now flock to fill the place to overflowing. Rainbows of God’s blessing and abundance will pour out on the Kirk as he smiles benignly down on the hitherto shy clerical sodomites.

Or everything will fall apart, just as it has done in North America.

From here:

Scotland’s largest protestant church has swept away centuries of tradition and voted to allow gay men and lesbians to become ministers, opening up the prospect of the church allowing civil partnerships for same-sex couples.

The Church of Scotland imposed a temporary moratorium in 2009 on admitting gay and lesbian ministers after Scott Rennie became the first openly gay clergyman in a homosexual partnership to be officially appointed as a minister in the church.