Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Flier’s authors promote dangerous `therapies’
Your Feb. 15 article [“Controversial flier could prompt policy changes”] quotes Parents and Friends of ExGays (PFOX) board member (and executive of the Family Research Council) Peter Sprigg as saying that the “idea that there is anything offensive” in the fliers distributed by PFOX at some high schools “is a complete misunderstanding of its context.”
The facts show otherwise.
The fliers urge students to go to the PFOX website, where a couple of clicks leads to explicit assertions that people can change their orientation through therapies. Such therapies are condemned by every mainstream American medical and mental health professional organization, including the American Medical Association.
The PFOX message contributes to misconceptions about sexual orientation that can lead to bullying or lead students (or their parents) to seek "therapies" that are dangerous to health, leading to depression and even suicide. Superintendent Starr correctly called the PFOX message “deplorable.”
But the county public school system also needs to explain why.
While material rebutting PFOX’s misinformation is available in high school guidance offices, the system does not convey in the health education curriculum the accurate information from our mainstream health care professionals on such "therapies."
School system health advisors from the Maryland Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Board of Education’s Citizens Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development have urged its inclusion.
It is time for the schools to act. David S. Fishback, Olney
The writer is the advocacy chairman of the Metro D.C. Chapter of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
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