A long with “respect for teachers,” Dr. Tait should remember the transcendent principle, “Above all, do no harm.” Our profession has done harm to homosexual people. As president, Marvin Margolis has acknowledged the incorrectness of past assumptions about homosexuality that denied training to many potential analysts (New York Times, October 10, 1996). Our committee now seeks to right those wrongs within The American and to make those changes widely known.
Dr. Socarides, once an innovator, now campaigns relentlessly for the dead past, still fighting battles he lost in the APA in 1973 and in The American in 1991–92. We try to counter the widespread misperception that all psychoanalysts agree with him. His typical response distorts what was said, attacks me for something I didn't say, and denounces our committee as radical gay activists. His assumption that only our committee opposes him is simply wrong. Dr. Friedman's letter (TAP 30/3) typifies our broad support from outside the committee.
The Times quoted Socarides' discourse on homophobic murder “to ask for total acceptance and enthusiastic approval of homosexuality … is truly tempting social and personal disaster.” My response: “I do not think Dr. Socarides intended to condone violence. If he was quoted out of context … he should publicly clarify his intent, lest others use his statements to rationalize hostility toward gay individuals.” No, I do not apologize for that.
Though choosing to remain publicly silent, the Executive Committee obviously considers Socarides' misrepresenting The American's position a serious offense. It was they who directed the attorney's actions. Again, Socarides distorted the issue to ridicule the charge.
His affidavit supporting Colorado's Amendment 2 characterized homosexuals as sick and dangerous to society, and he linked this with what he called “the official position of The American Psychoanalytic Association.” In fact The American has no official position on the nature of homosexuality, only a nondiscrimination policy. Fortunately, the judges ignored Socarides' one-hundred-page negative stereotyping of homosexuals as irrelevant to issues of gay civil rights. The damage to our reputation, however, is that Socarides' misrepresentation of our position has left The American irrevocably associated in court records with an amendment the Supreme Court found unconstitutional and “inexplicable by anything but animus” toward homosexuals.
Ralph Roughton
Chair, Committee on Issues of Homosexuality