Who gets to decide what behavior needs to be fixed?

The Kirk Murphy story that I wrote about a couple days ago also appeared on CNN as part of the Anderson Cooper 360 program. I had to wait until all three parts were posted online.

Part 1 is the story from the family's point of view. 9 minutes. A note -- at one point we are shown someone in a frilly pink dress. From the narration it is very easy to assume that was Kirk. It is actually his sister.

Part 2 includes an interview with George Rekers, who says the expected -- It's not my fault. The video is 8 minutes, but much of the 1st 3 minutes is a recap of part 1.

Rekers says his research was independently verified. Box Turtle Bulletin says those who concurred weren't independent. There is more here about the state of research in the early 1970s.

Part 3 is built around an interview with Ryan Kendall, who went through therapy as a teenager to make him straight. He was forced into it by his parents and his only way out was to get a legal separation from his family. A decade later he is finally able to resume life. Joseph Nicolosi of NARTH treated Ryan, so was also interviewed. Naturally, he doesn't remember Ryan and claims his treatments couldn't possibly be that harmful. The video is 9 minutes.

Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin has added a couple more essays to his research.

In 1986, Dr. Robert Stoller, founder of the Gender Identity Clinic at UCLA, wrote an article challenging psychoanalysts on the way they write case reports. The same criticism could also be leveled against behavioral therapists. Too much of what a doctor wrote could be rooted in the doctor's own biases rather than in reality. The way around that, wrote Stoller, was to show the case description to the patient and see of the patient agreed.

Stoller founded the GIC in 1963, so he was in charge when George Rekers was there treating Kirk Murphy in 1970. Granted, Stoller may not have realized his challenge was necessary at the time. But this was one case where that challenge was most appropriate.

During Kirk's treatment his mother fumed that the doctors told her nothing. The case description contained three parts -- this is what we observed in Kirk before treatment started, this is what we did for treatment, this is what we observed after treatment. Obviously, Rekers wasn't going to verify the case with Kirk's mother, so Jim Burroway did. She declared Rekers' before treatment observation of Kirk to be a lie. Rekers then built a career on that lie. Kirk's case even began appearing in textbooks and was the classic case for other researchers to cite.

Another important aspect of Behavioral Therapy is the follow-up evaluation. All evaluations of Kirk through age 15 are by Rekers or by people who had reasons to protect Rekers. All of the reporting is done by Rekers (and not always in peer-reviewed journals) and the details of the evaluation are not documented. Trust me, he's fine.

In addition, when Kirk was 15 his family was falling apart, he was the "man of the house," and, because he didn't want to repeat the trauma of his earlier treatment, had every reason to tell any researcher exactly what they wanted to hear.


Psychologists can be divided into groups, such as psychoanalyst, cognitive therapist, social psychologist, and behavior therapist. Most work from the inner workings of the mind outward to changing behavior. The exception is behavior therapist who works only with outward behavior and doesn't worry about the mind. This includes Rekers.

One tool of a behavior therapist is aversion therapy, used in such things as smoking cessation and eating disorders. However, it was also liberally applied to homosexuality starting at a time when being gay was considered an illness that needed curing. One treatment was to apply painful electric shocks whenever a gay man was aroused by pornography. However, gays did not become straight. They became messed up gays.

A big question in the behavior therapy world is does a particular behavior need to be changed? In Kirk's case does his "feminine" behavior need to be fixed? Related to that is the question who gets to decide? The patient -- one who doesn't want to be gay because he has been told so many times it is a sin? The parent -- convinced their child will go to hell otherwise? The therapist -- one who thinks swishy behavior must be eliminated at all costs? Perhaps a consensus -- attempts to cure gays has shown to both be ineffective and harmful.


Kathleen Gilbert, writing for the anti-gay blog LifeSite, has reinterpreted Burroway's research and the testimony of Kirk's family to fit their standard scenario. She wrote that Kirk needed therapy because his father was cold to him. Yup, blame the parents for insufficient or improper love.