The effort to push Cornerstone Executive Director Shannon McGinley out of Derryfield School’s board of trustees is based on the LGBT lobby’s biggest and most effective fabrications.
The Derryfield School Alliance is targeting McGinley for having opposed a law banning any therapy for children that might cause them to change or suppress their sexual preferences.
This ban was based on the assumptions that we are born with a preference for male or female sexual partners, and that even voluntary attempts to change sexual preferences are harmful and certain to fail. But is this true?
Related: Girard Issues Statement on Attempt to “Cancel” Shannon McGinley from The Derryfield School Board
Regarding the “born this way” story, a genome-wide association study concluded that genes have “considerably less than 1% of the variance in the self-reported same-sex sexual behavior.”
So no, we aren’t born with a sexual preference. Non-genetic factors such as upbringing, personality, and life experiences, are far more significant in shaping our sexual preferences. The study was based on data from more than 470,000 people who had given DNA samples and lifestyle information to the UK Biobank and to the U.S. genetics testing company 23andMe Inc.
But don’t we know that conversion therapy is harmful? After all, Governor Chris Sununu signed the law that bans minors from being subjected to “any practices or treatments that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.”
The problem is that the politically radical American Psychological Association (APA) based their narrative about conversion therapy on a deliberate misreading of their own research survey.
“Some individuals perceived that they had benefited from SOCE [Sexual Orientation Change Efforts],” according to the 2009 APA Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses. “Other individuals reported that SOCE was helpful—for example, it helped them live in a manner consistent with their faith.”
So what did the APA conclude about SOCE? Nothing.
“There are no studies of adequate scientific rigor to conclude whether or not recent SOCE do or do not work to change a person’s sexual orientation,” states the report.
Undeterred by facts, the APA voted to oppose SOCE, And so “born this way” and conversion therapy myths have been repeated so often that they’ve become axioms, like exploding golf balls or sewer alligators.
