Hilarious. All I said was that there wasn't any real scientific evidence that explains, defines or "normalizes" homosexuality. And I am right about that, of course.

I never suggested any discrimination against homosexuals, encouraged any hate crimes, nor did I say characterize homosexuals in any other sense, other than to note the (absolutely true) historical fact that up to 1973, homosexuality had a definitional place in the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

And so what happens to me on Salon? I am called a bigot, and it is suggested that my speech be banned.

Welcome to the open-minded, free-speech, science-based-reality world of Salon.

No matter what anybody below has said, I still love this debate. The more that the advocates for the normalization of homosexuality argue the point from a scientific perspective, the more that the world will realize, "Wow, we really don't understand this orientation at all, do we?"

Poor Straightman, victim of liberal censorship! His letter was selected as an editor's choice by the left-leaning Salon. That hardly proves his point.

I faulted Straightman's initial letter because his criticism of the American Psychological Association was based on an action of the American Psychiatric Association. Straightman confused the actions of two entirely separate organizations, based on the two having the same initials. And in fact, on the interrogation issue, the two organizations have very different views.

No one disputes Straightman's claim that homosexuality was listed in the DSM from 1952 until 1973, but in fact, homosexuality has been out of the DSM for longer than it was in it. The original list of mental disorders, DSM-I, was created from a survey of the APA membership, as a list of common terminology primarily used by psychanalysts. Until 1973, there was no effort to have any psychiatric diagnosis be evidence-based. The removal of homosexuality from the DSM in 1973 was part of a process to develop the first evidence-based list of mental illnesses, which culminated in DSM III. This effort included defining a mental disorder as a condition causing clinically significant distress and/or social/occupational impairment, and it was determined that homosexuality did not meet this definition of mental disorder.

This could have been an interesting article. Unfortunately it lacked anything substantive.

Typical of pseudo-intellectuals who have been cornered and wish to escape the argument, the name calling and attempts at ridicule begin.

Having read the APA Psychological Ethics and National Security task force’s statement on psychologists’ roles in interrogating prisoners, it is clear that many of those responding to this article have not. From reading their responses, one would believe the APA has decided to provide members with build-it-yourself Iron Maiden instructions.

That supposedly educated individuals cannot distinguish between interrogation and torture indicates either a rhetorical shell game resulting from intellectual dishonesty--if in fact they believe the terms interchangeable--or a willfully dishonest portrayal for political purposes. If the fundamental premise is that interrogation--the questioning of prisoners--is a bad thing, the conclusion can only be that every police officer in America should pack up and go home.

Just as it is highly unlikely that criminals will voluntarily confess their crimes without having been asked any questions, it isequally unlikely that terrorists will volunteer information without skillful interrogation. Incidentally, I look forward to “Salon’s” article about how dangerous police psychologists are, and how their presence aids and abets the torture policies of police departments across the country.

The fact is that psychologists can provide a much-needed check on interrogations, preventing the “crossing the line” into torture that apparently so many APA members believe their fellow members will slip into. The failure of these alarmist APA members to see the value of utilizing those individuals with expertise and experience to ensure interrogations do not go too far, is a greater indication of their beliefs about themselves than the conduct and decisions of the PENS task force.

There are facts missing in the debate on torture, facts nonetheless well-known both to those of us who treat refugee survivors of torture, and to military psychologists.

1. The Administration and military psychologists know that the techniques they use are torture. Before 9/11 and the Administration's wish to use torture openly, Congress passed and Bush signed into law The Torture Victim Relief Act in 1998. The Act says in part, "Some specific examples of physical and psychological torture (are) systematic beating, sexual torture, electrical torture, suffocation, burning, bodily suspension, pharmacological torture...deprivation and exhaustion, threats about the use of torture, witnessing the torture of others, humiliation and isolation" (Congressional Register, 22 March 200413308).

2. There is scientific evidence, well-known to military and other psychologists, that it is in fact impossible for psychologists or anyone belonging to a guard system to temper brutality. In Zimbardo's 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, he and the other psychologists inadvertantly became part of the torture because they ran the experiment--Zimbardo even acted as prison warden. Only the protest of an outside observer--in this case another psychologist coming days late to the experiment--enabled Zimbardo to see what he was permitting and stop guard torture. (P. Zimbardo, "The Lucifer Effect", Random House, 2007). This must be the reason the Red Cross and the UN Rapporteur on Torture are banned from US prisons--they would free the psychologists, and produce whistleblowers.

3. Military psychologists are familiar with the clinical literature from the 30 US torture treatment centers, and from the many outside the US. We all know full well that current interrogation methods leave symptoms for years, often for life. But no one ever said we know the knife in the throat is torture because we have followed the symptoms.

It is psychology that is useful to torture, not psychiatry, or medical practice. Modern torture has been designed for years by psychologists, but this is not generally known. It must be at least part of the reason the Administration has not tried to control the professional associations of doctors and psychiatrists as it has the American Psychological Association. But despite government manipulation of the APA, public protest is very important because it provides a defense of conscience, and so prevents the cultivation of a bystander culture.

However, despite the importance of opposing torture in interrogation, or participation of psychologists in this, the debate about torture in interrogation may prevent us from seeing the larger point of US torture. Modern state torture is for one of two reasons: interrogation of some for information, and torture of large numbers for political control by terror. By 2005 the US had 17 prisons in Iraq in addition to Abu Ghraib, and more than 50,000 Iraqis passed through them--far too many to interrogate. By now many more must have been imprisoned, and seen, heard, or been more directly subject to torture.

The APA Website in 2006 carried word that Zimbardo had instructed Naval Intelligence about the Stanford experiment. He was there to advise that teaching torture resistance, with military personnel as mock torturers, could get out of hand if not monitored somehow. It would not take Intelligence any effort to see what Zimbardo discovered at Stanford: that if you create the right situation, guards and even their supervisors will torture.

The advantage of creating such situations to an Administration

wishing to torture is that there is complete deniability--there does not have to be training to torture--the situation is known to produce it. And if anyone is caught, they will be only the low-ranking personnel, and will not even know what has happened to them. Not any more than the American public, which is not informed about experiments by psychologists.

(Anyone interested in sources is directed to the article, "Psychology and US Psychologists in War and Torture in the Middle East" in the Danish clinical journal TORTURE. The article is in the publications section at irct.org)

Gerald Gray, LCSW