Same-sex attraction used to be in the diagnostic manual of psychiatry. After a years-long political campaign by gay activists and psychiatrists, it was removed. Now the move is afoot to classify “homophobia” as a psychiatric disorder.
Medical “sexologist” Emmanuele Jannini, writing in The Journal of Sexual Medicine says, “After discussing for centuries if homosexuality is to be considered a disease, for the first time we demonstrated that the real disease to be cured is homophobia, associated with potentially severe psychopathologies.”
Jannini of the University of Rome Tor Vergata and twelve Phd and MD colleagues from the University of L’Aquila, University of Florence, and Spienza University in Rome have issued a study that asserts the better mental health you have, based on criteria Jannini established, the less likely you are to be “homophobic.”
The researchers interviewed 551 Italian university students.
The study found that “homophobes” have higher levels of hostility and anger and are more likely to be uncomfortable in close relationships. Jannini believes “homophobia” is more likely found “dysfunctional personalities.”
Jannini also believes “homophobia” is culturally induced and is caused by religion and conservative values.
Jannini’s study joins earlier work of academics that stigmatize opposition to the gay agenda. A 2012 study, for instance, found that those who oppose the gay agenda are in actuality struggling with their own same-sex desires. This has become a meme gay activists use against their critics.
The left-wing press eagerly picked up the new study. Think Progress ran the rather eager headline “New Study Suggests Connections Between Homophobia and Mental Disorders.”
Author and statistical expert Dr. William Briggs says in the new study “homophobia is defined in part as holding to the traditional, natural law and religious understanding of same-sex attractions and acts.” Briggs is concerned that Jannini’s description of “severe psychopathologies” connected to traditional religious beliefs “sounds like the sort of thing that requires treatment, perhaps even against the will of the patients.”
Briggs says the study is little more than phony science rigged to stigmatize traditional religious and philosophical belief. Any answer to the questionnaire that hewed closely to Biblical belief, for instance, was scored by the researchers as “homophobic.”
The study suggests such beliefs are “irrational,” but Briggs says “carefully developed doctrine and philosophy rooted in natural law evidence are not “irrational.” Labeling them as such and then dressing up the question-begging in a lab coat doesn’t make the procedure any less fallacious.”
Briggs says the study “is not science. It is either shameless advocacy, sloppy thinking, or both.”
Follow Austin Ruse on Twitter @austinruse