In light of the church's efforts to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians through financial contributions totaling over a million dollars to anti-gay efforts in Alaska and Hawaii, this American Psychoanalytic Association resolution would seem troubling to all but the most fanatic (who continue on—in spite of reality).

Continuing a transformation of its relationship to homosexuals, the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Executive Council has endorsed a resolution calling on states to grant same-gender couples the legal right to marry.

The initiative was brought to the psychoanalytic association by the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gay-rights advocacy organization, and was adopted by the Executive Council at its December 18 meeting in New York.

The resolution states, "Because marriage is a basic human right and an individual personal choice. . .the state should not interfere with same-gender couples who choose to marry and share fully in the rights, responsibilities, and commitment of civil marriage."

The adoption of the measure was applauded by American Psychoanalytic Association President Marvin Margolis, M.D., Ph.D., who also lauded the efforts of those psychoanalysts who over many years have used political and judicial activism "against attempts to infringe upon the civil rights of all individuals." He pointed out that the association frequently takes official positions on social issues, and "this seemed to be a simple matter of civil rights."

With its endorsement of the right of same-gender couples to marry, the psychoanalytic association "was acting to protect our own gay and lesbian members, our patients, and the public in general," Margolis said.

Atlanta psychiatrist Ralph Roughton, M.D., chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Committee on Issues of Homosexuality, told Psychiatric News that the members of his committee are "very gratified" that the Executive Council voted to back the resolution. "It indicates a significant change in the way the association looks at gay and lesbian issues."

Roughton noted that other than some concern about using the word "marriage," there was overwhelming support for the resolution. Of the approximately 40 members of the Executive Council, one cast a negative vote and one abstained, he said. The Executive Council consists of representatives from each of the association’s affiliated societies. The statement had earlier been endorsed by the American Psychoanalytic Association’s officers and by a steering committee made up of the organization’s committee chairs.

The strong backing the association’s leadership conferred on the same-gender marriage resolution is characteristic of a "major turnabout" in its policies regarding homosexuality, which began in 1991, Roughton said. The watershed event was the association’s passage of a sexual orientation nondiscrimination policy covering the training and promotion of psychoanalysts at its affiliated institutes. This followed a long history of charges that it rejected psychoanalytic training and faculty applicants who acknowledged that they were gay or lesbian but refused to try to change their orientation. The association’s stance was based on the theory that homosexuality is a developmental flaw that needed to be corrected before a person could meet the criteria for becoming a psychoanalyst.

Margolis explained in an interview with Psychiatric News that the erosion of the association’s insistence that homosexuality was a form of psychopathology that could be cured by psychoanalysis was "a gradual process in which thinking changed based on clinical experience. The issue wasn’t as simple as we used to think. . . . It became obvious that large numbers [of gays and lesbians] could not shift their sexual orientation, and, while there might be an issue of pathology for some, for many others that was not the case."

In the six years since the association banned discrimination against homosexuals in its affiliated institutes, "the [openly] gay candidates are doing just as well as the other candidates," Margolis noted, which counters the traditional argument that they have a "perversion" that precludes their becoming effective analysts. It was in conjunction with the adoption of that nondiscrimination statement that Roughton’s committee was established to help the association "facilitate and educate psychoanalytic institutes and societies about gay and lesbian issues," he explained.

There are now about 30 openly gay candidates at training institutes affiliated with the American Psychoanalytic Association, and about half of those institutes have openly gay trainees.

Accounting for the turnabout, Roughton explained that in the last several years there has been "a changing of the guard at the American Psychoanalytic, which has brought in leadership more open than in years past." He noted as well that he has observed a change in the viewpoint of the association’s general members toward "more acceptance of the position that homosexuality is not indicative of any psychopathology, though there is still no consensus on the origins of sexual orientation."

The vote on endorsing the right to same-sex marriage was also praised by Richard Isay, M.D., who spent years trying to convince his psychoanalytic colleagues to adopt the nondiscrimination position that the association finally endorsed in 1991. "Any progress made in the acceptance of sexual orientation as a natural attribute is wonderful," said Isay. "I applaud this effort [by the American Psychoanalytic Association] to compensate for past biases and prejudices." Isay is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Cornell Medical College, a faculty member at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and author of the book Becoming Gay: The Journey to Self-Acceptance.

The American Psychoanalytic Association is "evolving into a more diverse organization with greater openness than in the past," Margolis said. "We’ve taken a direction that makes scientific sense."

LDS counsellors siding with the church's policy condemning homosexuality are not in compliance with standards set by their peers. Scientific studies show that LDS polices on homosexuality do not reflect real-world experience. Affirmation will continue to reflect reality and stand as living proof of the truth of what we really are, and are not.