Odd Encino Companies: NARTH

Encino has a few exotic companies headquartered here. Until 2008, one of them was NARTH, the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, which is dedicated to persuading young gays to go straight.

With the big news in May that board member and anti-gay crusader George Rekers was caught returning to Miami with a rentboy (story here), I thought it timely to ask what is NARTH trying to achieve. (Update: Rekers subsequently resigned from NARTH)

Nowadays their Encino office belongs to Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D., who founded the Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic in 1980 (here), and co-founded NARTH in 1992 (here) when he went national. After mini-scandals in 2008, Nicolosi was relegated to board member.

Despite its claims to being secular, NARTH works closely with the anti-gay Religious Right and Nicolosi’s choice of “Thomas Aquinas” is a dead giveaway. But, if you worry that you or your kids may be gay and you need a consultation, Nicolosi is your man.

Do I think that “conversion therapy” is a waste of time? Yes I do. Any therapy based on the idea that “the homosexual condition is the anticipation of shame” (Nicolosi’s words) sounds like Catholic guilt to me. His approach empowers the therapist rather than the “homosexual” and it reinforces the “double binds” that generate the sense of shame in the first place. The way to abolish shame is to normalize gay relationships and you do that by exploring your own feelings and withholding judgment. If you can’t do that, then perhaps you’re the one needing a therapist.