Madam, - Research recently published in the Journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour and conducted by Prof Robert Spitzer at Columbia University in the US makes the controversial claim that treatment or therapy can be successful in turning homosexual people from being gay, and can restore them to having a normal heterosexual orientation. This view challenges the popular, politically correct view that sexual orientation is something determined by one's genetic make-up.
On the contrary, Spitzer's research suggests that, far from being genetically determined, homosexual orientation may well be the accidental outcome of some external, environmental factor such as a particular set of events or happenings that occurred to the individual in the early course of his life. It further suggests that what has been environmentally shaped may be environmentally reformed by educative or therapeutic means.
Prof Spitzer enjoys a reputation for being sympathetic to the plight of the homosexuals, and in the early 1970s he was influential in having homosexuality removed from the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental disorders. This time he insists he is not anti-gay, although homosexuals might feel threatened. He requests that his research ought to be fairly evaluated now for the honest and scholarly contribution it seeks to make to the debate. - Yours, etc.,
THOMAS P. WALSH, Faussagh Road, Cabra, Dublin 7.