Rejecting the zeitgeist.

On the subject of homosexuality, John Garvey has apparently decided to abandon Christian tradition in favor of the zeitgeist. He justifies this on the ground that if homosexuality were a choice, he could "agree that it is an evil, an objective disorder, but no homosexual person I know has experienced it that way."

I have news for Garvey: on May 9, 2001, Robert Spitzer of Columbia University appeared before the convention of the American Psychiatric Association [APA] in New Orleans and declared that his research, based on interviews with two hundred former gays and lesbians, proved to him that he had been wrong to believe that "once you are gay you cannot be changed." You may very well, in fact, have a choice, but this is not the most interesting part of the story. For this was the same Spitzer who in 1973 headed the task force that persuaded the APA to abandon its traditional view that homosexuality is "a mental disorder" and therefore subject to treatment by reparative therapy.

And Spitzer is not alone. Richard Fitzgibbons, a practicing psychiatrist who has specialized in reparative therapy, says, "There are at least nine major studies that show that the recovery rate is about 30 to 50 percent." He adds that if patients "bring in the spiritual component," the recovery rate is "significantly higher."

JOHN C. CORT 

Nahant, Mass.