Bogus “American College of Pediatricians” distributes deliberately fraudulent anti-gay propaganda to schools

Timothy Kincaid
April 5th, 2010

In 2002, the American Academy of Pediatrics, an association of 60,000 pediatricians, voted to adopt a position in support of gay parents.

Six pediatricians who opposed this policy on religious grounds rallied like-minded friends and, on October 19th, about 15 people founded the American College of Pediatricians.

It would be accurate to describe this organization as a vehicle through which a small minority of anti-gay doctors advocate in opposition to gay rights, abortion rights, and euthanasia.

According to Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink, at the end of March, the ACP sent out a letter to school superintendents. They don’t say how many schools received the letter, but even one is too many.

Despite the name, ACP is not a institute of higher learning. Nor is it a professional organization for pediatricians.

This is an advocacy group dedicated to political goals which is using an authoritative sounding name to fool the unaware.

Yes, their officers and their board are all pediatricians (usually older gentlemen in the South), but their “Pediatric Psychosocial Development Committee” reads like a members roster of the virulently anti-gay National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH).

* Dean Byrd – past president of NARTH and influential in Evergreen, the Mormon ex-gay group

* Joe Nicolosi – the founder of NARTH and current board member

* George Rekers – NARTH board member, Christian reconstructionist, and closely associated with Paul Cameron. Rekers once recommended banning Native Americans from being able to adopt.

* Arthur Goldberg – founder of Jewish ex-gay group, JONAH. Goldberg was recently removed from NARTH’s board when he was exposed as a con-man with a felony record.

* Rick Fitzgibbons – member of NARTH’s Scientific Advisory Committee and the Catholic Medical Association.

* Trayce Hansen – an inexperienced psychologist who has written anti-gay opinion pieces and testified (disastrously) on the side of an ex-lesbian who was trying to deny her ex-partner access to their children.

* John Raney – The only information we have on Raney is that he was part of the Editorial/Review board for Paul Cameron’s self-promoting (single issue) Empirical Journal of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior.

The connections don’t stop at the committee level.

One ACP board member, Quentin Van Meter, was a featured speaker at the 2009 NARTH Convention.

And Michelle Cretella, a real nasty piece of work, sits on both boards. She is also listed as the “chair of the Sexuality Committee, American College of Pediatricians”.

With connections this deep to an organization whose primary function is to generate anti-gay propaganda masquerading as scientific research, it should not be too surprising that the American College of Pediatrics uses the same tactics.

Their letter to the schools is rife with lies, misrepresentations, distortions and outright fraud. In fact, there is little there that has any distant relationship to truth.

The letter – and the website it directs the reader – makes a number of claims. And the ACP has adopted Paul Cameron’s tactic of lengthy footnotes.

But, as with Cameron, the supporting documents do not support the claims.

Let’s take a look at the first three.

(continued)

But he is someone who calls the gospels “near eye-witness” reports.

Nevertheless, I appreicate Dr. collins’s willingness to stand up and be counted.