Political Cortex: Anti-Gay Scientist Thinks Slaves Were "Better Off" in America

Anti-Gay Scientist Thinks Slaves Were "Better Off" in America

By Frederick Clarkson
01/17/2007 01:39:32 PM EST

As if the ex-gay therapy movement was not controversial enough, Gerald Schoenewolf a member of the Science Advisory Board of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) widened the controversy last fall when he claimed in a NARTH-published essay, among other things, that Africans kidnapped and sold into slavery in America had been "better off." The matter caused two other science advisors to resign in protest. And while NARTH has distanced itself from Schoenewolf's views, he remains a NARTH science advisor. Meanwhile, the silence of organizations on the religious right that promote Christian ex-gay therapies, such as Focus on the Family, has been deafening.

There is a detailed article on the flap in the winter issue of Intelligence Report, the magazine of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Excerpts from the article:

A prominent member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is under fire for publishing an essay in which he argues that Africans were fortunate to have been sold into slavery, and that the civil rights movement was "irrational."
"There is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America," writes Gerald Schoenewolf, a member of NARTH's Science Advisory Committee. "Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle... . Life there was savage ... and those brought to America, and other countries, were in many ways better off."

Schoenewolf, a psychotherapist who lives in New York City, is the director of The Living Center, an online therapy center for people in the arts. He has authored 14 books, among them The Art of Hating, in which he writes that, "Many people talk about hate, but few know how to hate well."
When interviewed for this article, Schoenewolf stood by his comments on the intellectual inferiority of civil rights movement supporters. "The civil rights movement has from the beginning and today seen itself as good and others are evil, like slaveowners are evil," he said.
During the interview, Schoenewolf lambasted civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights. "All such movements are destructive," he said. He also claimed the American Psychological Association, of which he is a member, "has been taken over by extremist gays."

Read the whole article here.

It's bad enough that Schoenewolf's despicable views were published (later withdrawn by NARTH). What is amazing is that NARTH has retained him on its science advisory board.

The entire matter warrants much more attention from people concerned about the religious right. Here we have a signficant orgnization seeking scientific respectability -- and this is how they operate.