Hi there,

Most people who have followed the controversies around homosexuality for a little while will be acquainted with the name, Dr Robert Spitzer. For many years a psychiatry professor at the University of Columbia in New York, Dr Spitzer led the push within the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973. Then in 2001 something amazing happened: he delivered a paper to the APA annual meeting about research he had conducted showing that some people could “change from gay to straight”.

Dr Spitzer became a respected and even heroic figure amongst those who hold to the view that homosexuality is a disorder and that it is possible, with sufficient motivation and help, for some people to change. Here was one professional and academic from outside their ranks who had been prepared to look at the evidence and acknowledge it. For Dr Spitzer, though, there was little or no consolation in this gratitude from a despised minority when his name was mud among his own peers. Now at the age of 80, and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he has made a surprising -- and sad -- move. You can read about it and the reaction of one expert in Michael Cook’s interview with Dr Gerard van den Aardweg.

If you need cheering up after that, go to Zac Alstin’s defence (against another dead journalist) of GK Chesterton, whose birthday was on May 29. A few quotes from GKC, even if they are on the grim subjects of Prussians and war, are enough to give one’s mood a lift. There are few worldly consolations like taking up a favourite author and losing oneself in his prose. Sometimes, when I want to switch off but my fevered brain keeps circling round some topic like internet porn, I pull The Everlasting Man from the shelf and allow myself to be swept along by Chesterton’s marvellous metaphors and wonderful wit.

I wonder what the Great Man would have had to say about the Middle East, with events ranging from the appalling in Syria to the perplexing in Egypt. He might have loathed “Prussians” but how would he choose -- as George Friedman this week suggests the Egyptians must -- between their military and the Islamists?

One can feel powerless before the problems of the world so it is great when the chance to do something practical is presented on a platter. That was the case early in the week when a young friend in the Philippines reminded me about an entrepreneurial project she is promoting. Ivanna Aguiling and colleagues are trying to raise the extremely modest amount of abut US$1600 over the next 19 days. Please go to the Demography post, Big Ups for Briggy Hall, and see if you can give them a hand.

Cheers,

Carolyn Moynihan,
Deputy Editor,
MercatorNet