Opusculum Paedagogum

Posted 17 August, 2007 in Writing |

One of the persistent complaints levelled at bloggers and their ilk, as against established journalists, is that they fail to back up their assertions with solid evidence or to put their claims into sufficient context, thus diminishing their overall credibility. One of the persistent problems with bloggers is that they continue to make this accusation so easy to level.

Case in point: the usually reliable Maud Newton. In her “Remainders” sidebar yesterday, Maud posted a snippet with the headline “Children’s book packed with anti-gay propaganda.” The entire snippet reads as follows:

“Now, I realize that I’m not gay.” A children’s book depicts a tyrannical father, needy mother, and pedophiliac uncle to scare kids straight. (Thanks, Phil.)

Posted by Maud on August 16th, 2007

The first link leads to a site called DormItem, which contains screenshots from said children’s book. The words and images are indeed offensive. The story involves a young boy who is denigrated by his father and succumbs to the sexual advances of his uncle. As an adolescent, the young man winds up in the office of a counsellor, because he fears that he is gay. The counsellor tells him that he isn’t gay and that his homosexual feelings are simply his misplaced need for his father’s love. The parents undergo counselling, the teen’s uncle breaks down in tears — whereupon the teen forgives him for molesting him — and the teen comes to the realization, quoted by Maud, that he is not in fact gay.

Nice, huh? I don’t think that too many rational adults in the world today would hesitate to condemn giving this book to children as a learning tool.

But that’s not my problem with Maud’s post.

My problem has to do with what Maud doesn’t tell you.

Let’s start with the obvious: she doesn’t tell you the name of the book or its author. This is probably because she doesn’t know. The DormItem site doesn’t include a shot of the book’s cover, so it’s impossible to tell what it’s called or who wrote it. In fact, the DormItem post ends with the poster, one Jeremy Hertz, admitting that he doesn’t own the book, but that he “just found these pictures in the vast universe we call the internet.”

So let me do Maud and Jeremy’s legwork for them.

The book is called Alfie’s Home, with text by Richard A. Cohen and illustrations by Elizabeth Sherman. Cohen is an American psychotherapist who was, as of 2005, president of Parents, Families and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX). According to a 2005 article in the Washington Post, Cohen “has been married for nearly 23 years — an arranged marriage that he said was suggested by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon when he and his wife were members of the Unification Church, to which they belonged for 20 years.” He is an advocate of “reparative therapy,” which posits that homosexuals are not born gay, and can be broken of their homosexuality through therapeutic treatment.

An article on the American Psychological Association’s website states that “[t]he most important fact about ‘reparative therapy,’ also known as ‘conversion’ therapy, is that it is based on an understanding of homosexuality that has been rejected by all the major health and mental professions.” An article in the online Psychiatric News states that the APA’s Board of Trustees “acknowledged that there is no evidence that these so-called ‘reparative therapies’ have any efficacy in converting someone from one sexual orientation to another.”

In 2003, the American Counseling Association “permanently expelled” Cohen for ethics violations. According to Wayne Besen, a gay-rights advocate, “Cohen’s violations … included inappropriate behavior such as fostering dependent counseling relationships, not promoting the welfare of clients, engaging in actions that sought to meet his personal needs at the expense of clients, unethically soliciting testimonials from clients and promoting products to clients in a manner that is deceptive.”

Alfie’s Home was self-published by Cohen’s International Healing Foundation in 1993, to dismal reviews. The School Library Journal opined: “Everything about this book screams fake. The illustrations are flat and garish in their simplicity, lacking any personality or appeal. If the generic illustrations aren’t a complete turnoff, the saccharine tone of the writing gives further challenge to credibility. If readers were able to ignore the presentation, there is still the message of the text to choke them.” The book’s Amazon.com page states that the item is “Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.” Nor is the book currently available from Amazon.ca, Chapters.Indigo.ca, or Powells.com. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) did mount a campaign to prevent the book from being placed in school libraries — a decade ago, in 1997.

So, to recap: The book that Maud pointed to yesterday was a) self-published, b) in 1993, by a man who c) met his wife while they were both Moonies, who d) espouses a theory that has been discredited by every major professional psychiatric association in America, and who e) was expelled from the American Counseling Association due to ethics violations.

Please be aware: I am in no way defending Cohen’s book, which I find reprehensible, nor am I suggesting that it is not a dangerous book to give to children. What does bother me, though, is that Maud treats as breaking news the presence of an anti-gay children’s book that is fourteen years old, was written by a man whose reputation and credibility have been thoroughly discredited, and is not currently available from any major online retailer. This is a non-story, but you wouldn’t know it from reading Maud’s “Remainders.”

The bottom line is this: unless and until bloggers and other online writers become more scrupulous about fact-checking and putting their (otherwise baseless) stories and assertions into some kind of context, the attacks on their own credibility will continue.

[UPDATE: Maud has revised her post, for which I thank her. And I of course agree with her that there are people out there who continue to espouse intolerant, homophobic, and otherwise frightening views, and that these views must be challenged at every opportunity. But my central point re: bloggers still stands.]

4 comments to “Opusculum Paedagogum”

Kerry, August 17th, 2007 at 12:09 pm:

• V. impressive and well put Steven W. Beattie!

DW., August 17th, 2007 at 2:23 pm:

• Great post, Steven.

Maud, August 17th, 2007 at 3:28 pm:

• Mr. Beattie:

  I did revise my post, it’s true, but I would like to clarify that I reject your implicit assertions that everything appearing on a blog must be breaking news and that all bloggers wish to be seen as journalists or view themselves as competitors of the mainstream media.

  I have repeatedly emphasized that my own website is a purely amateur affair, as you would know if you had done your own research or had the familiarity with my site your citation implies.

  See, e.g., “A dictatorship, not a democracy” (http://maudnewton.com/blog/index.php?p=1795; “With all due respect, and pardon me for repeating myself, this site is the product of my obsessions, capricious whims, and questionable judgment. No one pays me to post here, nor do I expect anyone to pay me. I’ve never promised anything more than ‘occasional literary links, amusements, politics and rants.’ And if I’ve failed to deliver on that score, well, sorry — but so what?… . If one morning I decide to dedicate the blog to speculations about the inner lives of snails, there’s not a damned thing anyone can do about it.”); http://maudnewton.com/blog/?p=6030; and http://maudnewton.com/blog/?p=7854.

  I reject your insinuation that my quick link to a book posted in full online is in any way problematic or sloppy, or that its inclusion in a column entitled “Remainders” is somehow misleading. Quite the opposite, I’d say, but perhaps you’re using some dictionary definition of the word that is unknown to me?

B, August 20th, 2007 at 9:45 am:

• Hmmm…Maud’s response is quite telling. About her “product” and her production process. It’s fine for her to not accept payment, but I’d certainly like to know what I’m not paying for. (due diligence, perhaps?)

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