Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity
The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, also known as the NARTH Institute, is a United States organization that promotes conversion therapy, a pseudoscientific practice used in attempts to change the sexual orientation of people with same-sex attraction. ATCSI's promotion of conversion therapy as a scientifically supported therapeutic method is contradicted by overwhelming scientific consensus. ATCSI has not been recognized by any major United States–based professional association. No schools, universities or professional programs currently train its counselors in reparative therapy.
ATCSI was founded in 1992 by Joseph Nicolosi, Benjamin Kaufman, and Charles Socarides. Until 2014, it was known as the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, and its headquarters were in Encino, California, at its Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic.
History
ATCSI was founded in 1992 by Benjamin Kaufman, Charles Socarides, and Joseph Nicolosi. In an article titled In Defense of the Need for Honest Dialogue, co-founder Kaufman explained that ATCSI was founded due to the American Psychiatric Association, and similar professional organizations, "had totally stifled the scientific inquiry that would be necessary to stimulate a discussion" about homosexuality.In July 2011, ATCSI failed to pay its dues to the California Board for Behavioral Sciences and was removed from the list of groups that provide continuing education credits to therapists in California.
The organization had 501(c)(3) tax exempt status, which was revoked by the Internal Revenue Service in September 2012 due to ongoing failure to file required paperwork.
Activities
ATCSI claimes to be a secular organization, differentiating it from other ex-gay groups that are primarily religious in nature. Nevertheless, ATCSI often partners with religious groups, such as Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing, Joel 2:25 International, Evergreen International, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Evergreen website has referenced the therapeutic methods of ATCSI founder Joseph Nicolosi as "beneficial". Nicolosi worked with Evergreen's A. Dean Byrd to co-author several papers on reparative therapy. Byrd also served as president of ATCSI and also published an article in the LDS church's September 1999 Ensign.Controversy
Stances on the etiology and mutability of homosexuality
The founders held that homosexuality is a treatable mental illness and that a person's sexual orientation can be changed through therapy. Such conversion therapy is pseudoscientific, harmful, and unethical according to major medical and psychological organisations in the United States and elsewhere. Socarides in particular said in the mid-1990s that he had treated about a thousand homosexual patients, and cured over a third by dealing with the parental causes of an absent father and overbearing mother.Claims that pathologize homosexuality and state that it can be changed through therapy have been denounced by almost every major US medical association, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association. In 2006, the American Psychological Association declared that ATCSI created "an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish". The Southern Poverty Law Center singled the group out as a main source of junk science used by hate groups to justify anti-gay rhetoric. ATCSI was accused of employing abusive methods to attempt to change sexual orientation by the Human Rights Campaign and Truth Wins Out.