Psychology Issues

"Robert Spitzer, M.D. of the APA Taskforce on Nomenclature and Statistics and proponent of scientific impartiality in the DSM, conceded that in removing the homosexuality diagnosis, "we are removing one of the justifications for the denial of civil rights...”. He further writes that doing so does not amount to “saying that it is ‘normal’ or as valuable as heterosexuality,” and that “this change should in no way interfere with or embarrass those dedicated psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who have devoted themselves to understanding and treating those homosexuals who have been unhappy with their lot.” [65] By the same token, certain diagnoses (the paraphilias) would not, in his opinion, be removed from the DSM is because "it would be a public relations disaster for psychiatry".[66]

"The DSM was substantially revised in 1980. The five revisions since its first publication in 1952 incrementally added to the number of mental disorders, though also removing those no longer considered to be mental disorders. The last major revision was the fourth edition ("DSM-IV"), published in 1994, however the latest edition is the fifth (relatively minor) revision, published in 2000." *****We are going to base/form public policy on this "Science"???
Dr. Kass, Dr. Mansfield, and Dr. Popenoe. have legit concerns I think.

Psychology questions on the following - INPUT DESIRED: 1) "Reliance on superficial symptoms"..2) "Psychologists Stanton and Yarhouse & criteria DSM criteria", 3) "Cross-cultural psychiatrist Arthur Kleinman", 4) "psychopathological paradigms", 5) "the Rosenhan experiment in the 1970s", 6) "Consumers and Survivors...aka..."DSM often uses definitions and terminology that are inconsistent with a recovery model."

"The DSM has attracted praise for standardizing psychiatric diagnostic categories and criteria. It has also attracted controversy and criticism. Some critics argue that the DSM represents an unscientific system that enshrines the opinions of a few powerful psychiatrists. There are ongoing issues concerning the validity and reliability of the diagnostic categories; the reliance on superficial symptoms; the use of artificial dividing lines between categories and from 'normality'; possible cultural bias; medicalization of human distress and financial conflicts of interest, including with the practice of psychiatrists and with the pharmaceutical industry; political controversies about the inclusion or exclusion of diagnoses from the manual, in general or in regard to specific issues; and the experience of those who are most directly affected by the manual by being diagnosed, including the consumer/survivor movement. The publication of the DSM, with tightly guarded copyrights, now makes APA over $5 million a year, historically adding up to over $100 million."

St .Padre Pio (Letters 1, p. 234

For some time I have felt the need to offer myself to the Lord as a victim for poor sinners and for the souls in purgatory...beseeching Him to pour out upon me the punishments prepared for sinners and for the souls in a state of purgation, even increasing them a hundredfold for me, as long as He converts and saves sinners and quickly admits to paradise the souls in Purgatory. St. Padre Pio (Letters I, p 234)

"I'm Gay and I Oppose Same-Sex Marriage"

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/03/9432/

California's 3 Parent Law

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/09/6197/

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/09/6197/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/21/archbishop-cordileone-gay-marriage-catholic-church/2001085/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/21/archbishop-cordileone-gay-marriage-catholic-church/2001085/

http://www.mercatornet.com/conjugality/view/11988

Media Bias Polll

http://www.ijreview.com/2013/03/43242-cnn-msnbc-is-really-really-biased-fox-news-is-not/

HHS Complications Continue...

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/289967-obama-health-law-faces-big-challenges-at-third-anniversary

St. Catherine of Siena quote...

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”
― St. Catherine of Siena

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”
― St. Catherine of Siena

If you are interested in joining an already active SPSE team in your area, or in starting a team of your own, we will help you and train you: http://po.st/hm0dt1

If you would like to learn more about the Faith and about evangelization in your daily life, sign up for our training and certification courses with monthly updates: http://po.st/gTfkr2

If you do not feel that God is calling you to join us at this time, but would like to help us through prayer or a financial gift:http://po.st/WYicfo

Gay Marriage Science....

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/22/opinion/anderson-states-same-sex-marriage/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

(CNN) -- "Pediatrics Group Backs Gay Marriage, Saying It Helps Children," proclaims a headline in The New York Times. But the advocacy group presented no new studies, no new data, to support this claim. And the studies the group cites have been shown to be insufficient to come to this conclusion about same-sex parenting.

Turns out the press release, picked up nationwide, was a PR stunt aimed at influencing the Supreme Court. The nine justices are set to hear oral arguments Tuesday and Wednesday in two cases about the constitutionality of marriage laws.

Today, 41 states define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Marriage is at the center of an intense national debate, a family-by-family, state-by state conversation that CNN substantively encourages by making room for varying perspectives and supplying state-based data. However, CNN risks obscuring that conversation about what marriage is by framing the issue as measurable by an "LGBT rights calculator."

Ryan T. Anderson

This writer is for equal rights for all Americans. But no one has the right to redefine marriage.

It's important to future generations that Americans understand what marriage is, why it matters, and the consequences of redefining it. The Supreme Court shouldn't truncate the debate and redefine marriage by judicial decree to include same-sex relationships.

So what about that release from the American Academy of Pediatrics? Two eminent political scientists, Leon Kass (a professor at University of Chicago) and Harvey Mansfield (a professor at Harvard), filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court cautioning against accepting politicized science: "Claims that science provides support for constitutionalizing a right to same-sex marriage must necessarily rest on ideology. Ideology may be pervasive in the social sciences, especially when controversial policy issues are at stake, but ideology is not science."

Kass and Mansfield urge the court not to redefine marriage based on new, inconclusive research. The academic studies on same-sex parenting purporting to show "no differences" are, they argue, "subject to severe constraints arising from limited data" and a lack of "replicable experiments." The professors contend:

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"Even if same-sex marriage and child rearing by same-sex couples were far more common than they now are, large amounts of data collected over decades would be required before any responsible researcher could make meaningful scientific estimates of the effects."

Although we still have much to learn about the impact of same-sex parenting, we do know quite a bit about marriage and child well-being. We have decades of rigorous social science data confirming that children do best with a married mother and father.

In another amicus brief submitted to the court, a group of social science professors explains:

"It is not simply the presence of two parents ... but the presence of two biological parents that seems to support children's development. ... Experts have long contended that both mothers and fathers make unique contributions to parenting."

Indeed, scholars have known this for quite some time. Professor David Popenoe of Rutgers University explains:

"We should disavow the notion that 'mommies can make good daddies,' just as we should disavow the popular notion ... that 'daddies can make good mommies.' ... The two sexes are different to the core, and each is necessary—culturally and biologically—for the optimal development of a human being."

These statistics have penetrated American life to such a great extent that President Barack Obama can refer to them as well understood:

"We know the statistics—that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it."

Fathers matter, and marriage helps to connect fathers to mothers and children.

But how can the law teach that fathers are essential if we redefine marriage to make fathers optional?

Redefining marriage denies the importance of mothers and fathers, and same-sex parenting arrangements, as the social science professors note, "by definition, exclude either a mother or a father." The concern is not whether same-sex couples can make "quality and successful efforts in raising children." The concern is that there "remain unique advantages to a parenting structure consisting of both a mother and a father, political interests notwithstanding."

Marriage policy should place the needs of children before the desires of adults. It should respect the rights of children to the care of the man and woman who created them as much as the rights of adults to live and love as they choose—which adults can do, without redefining marriage for the entire nation.

One thing CNN's calculator makes clear is that, wherever they live, Americans are in the middle of a national conversation about what marriage is, why it matters, and the consequences of redefining it.

The Supreme Court shouldn't make marriage policy for the entire nation. Rather than cut short democratic deliberation, the court should uphold the constitutional authority of citizens and their elected officials to make decisions about marriage.

New Zealand, Gay Marriage

http://familyfirst.org.nz/2013/03/no-public-mandate-for-gay-marriage-bill/

Secular Music, Ignore if you don't like Metallica :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwsbUUEOT9g

Science and Homosexual Marriage

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-the-shaky-science-behind-same-sex-marriage/2013/03/15/ccdbe82a-8cc9-11e2-9f54-f3fdd70acad2_story.html

George F. Will

Opinion Writer

The shaky science behind same-sex marriage

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By George F. Will, Published: March 15

When on March 26 the Supreme Court hears oral arguments about whether California’s ban on same-sex marriages violates the constitutional right to “equal protection of the laws,” these arguments will invoke the intersection of law and social science. The court should tread cautiously, if at all, on this dark and bloody ground.

The Obama administration says California’s law expresses “prejudice” that is “impermissible.” But same-sex marriage is a matter about which intelligent people reasonably disagree, partly because so little is known about its consequences.

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Michael Gerson

Filling in the budget gap

Charles Krauthammer

Codify the drone war

When a federal judge asked the lawyer defending California’s ban what harm same-sex marriage would do to the state’s interests in “the procreation purpose” of heterosexual marriage, the lawyer said, “I don’t know.” This was mistakenly portrayed as a damaging admission. Both sides should acknowledge that, so far, no one can know.

A brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Courtconcerning the California case by conservative professors Leon Kass and Harvey Mansfield and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy warns that “the social and behavioral sciences have a long history of being shaped and driven by politics and ideology.” And research about, for example, the stability of same-sex marriages or child-rearing by same-sex couples is “radically inconclusive” because these are recent phenomena and they provide a small sample from which to conclude that these innovations will be benign.

Unlike the physical sciences, the social sciences can rarely settle questions using “controlled and replicable experiments.” Today “there neither are nor could possibly be any scientifically valid studies from which to predict the effects of a family structure that is so new and so rare.” Hence there can be no “scientific basis for constitutionalizing same-sex marriage.”

The brief does not argue against same-sex marriage as social policy, other than by counseling caution about altering foundational social institutions when guidance from social science is as yet impossible. The brief is a preemptive refutation of inappropriate invocations of spurious social science by supporters of same-sex marriage.

For example, a district court cited Michael Lamb, a specialist in child development, asserting that the “gender of a child’s parent is not a factor in a child’s adjustment” and that “having both a male and female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted.” The conservatives’ brief notes that, testifying in the trial court, Lamb “had conceded that his own published research concluded that growing up without fathers had significant negative effects on boys” and that considerable research indicates “that traditional opposite-sex biological parents appear in general to produce better outcomes for their children than other family structures do.”

The brief is replete with examples of misleading argumentation using data not drawn from studies satisfying “the scientific standard of comparing large random samples with appropriate control samples.” The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a distinguished social scientist, said the “pronounced” liberal orientation of the social sciences is “well established” and explainable: “Social scientists are frequently caught up in the politics which their work necessarily involves” because social science “attracts persons whose interests are in shaping the future.”

This helps explain why “Brandeis briefs” have shaped U.S. law. Before joining the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis defended constitutional challenges to progressive legislation by using briefs stressing social science data, or what purported to be such, rather than legal arguments. He advanced his political agenda by bald assertions inexcusable even given the limited scientific knowledge of the time. For example, in his 1908 defense of an Oregon lawrestricting the number of hours women could work, he said “there is more water” in women’s than in men’s blood and women’s knees are constructed differently.

Since Moynihan wrote the above in 1979, the politicization of the social sciences has become even more pronounced, particularly in matters of “lifestyle liberalism.” Hence the need for judicial wariness about social science that purports to prove propositions — e.g., that same-sex marriage is, or is not, harmful to children or society — for which there cannot yet be decisive evidence.

If California’s law is judged by legal reasoning, rather than by social science ostensibly proving that the state has no compelling interest served by banning same-sex marriage, the law may still be overturned on equal-protection grounds. But such a victory for gay rights, grounded on constitutional values, and hence cast in the vocabulary of natural rights philosophy, would at least be more stable than one resting uneasily on the shiftable sand of premature social science conclusions.

Motley Fool - Obamacare

http://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/personal-finance/taxes/2013/03/15/how-obamacare-changed-your-taxes.aspx

"The Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare, completely changed how people get health care. With a big expansion of health insurance through mandatory coverage requirements, tens of millions of uninsured Americans will find themselves needing to get enrolled.

Yet the impact of Obamacare goes beyond the health care industry. New tax provisions associated with the Affordable Care Act have gone into effect this year, and they could have a big impact on your taxes both in 2013 and in future years."

Polygamy and more

Read more at: http://familyfirst.org.nz/2013/03/former-dutch-mp-admits-polygamy-group-marriage-next/

Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen

“The evil in the world must not make me doubt the existence of God. There could be no evil if there were no God. Before there can be a hole in a uniform, there must be a uniform; before there is death, there must be life; before there is error, there must be truth; before there is a crime, there must be liberty and law; before there is a war, there must be peace; before there is a devil, there must be a God, rebellion against whom made the devil.” Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Wartime Prayer Book)

Good article on the media and Catholicism

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/10/what-the-media-doesnt-get-about-the-catholic-church/

Totus Tuus

Totus Tuus

Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt, O Virgo, super omnia benedicta.

Translates as:I am all yours, and all that is mine is yours, O Virgin, blessed above all.

Pope Francis on the Cross...

"When we walk without the Cross, when we build without the Cross, and when we profess Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are worldly, we are bishops, priests, cardinals, Popes, but not disciples of the Lord. I would like that all of us, after these days of grace, might have the courage—the courage—to walk in the presence of the Lord, with the Cross of the Lord: to build the Church on the Blood of the Lord, which is shed on the Cross, and to profess the one glory, Christ Crucified. In this way, the Church will go forward." Pope Francis

Pope Francis

‎"We hope that legislators, heads of government, and health professionals, conscious of the dignity of human life and of the rootedness of the family in our peoples, will defend and protect it from the abominable crimes of abortion and euthanasia; that is their responsibility. Hence, in response to government laws and provisions that are unjust in the light of faith and reason, conscientious objection should be encouraged. We should commit ourselves to ‘eucharistic coherence’, that is, we should be conscious that people cannot receive holy communion and at the same time act or speak against the commandments, in particular when abortion, euthanasia, and other serious crimes against life and family are facilitated. This responsibility applies particularly to legislators, governors, and health professionals."

From the Fifth General Conference of Latin American and Caribbean Bishops, presented by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) in 2007.