This nutty article by James Dobson on how to ensure your son or daughter doesn’t grow up to be gay is making the rounds. Its not anything that Dobson himself says that is so nutty (though there is plenty of Dobson’s usual nuttiness in there), but rather an unpublished manuscript by Joseph Nicolosi that Dobson quotes from extensively in his article. Dobson describes Nicolosi’s as “the foremost authority on the prevention and treatment of homosexuality today. His book will offer practical advice and a clear-eyed perspective on the antecedents of homosexuality.” So what does Nicolosi recommend? Stuff like this,
Girls can continue to grow in their identification with their mothers. On the other hand, a boy has an additional developmental task—to disidentify from his mother and identify with his father. At this point [beginning at about eighteen months], a little boy will not only begin to observe the difference, he must now decide, “Which one am I going to be?” In making this shift in identity, the little boy begins to take his father as a model of masculinity. At this early stage, generally before the age of three, Ralph Greenson observed, the boy decides that he would like to grow up like his father.
This is a choice. Implicit in that choice is the decision that he would not like to grow up to be like his mother. According to Robert Stoller, “The first order of business in being a man is, ‘don’t be a woman.'”
Meanwhile, the boy’s father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son’s maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.
Who knew the cure for homosexuality was as simple as a game of catch and showers with Dad?