He added that the conference was important in helping the church face up to a difficult issue.
“Unfortunately many of the church leaders want to avoid this topic and they are doing it at the cost of the lives of many young people because they don’t want to really address a serious problem. If they can avoid it they will. And that’s why we think this conference today is very important, because it is finally recognising it,” he said.
Although Nicolosi is a practising Catholic, he takes a non-biblical approach to helping men overcome their unwanted same-sex attractions.
“It’s not a biblical approach, it is a scientific approach. But it is consistent with the laws God handed down to us thousands of years ago,” he contends. “The Christian view is to overcome your sin and if a believer believes that his homosexuality is a sin to overcome we are providing the ways with which he can overcome it.”
The psychiatrists, who have written and researched extensively on the subject of homosexuality and unwanted same-sex attractions, reject the claims of gay activists that they are homophobic.
“It’s unfair [to be branded homophobic] because it’s not about being against anything. It is about being for something the something we are for is the option of change,” said Nicolosi.
Goldberg added, “There is a total misuse of the term homophobic. A phobia is an irrational fear of something. If you have a principled disagreement with something, that is not an irrational fear and therefore is not a phobia.”
Jeffrey Satinover, a UN speaker and psychiatrist who will also address the conference, believes there is a much larger percentage of professional therapists who quietly believed same-sex attractions are treatable than are willing to say so publicly.
“It has become in some respects even a dangerous position, certainly for an isolated therapist who gets attacked by a cadre of activists and colleagues,” he said.
The three psychiatrists hope to reach young people with the message of change through conferences like Sex and the City as well as through the media.
“If we have true civil liberties, true equal protection, equal access, an end to viewpoint discrimination, then the truth will prevail because we are convinced that we speak the truth,” said Goldberg. “But if they don’t hear that point of view then they have only one choice to make.”
Nicolosi added: “One choice to make is no choice.”
