Wednesday, March 23, 2005

My First Publication

This is a paper that I wrote in Ethics class and submitted to the APA's Graduate Student Ethics Prize competition. I didn't win the trip to Hawaii, but it is being published along with the winner and one or two other significant papers.

Conflict Between Religious Commitment and Same-Sex Attraction:
Possibilities for a Virtuous Response

In Press: Ethics and Behavior (Journal)

Abstract

This paper addresses the treatment of individuals who experience conflict between their religious convictions and their same-sex attraction. Recently, attention has been drawn to the ethical issues involved in the practice of sexual reorientation therapy (SRT) with such conflicted individuals. This paper reviews the ethical arguments for and against SRT through the lens of the general ethical principles of the American Psychological Association’s (2002) ethics code. Practitioners are then challenged to think about how they might respond virtuously (Meara, Schmidt and Day, 1996) when presented with such a client. Thought questions are presented to assist therapists to develop in virtue while working with religious clients who are conflicted about same-sex desire.