Boston doctor says ads distort his work on gays

By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff

Lambasting a national anti-gay advertising campaign that draws on his research, a Boston doctor yesterday accused a Christian coalition of distorting his work to support their own theory that homosexuality can be ''healed.''

Dr. Robert Garofalo, a Children's Hospital pediatrician who authored a study of gay teenagers last spring, is cited at the bottom of full-page advertisements featuring a group of smiling ''ex-gays.'' The ads are part of a conversion campaign launched last month by a coalition of Christian groups.

Garofalo's survey, which found high levels of substance abuse among gays, is presented in the ads as footnoted evidence that homosexuality is self-destructive. The ads contend that substance abuse and other high-risk behavior among gays are the ''visible response to a broken heart.''

But Garofalo says he found nothing of the sort.

''It's a complete misrepresentation of what the research actually says,'' he said. ''It was taken completely out of context. It comes to the complete opposite conclusion of what the paper actually concluded.''

His paper - ''The Association Between Health Risk Behaviors and Sexual Orientation Among a School-based Sample of Adolescents'' - was published in May in the journal Pediatrics, based on a 1995 survey of 4,300 Massachusetts adolescents.

It found that teenagers who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual also report ''disproportionate risk'' for a number of other troubles - especially suicide, violence, and substance abuse. Garofalo said he believes the abuses are the result of the alienation that gay teenagers face in a ''culture that is often unaccepting.''

But the ad campaign - which was launched July 13 in seven newspapers nationwide, prompting an immediate outcry from advocacy groups - shifts the cause of the problem onto homosexuality itself. And conservative officials offered no apology yesterday for their interpretation of the medical research.

''Homosexual behavior itself is a symptom of deeper, unmet emotional needs,'' said Robert Knight, director of cultural studies at the Family Research Council, which is helping fund the campaign.

''Everyone in their heart knows the behavior is wrong,'' he added. ''People who are caught up in it often cover their emotional distress by abusing substances.''

The ad mentioning Garofalo, the ''Standing for Truth'' campaign, was printed in The Washington Post on July 14, then reprinted 15 days later in The Los Angeles Times.

Some ads invoke the names of prominent opponents of homosexuality, such as Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and others feature repentant former gays, such as Anne Paulk, who in one full-page advertisement is billed as a ''wife, mother, former lesbian.''

Dismissing Garofalo as a thrall to political correctness, Knight said there is no substance to the theory that alienation can produce self-destructive behavior.

''That's like saying, if we could just understand adulterers more, they wouldn't drink to cover up their guilt,'' he said.

Garofalo said he was ''horrified and angry'' about the misappropriation of his work, calling the interpretation by the group a ''divisive and destructive forum.''

''It's just an awful and very destructive message,'' he said yesterday. ''It alienates them, makes them further feel isolated and alone. That's the very thing that leads to suicide, and leads to the behaviors that were reported in my paper.''

The ad campaign, which has sparked a renewed debate about homosexuality, followed incendiary remarks last month by Lott, who described homosexuality as a behavior that can be ''controlled,'' and compared it to kleptomania. Advocates have responded in kind, taking out ads to counter such allegations.

The medical community has raised its own objections. Dr. Elizabeth Goodman, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, said yesterday that the causality implied in the ads is scientifically impossible.

''I think they've gone beyond the data,'' she said. ''I think Dr. Garofalo's work shows us youth who have sexual identity issues are at greater risk. But I think the importance of that is fixing how our society views sexual orientation - not fixing the sexual orientation.''

Knight said the Family Research Council is considering placing a similar ad in The Boston Globe.

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