Back in 2002, a small fringe group of pediatricians called the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) broke off from the country's main pediatric group, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in protest of the AAP’s support for LGBT adoption rights . Since then, the ACP has been a go-to source for right-wing activists and news outlets looking for anti-LGBT pseudoscience to counteract the views of mainstream groups like the AAP.
One example of how extreme ACP really is came in an interview that its president, Den Trumbull, gave last week to VCY America’s “Crosstalk” program, where he disparaged efforts to find a vaccine for HIV or encourage condom use to prevent the virus’ spread because HIV and AIDS are really a product of “practicing a sexual act that goes against our natural design.”
A caller who identified herself as a nurse asked Trumbull to comment on the high incidence of HIV among gay men, which she said revealed that “exposure is there in the lifestyle.”
“It’s that population in which AIDS is unfortunately and sadly thriving,” Trumbull responded. “And yet the push is more to find a vaccine, to use condoms, to — but I truly believe that when we are practicing a sexual act that goes against our natural design, it’s going to be very harmful to us emotionally, physically and, in the situation with AIDS, even infectious consequences will occur.”
Earlier in the program, Trumbull accused high school “gay-straight alliance” clubs of encouraging kids to be involved in a “lifestyle” that “is without a doubt medically, emotionally, physically harmful.”
“We have been accused of being homophobic or insensitive to those with same-sex tendencies,” he said, “and we do not want to be perceived as that, because what we want is what’s best for children, that’s our motto. So what about the homosexual teen or the same-sex attracted teen or whatnot? We would encourage them to not be involved in the homosexual sexual lifestyle, because that lifestyle is without a doubt medically, emotionally, physically harmful.”
“And what about clubs within high schools or junior highs that seek to validate these mixed emotions that a teenager may naturally flow through?” he added. “Shouldn’t any child, any middle-school child who has some feelings, ‘maybe I do have some attraction to the same sex,’ should they be validated, brought into an LGBT club, and that label will be placed upon them? Well, no, because the lifestyle that they thereafter will enter is a very unhealthy and harmful lifestyle.”
