"Pray the gay away," as ABC News put it. It seems to be that simple for Marcus Bachmann, PhD, husband of Michele, the woman sitting in the Iowa caucus catbird seat. And he does it using commingled state and federal Medicaid funds--over $161,000 worth according to msnbc--at Bachmann and Associates , the so-called Christian counseling center located in the Minneapolis suburbs of Lake Elmo and Burnsville. The clinic is jointly owned by Marcus and Michele. So what does it matter?
For starters, there is the small matter of big-time hypocrisy on how to spend big bucks wrested from taxpayers to fund bogus treatment modalities. Note to file: you don't "cure" homosexuality by prayer or reparative therapy. The use of prayer to a specific end has no place in clinical psychological treatment. Here's the deal in a nutshell: Bachmann and Associates conflates pastoral counseling with psychological counseling. And however so-called Christian psychological practice is conceived, you can't charge Medicaid for a cure-by-prayer or reparative therapy. For years, Marcus has denied that his practice attempts to cure homosexuality through reparative therapy--reorienting behavior by thought control of one variety or another, because he knows the practice is not accepted by the American Psychological Association, or any other association having anything to do with the human psyche.
[Read the entire article, an Editor's Pick, at:
http://open.salon.com/blog/steve_klingaman]
