Well, Look Who’s ‘Editing’ Wikipedia on ‘Gay’ Entries…

From NARTH Asks Wikipedia to Permit the Group to Correct Inaccuracies On Site, published Mar 19, 2007, by NARTH:

NARTH President Joseph Nicolosi sent a letter of concern to Wikipedia today asking that a lesbian activist be prohibited from editing the content of the article about NARTH. The NARTH Editorial Director recently attempted to make corrections to several errors about the organization on Wikipedia. However, the corrections were changed immediately and the misinformation was reposted. The editorial director discovered that the changes were made by a lesbian activist who routinely edits articles dealing with LBGT issues.

The letter to Wikipedia is reprinted below:

Corrections Needed On Wikipedia Article On The
National Association For Research And Therapy of Homosexuality

March 2007

Dear Wikipedia reviewer:

It was brought to our attention recently that your article about the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) has numerous factual errors in it regarding us.

In an attempt to correct this misinformation, our editorial director Mike Hatfield attempted to make corrections to the article. He attempted this two times. Each time he made the corrections, they were immediately changed back by someone else.

In investigating who was making the changes, he found the name of Joie de Vivre, who is a lesbian socio-political activist and a member of the WikiProject LGBT studies. The WikiProject site describes itself as “a group of editors who aim to improve the general quality and range of Wikipedia articles on LGBT and Queer studies topics.”

Vivre says –with obvious pride!– on her Wikipedia web site that she regularly changes the wording and rewrites articles dealing with gay and lesbian issues. It is dangerous for your credibility to have political activists slanting articles to fit their own political objectives.

NARTH must have the right to post corrections to an article about itself without having a lesbian activist vandalize the site by reposting inaccurate or distorted statements about the history and goals of NARTH.

We insist that Vivre be prohibited from making future changes on the NARTH site – and that whatever corrections NARTH chooses to post on the site will remain there without being deleted by other anti-NARTH activists.

There can certainly be disagreements about the purpose of NARTH, but to have a lesbian activist defining what NARTH is or is not is unethical and unprofessional. Every organization has the unqualified right to have its mission accurately described in Wikipedia.

The credibility of your online service is gravely jeopardized if you have activists regularly posting inaccuracies on web sites dealing with gay and lesbian issues.

We ask that you permanently ban Joie de Vivre from changing content on the NARTH site and ban any further individuals from posting things that are false or misleading on this site. Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.
President
National Association for Research And Therapy Of Homosexuality