Sadly, his attitudes didn't change after his son came out as gay.
Controversial Dr. Charles Socarides dies at age 83
Dr. Charles Socarides—an influential and infamous psychiatrist who came under heavy criticism for his belief that gay men and lesbians could be "treated" and turned straight—died on Sunday in New York. He was 83 and the cause was heart failure, his wife told the New York Times.
Socarides, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, was reviled by gay rights groups who denounced the half-dozen books on homosexuality that he wrote, including "The Overt Homosexual," published in 1968. He was also the father of Richard Socarides, the out liaison to the gay and lesbian community in the Clinton Adminstration.
In 1992, Charles Socarides co-founded the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality whose mission is to ''to make effective psychological therapy available to all homosexual men and women who seek change,'' according to its Web site.
In his 1995 book "Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far," Socarides said that the gay rights movement "takes deadly aim on the primary unit in society, the family. Second, it is eliminating one of the very obvious, but very key factors in the making of a civilization: the fact that one generation succeeds another generation. Third, the very fact of AIDS is the same-sex movement's
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