CNS Managing Editor Can’t Stop Promoting Discredited Anti-Gay Psychiatrist

CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman really, really hates gays and transgenders. So much so, in fact, that he publishes — and republishes — articles by discredited anti-gay and anti-transgender psychiatrist Paul McHugh.

Chapman’s still at it. In May, Chapman devoted an article to telling us that “Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and former psychiatrist–in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, who has studied transgendered people for 40 years, said it is a scientific fact that ‘transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men.'” 

Chapman states this particular McHugh rant came from “an article for The Witherspoon Institute,” but he doesn’t mention that it was published 11 months earlier — meaning it had no news value and that he’s very late in getting around to rehashing it. Or that CNS — presumably upon Chapman’s request — republished McHugh’s piece shortly after it appeared at Witherspoon. So Chapman is not only rehashing a nearly year-old piece, it’s a rehashed nearly year-old piece CNS itself republished.

Then, in a July 21 article, Chapman tells us once again that McHugh is “the Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University” — an appeal to authority that means nothing —  and that he now says “it is a scientific fact that ‘there is no gay gene.'”

According to Chapman, McHugh states of his claim: 

“The best data, of course, [comes from the Framingham Study],” said Dr. McHugh.  “If you are a man and you grow up in a rural environment, you are four times less likely to have homosexual relationships than if you grow up in a metropolitan area. That’s not left-handedness.”

“If you are a lesbian, you are much more likely to be college-educated,” he said.  “That’s not something that happens at conception.” 

McHugh appears to be referring to the Framingham Heart Study, which is a study of heart disease, not homosexuality. 

Oh, and these statements are even more out of date: the interview Chapman is quoting from was published in January 2010. That’s right — Chapman is presenting a six-year-old article as something new.

Nedless to say, in neither article does Chapman present a view counter to McHugh’s, despite the fact his anti-LGBT views have been widely discredited. That violates the mission statement of the “news” organization he runs, which “endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story.” 

It seems Chapman cares nothing about journalism despite running a “news” organization, interested not in news or even current events but, rather, pushing a biased, partisan agenda and silencing opposition. But we knew that already.