ministry to repentant homosexuals." Judith Butler describes this work as "intensely polemical", giving "highly conservative political reasons for strengthening the diagnosis [of "gender identity disorder"] so that the structures that support normalcy can be strengthened." Growing Up Straight (1982) Growing Up Straight: What Every Family Should Know About Homosexuality is a 1982 guide for parents, by the psychologist George Alan Rekers, on how to prevent their children from becoming homosexual. The book was influential. However, the viewpoints espoused in the book have been controversial. Professor Michael R. Schiavi wrote in a 2001 Modern Language Studies journal article that the work was a "horror show written for parents anxious to re-direct sissy sons to sexual righteousness". The journalist Frank Rich questioned the book's status as scholarship in The New York Times, writing that "many of the footnotes cite his own previous writings." The psychologist and sexologist Kenneth Zucker reviewed Growing Up Straight and Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity, another work by Rekers, in a 1984 issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior. He described both works as, "examples of the passionate response that can be engendered by the study of human sexuality. In this instance, religious rhetoric is used to defend the author's views on the subject. What is perhaps most disappointing about these two books is the idyllic view of family life and human conduct for which the author longs." Zucker went on to write, "Ultimately, one has to wonder how Rekers will feel toward his child patients, should they grow up not to be straight. He might well benefit by recalling the words of Harry Stack Sullivan: "We are all much more simply human than otherwise." Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity (1982) In Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity, Rekers provides advice to parents which he claims can help them prevent their children from becoming homosexual. The book received a negative review from the psychologist Kenneth Zucker in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Zucker wrote that, as in some of his other work, such as Growing Up Straight (1982), Rekers ignored, dismissed, or distorted scientific data to prevent it from conflicting with his religious views. He noted that some of the material was controversial, such as Rekers's discussion of his behavior as an expert witness in a child custody case, in which he testified against a lesbian mother seeking to regain custody of her daughters because her lesbianism "placed her children at