Val D. MacMurray

Val D. MacMurray is Assistant Professor of Sociology on the Faculty of Medicine, Division of Community Health Science at the University of Calgary. Formerly he worked at Tufts Community Mental Health Clinic in Boston.

Warning: Labels Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

Articles/Essays – Volume 10, No. 4

Dialogue 10.4 (Fall 1977): 130–132

MacMurray cautioned against people labelling themselves or others “homosexuals.” He argued that it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and that it was an impediment to a cure. This would become a major theory of Elder Boyd K. Packer and others who instituted a cultural taboo on the term that lasted until the early 2000s when self-labelling became somewhat more tolerated. This doctrine has its roots in reparative therapy theories.