WASHINGTON (ABP) — A new study suggesting that religiously motivated conversion from homosexual orientation is possible and not harmful has been hailed by some social conservatives, while others are questioning the study's motive and methodology.
The study, funded by an “ex-gay” group and released in book form by a Christian publisher, is called Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation. Released Sept. 17 in conjunction with a conference by Exodus International, the organization that sponsored the study, its authors are psychologists Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse.
Jones is a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, often considered American evangelicalism's flagship academic institution. Yarhouse is the director of the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. Regent was founded by Christian television broadcaster Pat Robertson.
The study is the first longitudinal (meaning its subjects are followed over a period of months or years) attempt to assess the success of people who enter Christian “reparative therapy” to alter their sexual orientations. The American Psychological Association, as well as several other professional mental-health organizations, have long considered sexual orientation to be immutable and considered attempts to change it via therapy prone to causing psychological harm.
“The present study produces significant scientific evidence that sexual orientation is in fact changeable for some, and this should trigger a considerable reexamination of many of the presuppositions about sexual orientation and sexual identity that hold sway in contemporary Western culture,” Jones and Yarhouse wrote.
The study followed 98 participants in Exodus groups over periods varying from 30 months to four years. Of those, 72 were men and 26 were women, with an average age of 37. However, by the end of the study, more than a quarter of the original participants had dropped out or disappeared. Only 73 completed the series of three interviews that researchers used for data.
Of the remaining people, researchers determined that 15 percent had experienced a “significant” decrease in same-sex attraction and a similarly significant increase in heterosexual desire. Another 23 percent felt they had undergone a significant reduction in homosexual attraction but had not developed heterosexual desires sufficient enough to enter into relationships with the opposite sex.
Jones and Yarhouse defined that 38 percent of the sample as successes in altering their sexual orientation, although they admitted that many of the successful participants still experienced occasional same-sex desires.
A third category, comprising 29 percent of those who completed the study, said they had experienced insignificant amounts of reduction in their same-sex attractions but were committed to continuing therapy. Another 15 percent said they had also experienced no reduction in their homosexuality and were confused about whether they would remain in therapy but had not entirely given up on the idea.
The study considered as “failures” another four percent who had given up on therapy but had not embraced a gay identity and eight percent who had given up and considered themselves gay.
The study also used a measure of psychological harm to determine that the 73 subjects experienced no greater harm from sexual-reorientation therapy than outpatients in other kinds of psychological counseling programs.
Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention's news service, and Focus on the Family both published stories hailing the study as a breakthrough, suggesting that large percentages of gays can successfully change their sexual orientation.
“These results are comparable with the success rates for dealing with other difficult issues, like depression, and more favorable than those reported by U.S. Department of Labor tax-funded programs in overcoming substance abuse,” said Melissa Fryear, head of the Colorado-based ministry's gender-issues department.
But critics said the study's methodology left a lot to be desired. Its sample — as Jones and Yarhouse concede — was self-selected from participants in an evangelical Christian ministry, it relied exclusively on the truthfulness of patients self-reporting their desires and feelings, and it had a high dropout rate.
“We've waited quite a long time for a better study than Robert Spitzer's 2003 effort,” wrote Jim Burroway, a contributor to the Box Turtle Bulletin gay news blog (www.boxturtlebulletin.com), in an analysis of the study posted Sept. 17. Burroway referred to an earlier, retrospective study that found some change of sexual orientation was possible in individuals who had strong motivation. Many psychological experts criticized the Spitzer study's methods as well.
Jones and Yarhouse's effort did not provide much better evidence, Burroway said. “This study held great promise based on its initial design, but its conduct left much to be desired,” he wrote. “Its rigorous design was not matched by similar rigor in execution. And so we're still left waiting for that definitive breakthrough ex-gay study. I don't think this one is it.”
Burroway particularly criticized the study's lack of attention to what may have motivated the large number of dropouts — many of whom, he hypothesized, may have dropped out because they embraced their homosexuality and wanted nothing more to do with Exodus or the study.
“Remember, Jones and Yarhouse described those ‘experiencing difficulty with change would be likely to get frustrated or discouraged early on and drop out of the change process,'” Burroway wrote. “And so assessing the dropouts becomes critically important, because unlike [another study on sexuality with a high dropout rate], the very reason for dropping out of this study may have direct bearing on both questions the study was designed to address: Do people change, and are they harmed by the process?
“With as much as a quarter of the initial population dropping out potentially for reasons directly related to the study's questions, this missing analysis represents a likely critical failure, one which could potentially invalidate the study's conclusions.”
Jones responded on the blog, noting that there was little he could have done about the dropout rate. “We went to extreme lengths to keep people in the study, involving multiple pleas and contacts including those through families and friends, and, when we had contact information at all, with personal calls and pleas from me,” he wrote. “At some point, you must respect people's wishes not to be contacted. We remain proud of our retention rate in the study.”
Others have criticized the study for not using physical measures to gauge sexual response to images of the same gender. But Yarhouse and Jones said the only reliable methods for measuring such arousal — attaching monitors to subjects' genitalia and then asking them to watch pornography — would be morally objectionable to the subjects.
Clinton Anderson, director of the American Psychological Association's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns Office, said Sept. 21 that he had not yet read the study but questioned why it was published in book form by a Christian publisher rather than in a scientific journal.
“Even if you think it's an excellent study, why would they choose to not have it published in the peer-reviewed literature? That's where it belongs,” he said. “Otherwise, I don't think I understand where they're coming from, as far as science and making a contribution to it.”
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