FYI -
Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation?
In May 2001, Robert Spitzer presented Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation? 200 Participants Reporting a Change from Homosexual to Heterosexual Orientation", a study of attempts to change homosexual orientation through ex-gay ministries and conversion therapy, at the American Psychiatric Association's convention in New Orleans. The study was partly a response to the APA's 2000 statement cautioning against clinical attempts at changing homosexuality, and was aimed at determining whether such attempts were ever successful rather than how likely it was that change would occur for any given individual. Spitzer wrote that some earlier studies provided evidence for the effectiveness of therapy in changing sexual orientation, but that all of them suffered from methodological problems. [2]
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Spitzer renounced his own study in 2012, [59] stating "I was quite wrong in the conclusions that I made from this study. The study does not provide evidence, really, that gays can change. And that’s quite an admission on my part." [93] He also apologized to the gay community for making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy, [60] calling it his only professional regret. [61] Spitzer has requested that all "ex-gay" therapy organizations such as NARTH, PFOX, American College of Pediatricians, and Focus on the Family stop citing his study as evidence for conversion therapy. [93]
Changing Sexual Orientation: A Consumer's Report
Ariel Shidlo and Michael Schroeder found in "Changing Sexual Orientation: A Consumer's Report", a peer-reviewed study of 150 respondents [94] published in 2002, that 88% of participants failed to achieve a sustained change in their sexual behavior and 3% reported changing their orientation to heterosexual. The remainder reported either losing all sexual drive or attempting to remain celibate, with no change in attraction. Some of the participants who failed felt a sense of shame and had gone through conversion therapy programs for many years. Others who failed believed that therapy was worthwhile and valuable. Shidlo and Schroeder also reported that many respondents were harmed by the attempt to change. Of the 8 respondents (out of a sample of 202) who reported a change in sexual orientation, 7 worked as ex-gay counselors or group leaders. [95] NARTH states that the Shidlo study has often been used by gay activists as "proof" that conversion therapy is on average harmful, but they advertised for study participants with an ad that said, "Help Us Document the Harm". [63] The Shidlo-Schroeder recruitment poster is available at NARTH online, [96] stating that the study's authors did not seek to measure the average outcome of conversion therapy, although their study has often been used by activists as if it had, in fact, sought a representative sample; the lack of a representative sample therefore makes the 80% failure rate, cited above in this same paragraph, a meaningless number. |
