Heterosexual and homosexual men have radically different sexual reactions to male and female sexual stimuli, while heterosexual and homosexual women have very considerable overlap in their sexual responses. (See href=”http://www.psych.northwestern.edu/psych/people/faculty/bailey/chiversetal.pdf )

Moreover, male sexual orientation seems to have a bimodal distribution, while that doesn’t seem to be the case for females. See:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01578.x and Page 11 of http://www.psych.northwestern.edu/psych/people/faculty/bailey/Publications/Bailey%20et%20al.%20twins,2000.pdf

Further, sex researchers tend to speak of greater “fluidity” in female sexuality, and, speaking anecdotally based on my own (extensive) reading, there seems to be a relatively decent crop of female ex-gay testimonies that seem credible, while I never seen a single one from a male that I felt I could trust. The closest I’ve seen are a couple of claims of “person-specific” sexual desire–they say they’re sexually attracted to their wives but no one else of the opposite sex, and they admit that their sexual attractions otherwise are exclusively to members of the same sex.

Anyway, just a thought.

I officially stand corrected :-)

I did characterize far too much. Perhaps it would have been better to have said:

To an ex-gay “change” is not a shift in sexual attraction or desire or romantic interest but instead is a change of another sort – perhaps a change in identity, a change in religious affinity, a change in perspective opening up to the possibility of a heterosexual eventuality, a transient or even pemanant partial change in sexual awareness of the other sex, or perhaps some other change entirely.

some better?

I think you’re right. It takes a whole lot of listening to figure out what change is supposed to mean for a particular speaker. “Change” changes from person to person.

When I attended Love Won Out, I wondered if there wasn’t an advantage to be gained by having so many different definitions of change. It’s what I was trying to get at in Part 4 of my Love Won Out series. The word “change” ended up becoming a sort of a Rhorschach test for the audience.

This really bothered me tremendously because it seemed like an extremely cruel way to treat the parents and family members who attended. So many of them were desperate to have their “little boy” or “little girl” back — to so many of them, their dreams for their children had died and it was almost as if their children themselves were dead. The grief was quite visible at times, and very funereal. I thought it was very cruel to allow them to leave with, I believe, unrealistic expectations of what “change” would mean.

The only person who was really candid was Alan Chambers. But his workshop was only attended by about a tenth of the overall conference attendees. I discussed it briefly towards the end of this week’s podcast with Daniel Gonzales.

I do think Timothy is 100% absolutely right about the coyness problem. It drives me crazy! I mean, seriously. If you’re gonna lie, then lie like you got a pair, dammit! Don’t pussyfoot around with these half-truths and cutesy jokes and please-read-between-the-lines-so-I-don’t-have-to- say-it-out-loud kind of statements. And DON’T tell different stories to different audiences and expect it to fly. GRRRRRRRRR.

Integrity. Integrity. Integrity.

One of the points I wanted to make (which may have fallen through the cracks, or you guys may just think I’m full of it, I dunno :-) ) is that I really don’t think there’s a uniform definition of change (or of anything else) being used even among the big shot spokesmen. I think there’s a great deal of fluidity (or, if you want to be less charitable, inconsistency) in how they use their terms. So I would be very hesitant to say “When exgays say ‘change,’ they mean a change in identity.” That seems to me to be simply false as a general rule, even among the leaders.

I look back on myself in college and marvel. My thoughts, perspectives, outlook, habits, friends, daily life were all so very different than today. I’m not the same person. I don’t even recognize that person.

And I have, over my life, made decisions that resulted in drastic change for the better. Comparing myself to those time periods I can hardly believe that was me.

Considering the change that many in ex-gay ministries have made in their lives, it is hardly any wonder that this word resonates. They have different friends, surroundings, life patterns, habits, activities. And, most importantly, they’ve gone from feeling unworthy or unsaved to feeling “justified in the sight of God”. And that is a HUGE difference, a wild and dramatic change.

But it isn’t a change in sexual orientation. And I object to the political and evangelical crusades that pretend that it is.

Perhaps it’s unreasonable to place arbitrary definitions on what constitutes a “successful” “change.” (I put both words in independent quotations because we’re talking about two independent definitions of words that are ultimately smashed together.) I think one point that DM raises is that if her change rises to a “personally-significant” degree — that’s the only standard that matters.

Which makes sense to me. When it comes to such a personal matter as sexuality, that’s probably the only standard that matters in the end — as long as the person is sufficiently self-aware that he or she is certain that he or she is not indulging in wish-fulfillment. That’s a pitfall we’re all prone to, regardless of our goals.

I hasten to add that DM seems, to me at least, to be sufficiently — even impressively — self-aware. But it’s my experience that this is a rare commodity. Maybe I’m projecting my own foibles too much on everyone else, but I wonder how many people have the maturity to separate their wishes from their actual experiences.

But even if we all could gain that level of maturity, I think that Timothy’s criticisms of the ex-gay leaders coyness in describing change still stands. Their coyness invites exactly the sort of doubt that Timothy expresses. When a slick brochure promises something, whoever’s reading it ought to be able to understand what he/she is reading with the assumption that we’re all sharing the same English language. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

It’s taken me a couple of years of reading and listening before I’ve been able to arrive at what they’re talking about. But since we all happen to speak one of the world’s most pervasive languages — a language which also has one of the most expansive vocabularies compared to many others — there is no reason whatsoever for us to be having this problem.

I think that you neglected another reason for the reluctance by these political ex-gays to acknowledge that they are still attracted to the same sex: bisexuality.

Alan and Randy in particular seem to talk about their progressive loss of “desire” for men, and then their attraction to women. POOF! (no pun intended) They become heterosexual. They don’t even describe an asexual period. The just describe a nebulous time (12 years ago…16 years ago, etc)

DM describes attractions to both sexes at this point, but I think that creating bisexuals or going through a “bisexual phase” would not sell very well. In fact, heterosexuals and homosexuals both seem more biased against bisexuals than each other. It would be very interesting to hear Alan and Randy try to respond to persistent questions about bisexuality or bisexual phases in their experience.

Not that it should matter, but I am not bisexual. I just think this is one of the many conundrums that the political ex-gays face.

as you rightly point out, I did paint with a pretty broad brush. I should have been more clear that my comments about “ex-gays say…” really were directed to the public leaders who engage in political and media campaigns.

You, on the other hand, are much more honest and don’t engage in semantics games intended to deceive.

I’ll try to be less all-inclusive in future posts.

As for the reason that there is such a need to hide continued same-sex attractions, I think the answer is three-fold.

First, even though Exodus loudly proclaims that same-sex attractions are not sin, I think that deep down inside the leaders still believe that it is either a sin or a flaw or an indication of failure, lack of faith, or immaturity. Their goal is not to find opposite-sex attraction but to rid theirselves of same-sex attraction. And any admission that they still are sexually attracted to the same sex is an admission of failure, an indication of lingering sin/fault/flaw, or a suggestion that God’s healing is incomplete and not completely effective.

Second, Exodus (like all organizations in existance) wants participants. And Randy and Alan know that their draw is not a partial change in some attractions. No one wants frustration and for most that is what “you will be attracted to the same sex on some level for the rest of your life” sounds like.

Their potential clients want to be RID of their same-sex attractions. And they want to know that it CAN be done and they want to see it in their leaders.

Three, polls repeatedly show that if a person believes that sexuality is fixed, they support equal treatment for gay people. If they think that homosexuality is chosen, they oppose gay rights. And for most people “fixed” means that the same-sex attractions don’t go away – regardless of opposite sex attractions. It’s a basic “I get it” kind of thing. And sadly, Alan and Randy care far more about political machinations than they do about the truth so they are perfectly willing to say whatever will deceive the media or the public into believing that they no longer are same-sex attracted.

Or so I think.

If the answer is “yes,” then no change has happened at all. Andy Comiskey, who was with Desert Streams Ministry when I read an article by him in Charisma Magazine wrote that he told a gay man who was attending the church he did, “After having been married more than 20 years and having grown children, I still occasionally experience sexual attractions toward men.”

I found it odd that was published in that Charismatic/Pentecostal magazine since the publisher and editors are anti-gay. And what he wrote and said does not prove he is actually an “ex-gay.”