Posts Tagged As: Mark Yarhouse

Yarhouse nails the post-Exodus problem

Timothy Kincaid

June 21st, 2013

In response to the announcement that Exodus will cease to exist and will be replaced with an organization that will “come alongside churches to become safe, welcoming, and mutually transforming communities”, Mark Yarhouse (co-author of the Jones and Yarhouse study on religiously mediated orientation change) had this to say,

When I think about what may be interesting in the years to come is this: Is there is room in a diverse and pluralistic culture for a Christian ministry to retain its beliefs and values about sexuality and marriage while moving away from the expectation of change (at least in the form of reparative therapy)? … A ministry would then have to ask: Is there an audience for that kind of ministry when many people (most?) who come to a ministry want the very change held out as normative in reparative therapy? All indications are that the message will be that of Christlikeness (or what Christian refer to as sanctification), and, I would guess, that the focus on sanctification will be independent of the question of whether attractions change.

Yarhouse is correct in noting that if a ministry seeks to encourage a life in accordance with one’s faith, then the question of whether one’s orientation changes is irrelevant. Whether same-sex attracted, opposite-sex attracted or possessed of little sexual attraction at all, we each choose how we express our sexuality.

But that isn’t really a revelation. Other than to the wackadoodles who (to comport with their own political and religious demands on society) insist that Christian doctrine demands that one make impossible changes, this is intuitive.

But Yarhouse does raise the one question that no one seems to have pondered: is there an audience for this message?

I believe that there is value in providing a safe haven for conservative Christians who are negotiating their sexuality. Those who are as yet uncertain – or even those who have concluded that they want a life of celibacy – can benefit from fellowship with others who share their experiences and values. And it goes without saying that many a conservative church needs to hear that their rejection of their gay and lesbian youth is an affront to Christ.

But does anyone want it?

Will the young conservative Christian man who discovers his own attractions seek out a support group that encourages celibacy? Or will he desperately look for a cure, a solution, a way that lets him be like his brothers? The old Exodus would have an appeal to him, but will the post-Exodus group?

And will the youth pastor confronted with a young woman in his church who discovers that her crushes on other girls is not a passing phase have any use for counsel that advises him to accept and support her and that she’s not going to ever fit the church’s presumptions? Or will he be drawn to a group that says, “you don’t have to mellow your rhetoric, she’s broken and we can fix her”? I suspect that the latter is less of a challenge to him than the former.

I think that the post-Exodus group has something to say to the Christian community. But I think Mark Yarhouse’s question is a good one, Is there anyone who wants to hear it?

Ex-Gay Project Fails

Rob Tisinai

September 28th, 2011

The National Organization “for” Marriage is trumpeting a new survey about changing your sexual orientation, based on “religiously-mediated” involvement in Christian conversion ministries:

Many professional voices proclaim that it is impossible to change homosexual orientation, and that the attempt to change is commonly and inherently harmful…

The results show change to be possible for some, and the attempt not harmful on average.

I don’t have access to the full survey, but the researchers have summarized the results.  Here’s how it turned out after 6 to 7 years of tracking participants:

98 The number of subjects when the study began: 72 men and 26 women.
37 The number of subjects who dropped out of the study and did not report their results. I don’t think we can count any of them as an ex-gay “win.”
12 The number who stopped trying to change, and embraced their gay identity.
18 The number who were reportedly chaste, “with substantive dis-identification with homosexual orientation.”

In other words, they’ve managed to stop having sex, and don’t think about getting same-sex down-and-dirty as much as they used to.

This isn’t a change in orientation, any more than a straight person is no longer straight because they’ve used prayer to become celibate and partially push some of their sexual feelings underground.

17 The number who apparently stayed with the study, but whose outcomes are not described in the summary. Presumably, they’re not clear ex-gay “wins” either.
14 The number who reported “successful ‘conversion’ to heterosexual orientation and functioning.”

That’s a meager 14% success rate.

Or is it? Let’s learn more about those 14 people.

First, it’s probably not 14.  The study cautions us that the 14 conversions and 18 celibates represent “likely overly optimistic projections of anticipated success.”

In other words — less than 14 actual conversions.

But wait.  Check out what “conversion” means:

Most of the individuals who reported that they were heterosexual at Time 3 did not report themselves to be without experience of homosexual arousal, and did not report heterosexual orientation to be unequivocal and uncomplicated.

You know what they call straight people who experience homosexual arousal, and whose orientation is at most equivocal?  Bisexual. Most of the 14 heterosexual “conversions” seem to be bisexuals.

This leaves us with at most — at most — 6 individuals who went from gay to straight (as of now, at least; who knows where they’ll be in another 7 years).

6.

And the authors aren’t willing to go even that far.  Their single-sentence summary:

In short, the results do not prove that categorical change in sexual orientation is possible for everyone or anyone, but rather that meaningful shifts along a continuum that constitute real changes appear possible for some.

Wow.  Out of 98 highly-motivated subjects, the authors found that a small, unspecified number can use prayer and counseling to shut down their sexual feelings or become a bit more bi.  And possibly none who turned straight.

Frankly, I’m surprised they couldn’t find more.  The authors claim their results:

…challenge the commonly expressed views of the mental health establishment that change of sexual orientation is impossible or very uncommon…

Actually, it looks more like the results confirm those views.  If the antigay camp sees this as vindication and victory, they must be even more desperate than I thought.

UPDATE: I’m abashed to say that Timothy Kincaid has already covered this here at Box Turtle Bulletin, and in far more depth. You can check out his series of articles here.

Willow Creek Threads the Needle Between Ex-Gay Movement And Pro-Gay Acceptance

Jim Burroway

July 22nd, 2011

Last month, David Roberts at Ex-Gay Watched happened to notice that the influential Chicago-area megachurch Willow Creek was no longer listed on Exodus International’s affiliate listing as they had been in the past. Roberts obtained a response from a Willow Creek spokesperson confirming that “After a recent review of our affiliations we determined that, moving into the future, we no longer intend to be affiliated with Exodus International.”

Willow Creek is a very large interdenominational Evangelical church with satellite campuses across the country, and has been called the “most influential church in America.” Christianity Today picked up on the story and spoke with the same Willow Creek spokesperson, Scott Vaudrey, who said that Willow Creek’s decision was not intended as a social or political statement, but resulted from “a season of reviewing and clarifying some of our affiliations with outside organizations.”

Exodus International president Alan Chambers answered Vaudrey’s innocuous framing of their decision with his own combative interpretation of Willow Creek’s decision:

“The choice to end our partnership is definitely something that shines a light on a disappointing trend within parts of the Christian community,” he said, “which is that there are Christians who believe like one another who aren’t willing to stand with one another, simply because they’re afraid of the backlash people will direct their way if they are seen with somebody who might not be politically correct.”

Chambers said he sympathizes with Christian organizations that deal with social, political, and financial backlash, but added, “Biblical truth is unpopular, and when you’re supporting unpopular truth, you are unpopular too; which means, some days, getting upwards of 10,000 phone calls and emails, and it can be overwhelming.”

He later added:

“I really do think decisions like this, ultimately, highlight a reticence in the church to stand up for biblical truth, and they’re coming at a time when we’re going to have to stand up for what we believe. I think there’s a way to stand up. We have to find that way.”

Willow Creek however denies that their theological position on homosexuality has changed. Christianity Today’s article cites Susan DeLay, Willow Creek’s director of media relations, in saying that the church hasn’t not “become less welcoming to people with same-sex attractions or more averse to big problems.” It should be noted that “less welcoming to people with same-sex attractions” is not the same as “less welcoming to gay people.” The former phrasing refers to those who would be part of an ex-gay ministry, rather than openly gay individuals or families headed by gay couples. DeLay goes on:

“It’s quite the contrary,” she said. “Willow Creek has a whole host of ministries for people dealing with these issues, and we would never intend for them to feel sidelined. All we’ve changed is how we’ve gone about inviting them into the church, which is the primary issue here.”

It remains unclear how Willow Creek would respond if a group of LGBT parishioners wanted to form a study group or start a PFLAG sponsorship. DeLay’s referencing those who are “dealing with these isssues,” does not suggest that an acceptable way of dealing would be to embrace one’s God-given gifts.

What actually appears to be happening is that Willow Creek may be trying to “thread the needle.” On the one hand, they want to be clear that they are still an ex-gay-welcoming church and they aren’t about to define themselves as a gay-welcoming church. But they don’t want the to erect obvious barriers to gay people walking through its doors. Mark Yarhouse, whose own studies have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of ex-gay ministries in changing sexual orientation, believes that churches like Willow Creek are beginning to notice that Exodus International and the ex-gay movement has become a significant and growing barrier:

Churches are realizing that while there is a small contingent of the gay community responding to language like ‘freedom from homosexuality’ or ‘freedom is possible,’ the vast majority strongly disagree. They’re angry and they believe it’s impossible to change, and to hear this is so offensive that they will have nothing to do with Christians. So I think churches, in response to that vast majority who say, ‘We’re not interested,’ have decided to look at other approaches in an attempt to connect with the gay community on at least some level. That doesn’t mean that churches disagree with the language of ‘freedom from homosexuality’ doctrinally; they’ve just found that it doesn’t work on a social level.”

Mark Yarhouse needs to decide between honesty and anti-gay activism

Timothy Kincaid

July 15th, 2011

Mark Yarhouse, professor of psychology at Regent University, frustrates me.

On the one hand, he has been willing to conduct research and produce results that have called into question long held presumptions about orientation change efforts. In much of his current writing, Yarhouse has distinguished between experiencing attraction, identity, and behavior and seeks to move away from the affirmation vs. reorientation dichotomy and to focus on reconciling values with a structure of behavior.

But on the other, he has utilized selective language that encourages confusion and has allowed others to mischaracterize his work in ways that he knows to be dishonest. He has allowed, if not encouraged, political positioning that well serves anti-gay activists but which is in direct contradiction with his own endeavors.

And today we have an example of each.

As noted at Dr. Warren Throckmorton’s site, Yarhouse released a study in Edification (aChristian psychology journal published by the American Association of Christian Counselors) that found that same-sex attracted men in heterosexual marriages experienced an increase rather than * do not experience a decrease of such attractions over time. (Actually, the entire journal is fascinating in how it illustrates the way in which some within the most conservative end of Christianity are struggling to make sense of conflicts between doctrine and observation.)

But also today we have Yarhouse speaking to the Christian Broadcasting Network in defense of the Bachmann clinic’s prayer and promise about complete reorientation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMOQBuumZcw

If you’ve watched the mainstream media’s reporting in the last day or so, you’ve seen these tapes which suggest that changing sexual orientation is not possible. In fact, at least one major study shows change is possible.

Psychologist Mark Yarhouse explored the question in a six year work that he presented at the American Psychological Association’s annual conference.

Yarhouse: I think our study raises that question again, says wait a minute, here’s a change effort sustained over time and there’s a pretty significant percentage of people for whom this is helpful.

Let’s stop there. Or, as Mark would say, “Wait a minute!”

There is a world of difference between “this is helpful” and “change is possible.” I don’t doubt for a moment that many people who stay year after year after year in Exodus ministries find the efforts to be “helpful”. If they didn’t, they probably would eventually quit, as more than a third of Yarhouse’s study did.

But did they change their orientation? That is a different question, one the CBN tries to answer through bulletin points.

Yarhouse and coauthor Stan Jones followed 63 people who tried to change with the help of Christian ministry.

Thirty percent were able to reduce their homosexual attraction enough to be celibate without distress. And (smugly) another twenty-three percent were able to convert to opposite-sex attraction. Total the change, fifty-three percent.

Is this a truthful representation of what Stan Jones and Mark Yarhouse discovered? No, not at all. Not even close.

First the numbers: Actually they followed 98 people, of which 37 dropped out of the program. While in testing drug efficacy it might be appropriate to ignore drop-outs, in testing whether one can change orientation, it’s pretty relevant whether they stick around.

After all, if Mark is going to say that “change effort sustained over time” is evidence of efficacy, then surely not sustaining it over time is evidence of inefficacy. Dr. Yarhouse simply cannot have it both ways.

Taking the 37 dropouts into consideration, we come up with a different calculation:

    Success: Conversion – 14 (14%)
    Success: Chastity – 18 (18%)
    Non-Success – 29 (30%)
    Drop-Outs – 37 (38%)

But this deception goes beyond numbers. It presents definitions of “success” that are laughable outside of hard-core anti-gay conservative Christian circles.

I don’t know of a secular person or a moderate to liberal Christian who would characterize achieving celibacy as a change in sexual orientation. We all know of a few gay people who have “achieved celibacy” who would much rather than they hadn’t and such an “acheivement” says nothing about their orientation.

But where the CNB report is most dishonest is in their smug announcement that twenty-three percent were able to convert to opposite-sex attraction.

Really? Opposite sex attraction without any caveat, asterisk, or explanation?

Then explain why Jones and Yarhouse’s report said this:

[W]hile we found that part of our research population experienced success to the degree that it might be called (as we have here) “conversion,” our evidence does not indicate that these changes are categorical, resulting in uncomplicated, dichotomous and unequivocal reversal of sexual orientation from utterly homosexual to utterly heterosexual. Most of the individuals who reported that they were heterosexual at T6 did not report themselves to be without experience of homosexual arousal, and they did not report their heterosexual orientation to be unequivocal and uncomplicated.

Or why Jones clarified:

A typical hetero male finds himself attracted to a wide range of females. But among the successful people who reported conversion the typical response was I’m very happy with my sexual responses to my wife, but I don’t experience much hetero attraction to other women. Also, when asked and pressed about whether they still find attraction to men, they will say: ‘Yes, if I let my mind go in that direction.’

Sorry, but that isn’t a heterosexual. It’s just not. And that isn’t the kind of change that is being promised by Bachmann’s clinic.

A dishonest researcher is not just one who misrepresents their own research. A dishonest researcher is one who sees others misuse or misstate his work and does nothing to correct them.

It’s time for Mark Yarhouse to decide which is more important to him, his honesty or anti-gay activism.

UPDATE

* More accurately, the participants expressed increased heterosexual behavior but measures that included both behavior and attractions, fantasies, and emotional attachments illustrated no material change (though a small change in the direction of homosexuality). It is reasonable to conclude that removing the behavior component would likely reveal a moderate shift towards homosexual attractions, but this is not clearly reported by Dr. Yarhouse.

Marin, Chambers, Others Respond to Prop 8 Decision

Jim Burroway

August 10th, 2010

Christianity Today has a roundup of responses from various Evangelical leaders to last week’s decision declaring California’s Prop 8 unconstitutional.

The most interesting response, to me, comes from Andrew Marin, who is often credited as being a “bridge builder” between Evangelicals and the gay community. Interesting, only because I’ve been listening to hours of his talks trying to figure out what he really believes, and I don’t think I’m any closer to understanding what he wants to accomplish than when I started, since he won’t just come right out and say what he really believes. In response to the Prop 8 decision, Marin told Christianity Today:

We can continue to politically fight a drawn-out battle with a government that is not governed through an evangelical worldview, producing more casualties for Christ. Or we can learn right now what it means to live in relation to, and relationship with LGBT people as gay marriage is legalized—continuing to actively show Christ’s compelling nature regardless of state or national policy. The choice is ours.

Trying to understand Marin’s position on same-sex marriage (or whether homosexuality is a sin) is like trying to deconstruct the latest statements from the Federal Reserve. When asked directly whether he thinks gay people should marry, Marin adamantly refuses to answer and instructs his followers to do the same. Which, to me, blows his whole bridge-building exercise out of the water. After all, who wants to walk onto a bridge when they don’t know where it goes?  So without a map, we’re left hunting for clues and here we find another: the government is not governed (as evidenced by this decision) through an Evangelical worldview. Many LGBT people might find cause to dispute that — we can’t marry in 9/10ths of the country — but as a self-proclaimed evangelical himself we at least now have an indication that marriage equality doesn’t fit that shared worldview. Take that hint for what it’s worth.

Alan Chambers, of Exodus International responded:

We cannot avoid the glaring scriptural truth that there is, and will always be, a right way and a wrong way concerning just about everything we can imagine. And, yet, I believe that our attitudes towards people (internal and external) are just as important as our positions on the issues at hand. … I firmly believe that if we had spent as much money, time, and energy battling for people’s hearts as we did fighting against their agendas, the gay rights battle would look very different today.

In a recent statement condemning Uganda’s proposed draconian legislation to impose the death penalty on gay people under certain circumstances and to virtually outlaw knowing or providing services to LGBT people, Chambers acknowledged that part of his motivation for waiting sixteen months before adequately addressing the March 2009 anti-gay Kampala conference which started the whole mess was due to the fact that LGBT advocates were calling upon him to do so. That was, I think, a startling and welcome admission. It also marks a change from 2007 when he spoke before a group of anti-gay activists in Florida and characterized the gay community as following an “evil agenda” and actively lobbied Congress against hate crimes legislation and other issues important to the LGBT community. And yet, even in those times, he would offer messages to other broader mainstream audiences similar to the one above. So whether this change is episodic (as others have been) or enduring remains to be seen. (Update: Alan reaffirms that “Exodus isn’t returning to politics, but it was a good venue for talking about having compassion for our neighbors whether we agree with them or not.”)

Other interesting reactions include Timothy George of Samford University:

Christians who thought they would be able to just sleep through this issue will not be allowed to. At stake in the debate is the very nature of marriage itself. Thinking biblically does not allow us to regard marriage as merely prudential or preferential (I like strawberry, you like pistachio), but as a covenantal union of one man and one woman established by God for a purpose that transcends itself. Marriage is not a “right” to be defended or exploited…

Gerald R. McDermott, professor of religion at Roanoke College:

Social science has shown that children do best in a home with two parents of the opposite sex in a low-conflict marriage, and gay marriages make that impossible for their children and less likely for society generally. More children will be created by artificial sperm donation, which in many cases forever cuts the children off from knowing both their biological parents. Gay marriage will also encourage teens who are unsure of their sexuality to embrace a lifestyle that suffers high rates of suicide, depression, HIV, drug abuse, STDs, and other pathogens.

McDermott, a relatively minor figure in anti-gay politics, nevertheless remains unchastened over pushing discredited researcher Paul Cameron’s bogus statistics. His 2004 Christianity Today article, “Why Gay Marriage Would Be Harmful,” was the basis for one of the earliest reports by Box Turtle Bulletin.

Glenn Stanton of Focus On the Family was equally direct in his response:

The gospel is deeply serious while Judge Walker’s decision is a jumbled mess of sloppy thinking and accusation. He asserts religion is the cause of violence against gays. Jesus, when asked a tough legal question about marriage, explained, “God created them male and female.” This dual identity of humanity is no small thing for us nor our Lord because male and female image the invisible God, creating a full human communion. But Judge Walker says, “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.” The Christian’s allegiance is clear.

Gender was a major focus on the 2008 debate hosted by Box Turtle Bulletin between anthropologist Patrick Chapman and Glenn Stanton on Stanton’s white paper, “Differing definitions of marriage and family” (PDF: 80KB/10 pages).

And finally, I’d like to highlight Mark Yarhouse, of Regent University:

I don’t know that there is one response to the Proposition 8 decision that will reflect the depth and breadth of the gospel in the life of believers today. A gospel response is shaped by many factors, including how one views Christ and culture. Some Christians will see appealing the decision as part of the gospel response, drawing upon legal avenues and hoping it will be overturned upon appeal. Other Christians will prayerfully consider alternatives to legal means to be a witness to a rapidly changing culture. I think younger Christians, in particular, are more likely to explore such alternatives.

Yarhouse collaborated with Wheaton College’s Stanton Jones in an ex-gay study that found very little change among the study’s participants. Because of the study’s results, Yarhouse has since downplayed the possibility of sexual orientation change.

A Preliminary Review of Jones and Yarhouse’s “Ex-Gay? A Longitudinal Study”

Jim Burroway

September 17th, 2007

Last Thursday, Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse announced the results of their new ex-gay study at a press conference in Nashville, where the American Association of Christian Counselors was holding its annual conference. The study, Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation will be published by InterVarsity Press October 10. This review is based on a thirteen-page synopsis that was provided for the AACC.

This study was funded by Exodus, with Jones and Yarhouse promising that “we would be reporting publicly the results of our outcome study regardless of how encouraging or embarrassing Exodus might find those results.” Based on Exodus’ press release and Alan Chambers’ presence at the press conference, it appears that Exodus is quite pleased with the study. Exodus, by the way, chose that same weekend to host their regional conference in Nashville, making for a very well coordinated event.

The Study’s Design

According to Jones and Yarhouse, their study was intended to answer two questions: Is change in sexual orientation possible, and are attempts to change harmful? And to answer those questions, they set out to do something that hadn’t been done before. They constructed what’s called a longitudinal or prospective (i.e. forward-looking) study, where they followed a population of study participants as they were beginning their experience with ex-gay ministries and continued to follow them over a period of four years.

This is an important feature of the study. One of the many criticisms for Robert Spitzer’s 2003 ex-gay study was that it was a retrospective (i.e., backwards-looking) study. In other words, study participants were asked to remember back to before they began their attempts to change and report from memory their sexual orientation and attractions. Jones and Yarhouse chose to conduct a prospective study instead:

In contrast to retrospective methods that ask participants to remember change experiences that happened in their pasts, a prospective methodology begins assessment when individuals are starting the change process and assesses them as the results unfold.

Because it’s longitudinal, beginning as the ex-gay participants begin their own journey, there’s no reliance on possibly faulty memories when asked, “What were your attractions several years ago when you started?”

When the study began, participants undertook a number of interviews face-to-face. This was at Time 1. There were two more interviews, Time 2 and Time 3, with the span between Time 1 and Time 3 being between thirty months to four years. Most of the Time 2 interviews were conducted face to face (15% were over the phone) and all of the Time 3 interviews were done over the phone. For all three, Jones and Yarhouse used a number of recognized, standardized measures for sexuality and mental health, with the crucial self-reports of sexuality being conducted via mail-in questionnaires.

Another weakness with Robert Spitzer’s study was that he didn’t use any standard measures for sexual orientation. He didn’t use the Kinsey scale (where 0= completely heterosexual and 6 = completely homosexual), nor did he use the Shively-DeCecco scales (which separates the intensity of homosexual and heterosexual attractions on two separate scales for independent measurement, with the zero axis representing perfect asexuality). Jones and Yarhouse used both sets of scales for their analysis, using commonly recognized standardized questionnaires to determine ratings at Time 1, Time 2 and Time 3.

Probably the weakest link in the design was in relying on self-reports for assessing sexual orientation instead of physiological measures of arousal. They addressed those criticisms this way:

Psychophysiological measures assess sexual arousal and orientation by attaching sensors to the genitals of subjects and measuring sexual arousal while the subjects watch pornography. We judged these methods as pragmatically impossible given the dispersed nature of our sample and the limitations of our funding, as morally unacceptable to the bulk of our research participants, and as not justified in light of current research challenging the reliability and validity of the methods themselves.

These are all legitimate objections as far as penile and vaginal plethysmography are concerned. There are however new emerging technologies involving MRI’s which may be useful for future studies.

Difficulty In Recruiting Participants

While Jones and Yarhouse’s study appears to be very well designed, it quickly falls apart on execution. The sample size was disappointingly small, too small for an effective retrospective study. They told a reporter from Christianity Today that they had hoped to recruit some three hundred participants, but they found “many Exodus ministries mysteriously uncooperative.” They only wound up with 98 at the beginning of the study (72 men and 26 women), a population they describe as “respectably large.” Yet it is half the size of Spitzer’s 2003 study.

Jones and Yarhouse wanted to limit their study’s participants to those who were in their first year of ex-gay ministry. But when they found that they were having trouble getting enough people to participate (they only found 57 subject who met this criteria), they expanded their study to include 41 subjects who had been involved in ex-gay ministries for between one to three years. The participants who had been in ex-gay ministries for less than a year are referred to as “Phase 1” subpopulation, and the 41 who were added to increase the sample size were labeled the “Phase 2” subpopulation.

This poses two critically important problems. First, we just saw Jones and Yarhouse explain that the whole reason they did a prospective study was to reduce the faulty memories of “change experiences that happened in their pasts” — errors which can occur when asking people to go back as far as three years to assess their beginning points on the Kinsey and Shively-DeCecco scales. This was the very problem that Jones and Yarhouse hoped to avoid in designing a prospective longitudinal study, but in the end nearly half of their results ended up being based on retrospective responses.

This diluted the very purpose of doing a longitudinal study, and as Jones and Yarhouse describe it, this also clearly affected the results:

We expected that the results of change would be somewhat less positive in this group (phase 1), as individuals experiencing difficulty with change would likely be somewhat less positive in this group, as individuals experiencing difficulty with change would be likely to get frustrated or discouraged early on and drop out of the change process. We were able to retain these Phase 1 subjects in our study at the same rate as the whole population, and indeed found that change results from them were a bit less positive.

Left unsaid but clearly implied is the second problem with adding Phase 2 participants. Since they had already hung in there for between one and three years, that subpopulation would not have included those who entered ex-gay ministries at the same time they did but who were discouraged early on and dropped out. It’s no wonder the change results for Phase 1 were less positive than Phase 2. There’s no indication how “less positive” those results were, not in this synopsis anyway. Hopefully the book will break these numbers out.

But in the synopsis at least, the study’s results appear to combine Phase 2 and Phase 1 participants, which represents an unacceptable mixing of prospective (Phase 1) and retrospective (Phase 2) participants. And since the Phase 2 participants make up nearly half the total sample, this ruins any chance of this being a truly prospective study.

Study Dropouts

Whenever a longitudinal study is being conducted over a period of several years, there are always dropouts along the way. This is common and to be expected. That makes it all the more important to begin the study with a large population. Unfortunately, this one wasn’t terribly large to begin with; it started out at less than half the size of Spitzer’s 2003 study. Jones and Yarhouse report that:

Over time, our sample eroded from 98 subjects at our initial Time 1 assessment to 85 at Time 2 and 73 at Time 3, which is a Time 1 to Time 3 retention rate of 74.5%. This retention rate compares favorable to that of the best “gold standard” longitudinal studies. For example, the widely respected and amply funded National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (or Add Health study reported a retention rate from Time 1 to Time 3 of 73% for their enormous sample.

The Add Health Study Jones and Yarhouse cite began with 20,745 in 1996, ending with 15,170 during Wave 3 in 2001-2002. But this retention rate of 73% was spread over some 5-6 years, not the three to four years of Jones and Yarhouse’s study.

What’s more, the Add Health study undertook a rigorous investigation of their dropouts (PDF: 228KB/17 pages) and concluded that the dropouts affected their results by less than 1 percent. Jones and Yarhouse didn’t assess the impact of their dropouts, but they did say this:

We know from direct conversation that a few subjects decided to accept gay identity and did not believe that we would honestly report data on their experience. On the other hand, we know from direct conversations that we lost other subjects who believed themselves healed of all homosexual inclinations and who withdrew from the study because continued participation reminded them of the very negative experiences they had had as homosexuals. Generally speaking, as is typical, we lost subjects for unknown reasons.

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.” And so assessing the dropouts becomes critically important, because unlike the Add Health study, 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.

Representativeness of Study Participants

Jones and Yarhouse describe their sample’s representativeness in contradictory and confusing terms:

Our study examines a representative sample of the population of those in Exodus seeking sexual orientation change. We cannot be absolutely certain of perfect representativeness, since no scientific evidence exists for describing the parameters of such representativeness. Still, we are confident that our participant pool is a good snapshot of those seeking help from Exodus.

Did you get that? It’s representative, but they can’t prove it. But they’re confident anyway.

When researchers make a sweeping statement, especially one as important as representativeness, they bear the burden of providing evidence to support their claim. If they can’t do that, then they must instead caution that their sample may not be representative and list the reasons why. I don’t think a respected peer-reviewed journal would let Jones and Yarhouse get by with claiming representativeness with nothing to substantiate that claim.

Their synopsis doesn’t describe how members were recruited into the study, so we can’t judge what selection biases may occur during recruitment. (I’m sure the book addresses some of this — I’d be shocked if it didn’t.) Nor do they discuss how their demographics might compare with other measures for ex-gay ministry participant populations. There are conferences, rosters, or simple surveys of ex-gay ministry leaders that they could have culled and compared their demographic data with.

But they didn’t appear to have done this, not according to the synopsis anyway.

But I think at least one demographic variable they provided is ample evidence that their sample is not representative. For example, they said that the average age of their sample was 37.50 years. Having asserted that their sample was “fairly representative,” they extrapolated that to the entire Exodus population this way:

The average age was older than we had expected, and its significance should be underscored. There is an unflattering caricature that Exodus groups appeal primarily to young, naïve, confused and sexually inexperienced individuals.

In this statement, Jones and Yarhouse appear to be more interested in defending Exodus’ reputation than in defending their own sample. But when I attended the Exodus Freedom Conference in Irvine California in June 2007, I got the distinct impression that the average age of the 800 participants was well under 37 years — perhaps even under thirty. The median age of “strugglers” was certainly close to thirty. The conference audience definitely skewed quite young.

We should keep in mind that Jones and Yarhouse limited their study sample to those over eighteen; their youngest participant ended up being twenty-one. Exodus, on the other hand, allowed registrants for their annual conference to be as young as thirteen, although I don’t think I saw anybody that young there. I did see a large number of teenagers, and an extraordinary number of young people, largely under thirty. Exodus had special programs set aside at that conference for younger people which old fogies like me weren’t allowed to attend. Exodus even operates an entire ministry called Exodus Youth, headed by Scott Davis, which specifically targets young people of high school and junior high ages. The Love Won Out ex-gay conferences also conduct several workshops for youth. And again, some of these workshops are closed to older adults.

Jones and Yarhouse may have had good ethical and methodological reasons for limiting their study to those above the age of eighteen. There are issues of informed consent, and questions would undoubtedly arise as to whether youth who are still under their parents direction would feel free to answer questions truthfully. But by limiting the study to those above the age of eighteen, Jones and Yarhouse guaranteed that their study would not be representative of Exodus participants overall.

Results – Is Change Possible?

As Timothy Kincaid already reported, the breakdown of the quantitative results went this way:

  • 33 people reported change (moving from homosexual, bisexual or other at Time 1 to heterosexual at time 3; or homosexual at Time 1 to bisexual or other at Time 3)
  • 29 reported no change
  • 8 reported “negative change” (moving from heterosexual, bisexual or other at Time 1 to homosexual at Time 3; or from heterosexual at Time 1 to bisexual or other at Time 3).
  • 3 reported uncertain change (moving from bisexual to other, or the reverse)

Keep in mind however that these results mix the truly prospective participants (Phase 1 participants who who began the study during their first year in Exodus ministries) and the retrospective participants (Phase 2 participants who had been in ministries for between one and three years). We don’t know what the mix of these two subpopulations are in the results. Since Jones and Yarhouse already stated that reported change from the prospective phase 1 group were “a bit less positive,” we know the results aren’t the same. But unless we understand how Phase 1 fared, we don’t know how mixing in people who were asked what their beginning orientation was retrospectively affected the results.

These results were derived using standardized measures using Kinsey and Shively-DeCecco scales. And the the Shively-DeCecco scales (remember, this separates homosexual attraction and heterosexual attractions on two separate axis), revealed something particularly interesting:

Changes on the Shively and DeCecco ratings for all three of our analysis followed a stable pattern… We see that change away from homosexual orientation are consistently about twice the magnitude of changes toward heterosexual orientation. It would appear, then, that while change away from homosexual orientation is related to change toward heterosexual orientation, the two are not identical processes. The subjects appear to more easily decrease homosexual attraction than they increase heterosexual attraction. [Emphasis in the original]

In many ways this confirms what many opponents of ex-gay therapy have noted, that attempting to change sexual orientation does not necessarily make someone straight. In fact, this particular finding makes it all the more unlikely, and puts into context Jones and Yarhouse’s characterization of success as “satisfactory, if not uncomplicated, heterosexual adjustment.”

This also, I think, goes a long way toward describing something else. It is often assumed that those who reported the most change were probably bisexual to some degree when starting the change process. To test that theory, Jones and Yarhouse created a subpopulation from their sample that, for want of a better term, they dubbed “The Truly Gay”:

… [T]o be classed as truly gay, subjects must have reported above average homosexual attraction and reported homosexual behavior and reported past embraced of a gay identity. We would emphasize that these were much more rigorous standards than are typically employed in empirical studies to classify research subjects as homosexual. Using this method, 45 out of our total 98 subjects were classed as “Truly Gay,” just less than half the population sample. We expected that the results of change for the Truly Gay subpopulation would be less positive, as they individuals would be those more set and stable in their sexual orientation. This is not what we found. Rather the change reported by the Truly Gay subpopulation was consistently stronger than that reported by others.

It’s unclear to me what they meant by “above average homosexual attraction” in their definition for the “Truly Gay.” Most researchers consider only Kinsey 5’s and 6’s to be “truly gay.” It’s not clear that this is what Jones and Yarhouse did here. By saying “above average homosexual attraction,” do they mean above average for this sample? If so, what was that cut-off? Maybe the book will clear things up. We’ll see.

But let’s assume for a moment that their criteria is valid, and let’s look at this in light of what they noticed about change to begin with: A change away from homosexual attractions at a rate that is about twice the rate of change toward heterosexual attraction. When looked at it this way, it is possible that the “stronger change” for the “Truly Gay” subpopulation was possible simply because there was a greater potential travel along the Kinsey or Sively-DeCecco scales to begin with; many bisexuals would have begun their attempts to change already partway down those paths. And since overall, the best functioning was “satisfactory, if not uncomplicated, heterosexuality,” it appears that for both groups, there was a finite limit short of Kinsey 0 or 1 that few in either group approached.

Qualitative Analysis of Change

So far, we’ve talked about statistical measures of change based on Kinsey and Sively-DeCecco scales. Jones and Yarhouse also described some qualitative analysis, based on open-ended questions about participants’ attractions, experiences and identity. Those results were:

  • “Success: Conversion”: There were subjects who reported that they felt their change to be successful and reported substantial reduction in homosexual desire and addition of heterosexual attraction and functioning. 15% (11 of 72) at Time 3 met this standard.
  • “Success: Chastity”: These were subjects who reported that their change was successful, and who reported homosexual attraction to be present only incidentally or in a way that does not seem to bring about distress, allowing them to live happily without overt sexual activity. 23% (17 of 72) at Time 3 met this standard.
  • “Continuing”: These persons may have experienced modest decreases in homosexual attraction, but were not satisfied with their degree of change and remained committed to the change process. 29% (21 of 72) at Time 3 met this standard.
  • “Non-response”: These people experienced no significant change. They had not given up on the change process, but may be confused or conflicted about which direction to turn next. 15% (11 of 72) at Time 3 were in this category.
  • “Failure: Confused”: These persons had experienced no significant change and had given up on the change process but without yet embracing gay identity. No change reported and had given up but did not label themselves gay. 4% (3 of 72) at Time 3 were in this category
  • “Failure: Gay identity”: These persons had clearly given up on the change process and embraced a gay identity. 8% (6 of 72) of the sample at Time 3 were in this category.

To further understand what all this means, it would be important to know how the dropouts might have affected these results. As we mentioned earlier, the Adolescent Health study (which Jones and Yarhouse upheld as a “gold standard”) made a concerted effort to understand how their dropouts might have affected the results. In doing so, they discovered that fewer than 5% dropped out because of refusal to continue. With that and other information at hand, they were able to determine that their dropouts affected the results by no more than a single percentage point.

Jones and Yarhouse appear to show no similar curiosity, and this represents a very significant failing of their study. In fact, the dropouts might have contributed very significantly towards higher “failure” numbers. But since Jones and Yarhouse appear to be incurious to find out more about this group, we are left in the dark.

Outcomes for Harm

Jones and Yarhouse administered the System Check List-90-Revised (SCL), which they describe as “a respected measure of psychological distress that is often used to measure the effects of psychotherapy.” They report no difference in the SCL scores from Time 1 to Time 3 when compared to others who are undergoing outpatient counseling.

But again, what about the dropouts? Did they report higher SCL scores at Time 1 or Time 2 before dropping out? We don’t know, not from the synopsis anyway. Again, maybe the full book will provide more details. But without this critical information to understand how the dropouts might have affected the results, Jones and Yarhouse cannot confidently conclude that attempting to change produced no harm. At best, they can only conclude that there was no greater degree of distress among those who continued ex-gay therapy when compared to mentally distressed persons undergoing psychological counseling for other issues — and by the way, is that really a legitimate comparison? I think it’s debatable. At any rate, where they chose to look, there was no problem. Where they chose not to look, who knows?

Conclusions

From Jones and Yarhouse’s synopsis of their study, I have a few more questions than answers. Hopefully I’ll get a copy of the full report in a few days. If so, I’ll post a more complete review as time permits. Until then, consider this review a preliminary one.

I’d have to say that I was very impressed with the study’s design, and very disappointed in its execution. Seventy-two participants out of Alan Chambers much-repeated “thousands” or “tens of thousands” doesn’t impress me much. I’m especially disappointed with these particular weaknesses:

  • Jones and Yarhouse’s insistence that the study is representative of Exodus participants is completely without merit. If Jones and Yarhouse feel free to make such a sweeping claim with no data to support it, one wonders what other sweeping claims they may have made.
  • Jones and Yarhouse’s apparent incuriosity towards those who dropped out borders on willful ignorance. Maybe the full book will provide better information in this area, but the synopsis leaves the impression that unlike the Add Health study that they admired, they didn’t try to learn what those dropouts might mean for their results.
  • Jones and Yarhouse’s inclusion of those who had been in Exodus member ministries for between one and three years — and having that group making up nearly half of the study — makes a significant chunk of what was supposed to be a prospective study a retrospective one instead. And it misses those who “failed” out of that Phase 2 group before they had a chance to join the study. This is a particularly sloppy failing that most certainly biased the results in favor of more “successes” and fewer “failures.”

We’ve waited quite a long time for a better study than Robert Spitzer’s 2003 effort. This study held great promise based on its initial design, but its conduct left much to be desired. 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.

Update: Stanton Jones Responds

Exodus Press Release Spins Study

Jim Burroway

September 15th, 2007

Yesterday, I made the mistake of promising a detailed review of the synopsis from Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse of their new ex-gay study. Little did I know that unexpected company would be dropping in this weekend. So watch this space for my review sometime Monday.

Meanwhile, Exodus is pleased as punch about Jones’ and Yarhouse’s ex-gay study:

Alan Chambers, a former homosexual and President of Exodus International, responded to the study findings at today’s press conference, “Finally, there is now scientific evidence to prove what we as former homosexuals have known all along – that those who struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction can experience freedom from it.”

Alan Chambers’ sweeping generalization “that those who struggle.. can experience freedom” isn’t supported by the study. At best, a few (namely, eleven out of this sample of seventy-three) found freedom — that is, if freedom means “satisfactory, if not uncomplicated, heterosexual adjustment” as Jones and Yarhouse so carefully put it. Another seventeen decided that celibacy was good enough. Not what I’d call freedom, but hey — different strokes, right?

Update: Here’s the review I promised: A Preliminary Review of Jones and Yarhouse’s “Ex-Gay? A Longitudinal Study”

Limited Available Information on Study has Confusing Numbers

Timothy Kincaid

September 14th, 2007

Dr. Warren Throckmorton is reporting some of the findings from the Yarhouse and Jones book. It appears that the study was over four years and included 98 people who were referred by various Exodus ministries.

  • 33 people reported change in the desired manner (from gay at time 1 in the heterosexual direction at time 3)
  • 29 reported no change
  • 8 reported change in the undesired direction
  • 3 were unsure how to describe their experience of change

and 25 people discontinued participation in the study during that time. The study also reports:

  • Success: Conversion – There were subjects who reported that they felt their change to be successful and reported substantial reduction in homosexual desire and addition of heterosexual attraction and functioning at Time 3. 15% met these criteria.
  • Success: Chastity – These people experienced satisfactory reductions in homosexual desire and were living chaste lives. 23% were in this category.
  • Continuing – These persons experienced only modest change in the desired direction but expressed commitment to continue. 29% were in this category.
  • No-response – These people experienced no change and were conflicted about the future even though they had not given up. 15% were here.
  • Failure (from their perspective): Confused – No change reported and had given up but did not label themselves gay. 4% were in this group
  • Failure: Gay identity – No change, no pursuit and had come as gay. 8% were in this category.

Assuming that these are percentages of the 73 participants who made it to the fourth year, this would break out as follows:

  • Success: Conversion – 11
  • Success: Chastity – 17
  • Continuing – 21
  • No-response – 11
  • Failure: Confused – 3
  • Failure: Gay identity – 6

With four people left unaccounted for.

Try as I might, I can’t get these two findings to reconcile. Did 33 people report a change in the positive direction, or did 28? Did 8 people identify as gay or did 6?

We will have to wait for Jim’s analysis of the book for better answers. At present, we can only conclude that, at best:

Perhaps eleven percent of an nonrepresentative sample of 98 highly motivated gay people who went through Exodus programs reported that after four years there was “substantial reduction in homosexual desire and addition of heterosexual attraction and functioning”.

Christianity Today provides further clarification on those eleven successes.

Most of the individuals who reported that they were heterosexual at Time 3 did not report themselves to be without experience of homosexual arousal, and did not report heterosexual orientation to be unequivocal and uncomplicated. … We believe the individuals who presented themselves as heterosexual success stories at Time 3 are heterosexual in some meaningful but complicated sense of the term.

These sound less like Mom and Dad heterosexuals and more like Larry Craig heterosexuals. In other words, the number of individuals who went from plain old gay to plain old straight: zero. Not an overwhelming success story, I’m inclined to think.

Jones’ and Yarhouse’s Ex-Gay Study Released

Jim Burroway

September 14th, 2007

The results of Stanton Jones’ and Mark Yarhouse’s Exodus study were released yesterday. I have a synopsis of that study that I’m reviewing now. Short take: The methodology seems to be pretty good, (I’m especially happy to see them use standardized measures for sexuality, something that Spitzer didn’t do).

The greatest weakness is its small sample size, and I’m concerned about the cohorts that they added to the study to try to beef it up. They originally wanted to study Exodus participants who were in their first year of attending an Exodus member ministry, but when they couldn’t find enough subjects they added a cohort of strugglers who had been in the ministry for one to three years. I don’t think there’s anything nefarious going on there, but so far I can’t sort out how those cohorts affected the results. I think that for what’s supposed to be a longitudinal study, this is critically important. I also question their claims that their sample is representative of Exodus participants. So far as I can tell, they fail to justify that claim.

These are just first quick impressions from the synopsis. I’ll have more for tomorrow morning late tomorrow afternoon. The study itself is a 375-page book. I’m trying to obtain an advance copy, and when I do it will obviously take a great deal of time to go through it.

Jones and Yarhouse: “The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science in the Ecclesiastical Homosexuality Debates”

Jim Burroway

September 13th, 2007

So today is when Stanton L. Jones and Mark Yarhouse are set to release the results of their ex-gay study in Nashville at the American Association of Christian Counselors World Conference. The study itself, Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation, will be published in book form by InterVarsity Press, but won’t be publicly available until October 10. This study will reportedly will show whether a significant percentage of gays can change their sexual orientation through religious-based counseling.

Since this study went to a commercial Christian publisher instead of a peer-reviewed journal, we have no a priori assurance that it has been vetted by qualified professionals. We can’t rely on IVP Press to to that vetting; they’ve also agreed to publish Richard Cohen’s forthcoming book despite his many embarrassments to the ex-gay movement. And we can’t rely on George Rekers, who praised the study in the IVP press release. He was similarly impressed with Paul Cameron’s Research.

So until we’re able to obtain a copy to evaluate for ourselves, it’ll be difficult to judge its methodology or conclusions. But a glimpse into Jones’ and Yarhouse’s previous collaborations might give us an idea of what to look for.

Jones and Yarhouse have collaborated at least three times before. They wrote “The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science in the Ecclesiastical Homosexuality Debates,” which appeared in the 2000 anthology Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture (edited by David L Balch and published by Eerdmans). That chapter was based largely on an earlier article they wrote for the Christian Scholar’s Review in 1997 titled “Science and the Ecclesiastical Homosexuality Debates.” They also contributed a chapter titled “The Homosexual Client” in the 1997 anthology Christian Counseling Ethics (edited by R.K. Sanders and published by InterVarsity).

In “The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science,” Jones and Yarhouse avoid most of the pitfalls which characterize much of the anti-gay cannon. The tone is considerably more moderate than most of the literature. There’s virtually no demonizing or name-calling, they stick to the more reputable researchers and their findings (Paul Cameron need not apply), they portray pro-gay arguments with reasonable accuracy and avoid the typical strawman arguments that are all too common elsewhere.

But “The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science” is not an unbiased chapter, and I don’t think Jones and Yarhouse would pretend otherwise. When Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture” was released in 2000, they commented:

We (Stan and Mark) have watched for years as the supposed “scientific evidence” has been used in the ethical/moral debates of the various Christian denominations over the divisive topic of homosexuality. The majority of the time, the “evidence” has been used against the traditional moral position that sees homosexual behavior as sin.

Their examples of “misuse and abuse” of science only extended to the pro-gay side of the debates. They were strangely silent on the many ways silence on the many countless ways in which science is widely abused by the anti-gay side — abuses so widespread that debunking them can take up several entire web sites. (Ahem!)

Prevalence of Homosexuality

In “The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science,” Jones and Yarhouse undertook four specific areas for review. The first topic for review was of studies determining the the prevalence of homosexuality. This is an important point in anti-gay circles, with anti-gay advocates prefering much lower prevalence figures for many reasons. In simple terms, the lower the number, the less “normal” homosexuality becomes. They especially don’t like Kinsey’s famous ten-percent statistic — a statistic which most of the more prominent pro-gay advocates have abandoned quite some time ago.

Jones and Yarhouse perform a thorough debinking of Kinsey’s statistic, and in truth most of those criticisms are perfectly valid. For one, Kinsey didn’t use probability sampling techniques. He also was doing something that had never been done before: undertaking a wide-ranging survey of American attitudes about sexuality. Begun in the 1930’s, his research was groundbreaking. But as is the case with most pioneers with no prior precedence to guide them, “mistakes were made.” Kinsey was certainly no exception.

Jones and Yarhouse then reviewed a half dozen surveys which were published before 1995, all with low prevalence figures. But they didn’t discuss the many factors which contribute to low numbers. Homosexuality then, even moreso than now, was highly stigmatized (AIDS was in full rage, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” had been written into law by a Democratically-controlled Congress in 1993, DOMA passed both houses of Congress with wide bipartisan support in 1996.). Also, because of small sample sizes, margins of error were often wide, and refusal rates — the percentage of people who refused to participate for whatever reason — hovered in the 20-35% range. That’s why responsible researchers routinely caution that results reflect the low range for homosexuality.

But not Jones and Yarhouse. True to form, they chose a low-ball figure:

So when the genders are combined, homosexuality almost certainly characterizes less than 3 percent of the population, and the correct percentage combining men and women might be lower even than 2 percent.

What Causes Homosexual Orientation?

The second area Jones and Yarhouse reviewed was the several biological and environmental theories for the causes of homosexuality. Again, no surprises here. The biological theories were dissected in great detail and largely dismissed for their obvious weaknesses. And in truth, the state of research as of 2000 was indeed not terribly strong — especially if one were to assume that there will ever be a single cause for something as complex as human sexuality, an assumption that is essential in order for their grounds for dismissal to be taken seriously. (Ironically, it is also an assumption they disavow just a little later in the chapter.)

In contrast, Jones and Yarhouse were rather protective of psychological theories — distant father, absent parent, molestation, you get the idea. While they expended a great deal of effort to debunk each of the major biological theories, their review of environmental theories was cursory and circumspect at best. They acknowledged that there has been very little recent study on environmental causes, but chalked that up for “enthusiasm for biological explanations,” concluding:

Though the substantive body of psychological causation research is aging and not being regularly renewed, it has never been refuted and still holds promise for understanding part of the causal puzzle of homosexuality.

They do however note that there may be an interplay between biological and experiential factors, and that “the complex factors which results in the orientation toward homosexuality probably differs from person to person.” But even if biology plays a role, they conclude:

There appears to be a variety of factors which can provide a push in the direction of homosexuality for some persons, but there is no evidence that this “push” renders human choice utterly irrelevant. …

One study of the correlations between the television viewing of adopted children and their adoptive and biological parents produce evidence of “significant genetic influence on individual differences in children’s television viewing.” … All of us would reject the notion that our genes make us sit for a certain number of hours in front of a television screen, but we may have a predisposition (sedentary tendencies?) which would make the choice to view television appealing to varying degrees.

Is Homosexuality a Pathology?

From there, they moved on to the question, “Is homosexuality a pathology?” Here they focused on personal distress (“Contemporary research continues to suggest high levels of distress in the homosexual population even if that conclusion is usually not stated.”) and maladaptiveness (citing several non-representative studies for promiscuity statistics to suggest gay men and women cannot form monogamous relationships, “an essential adaptive capacity.”) They conclude:

The evidence cited above fails far short of a convincing case that homosexuality in itself constitutes a psychopathological condition. The evidence also suggests that one would be on shaky grounds in proclaiming that there is no evidence that homosexuality is anything other than an healthy, normal lifestyle variant.

Is Change Impossible?

And finally — and the point that is most relevant for their newest ex-gay study — they ask “is change to heterosexuality impossible for the homosexual?” Remember, this was before Robert Spitzer’s ex-gay study, “Can some gay men and lesbians change their sexual orientation?” appeared in the October 2003 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior. So at this point, they had little to go on. But I did notice a very interesting footnote:

111. For a reasonably complete review of existing “conversion therapy” studies, see J. Nicolosi, Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality (New York: Jason Aronson, 1991). Critics are right to note that many of these studies lack methodological rigor and are basically compilations of independent clinical interventions. Reported success rates have hovered in the 33 to 50 percent range. [Emphasis mine]

There it is. The 30-to-50 percent range we’ve been hearing about. Or, according to the much bigger picture, the 50-to-70 percent failure rate.

Jones and Yarhouse however did close their discussion of change by noting:

It is troubling that the many Christian ministries which attempt to provide opportunities for growth and healing for the homosexual person rarely if ever study and report their success rates.

Now with their newly announced ex-gay study, it looks like they are trying to address that deficiency. But as I said, until we get a copy of the study and can evaluate it ourselves, I think skepticism is in order based on Jones and Yarhouse’s previous collaborations. While “The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science” certainly doesn’t fall into the usual traps of egregious exploitation of scientific research, neither does it rise to being a dispassionate review of the scientific literature.

“The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science” has become an influential resource among anti-gay activists. Several speakers at Love Won Out and the Exodus Freedom Conference referred to this chapter specifically when they want to debunk studies on the prevalence of homosexuality or the possible biological contributions to homosexuality. The book was also sold at those conferences and was highly recommended by several speakers and participants.

The results from Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation will be released today during a press conference at the American Association of Christian Counselors World Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Exodus will be holding their regional conference in Nashville that same weekend. That’s quite an audience clamoring for this book. But whenever a researcher bypasses the peer-review process and has a book to sell to an eagerly waiting customer base, skepticism is warranted.

InterVarsity Press Announces Release of Exodus Ex-Gay Study

Jim Burroway

September 9th, 2007

InterVarsity Press issued this press release, announcing the Sept 13 release of a study by Stanton L. Jones (Wheaton College) and Mark A. Yarhouse (Regent University). Titled “Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation, the study is intended to address two questions: can people change, and is trying to change harmful?

When Robert Spitzer’s ex-gay study, “Can some gay men and lesbians change their sexual orientation?” appeared in the October 2003 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the journal took the highly unusual step of publishing twenty-six peer review commentaries, both critical and laudatory. Among the commentaries was Mark Yarhouse’s “How Spitzer’s study gives a voice to the disenfranchised within a minority group.” He notes a few of the limitations of Spitzer’s study and muses on what a better constructed study might look like:

There is a need for studies with improved methodology. This would include a prospective longitudinal design in which participants provide information on sexual behavior, attractions, fantasy, and so on, prior to or in the early stages of therapy, and then tracked over tie, so that something as potentially unreliable as memory recall would not play so prominent a role in studies that touch on such a controversial topic.

I would also suggest another set of data: follow-up on those who drop out of ex-gay ministries, and their post-therapeutic experiences and perspectives. Yarhouse wrote another paper titled, “An Inclusive Response to LGB and Conservative Religious Persons: The Case of Same-Sex Attraction and Behavior”, which appeared in the June 2002 issue of Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. In that paper, he recognized the existence of “ex-ex-gays”:

A similar tension exists when we consider “ex-ex-gays.” They are individuals who once lived an LGB lifestyle, later attempted to change their behavior or attractions, and still later returned to living an LGB lifestyle. From a conservative religious perspective, ex-ex-gays may be the result of poor therapeutic technique, insufficient client commitment or motivation, moral or spiritual failure, or failure of ministries to offer realistic expectations of change. This last consideration is particularly important. It might be that conservative religious persons hold out expectations for change that are too high (i.e., that a person would be free from every vestige of same-sex desire and would be happy and fulfilled in marriage). From this perspective, ex-ex-gays are discouraged, sometimes angry, about their experiences within religion-based ministries.

Yarhouse continues:

Gay-affirmative theorists tend to see ex-ex-gays as casualties of professional interventions and religious ministries (Haldeman, 1994). Gay-affirmative theorists propose that ex-ex-gays are the result of the predictable failure of sexual reorientation therapy and religion-based ministries to accomplish what they purport to accomplish. According to Haldeman, some question whether these proponents of reorientation and reparative therapies are not disturbed themselves, preying on vulnerable persons who are hoping against hope to experience change.

Again, is there merit to both accounts? Is it possible that some people are misled about what reorientation and reparative therapy can offer? It is possible that some people do hold expectations for change that are too high. Whether the individual is freely seeking changes for personally felt reasons or is being taken to a program for change by a third party is also a factor in relation to this topic. All of this depends on several factors, including what sexual orientation is, whether it is immutable, and what evidence exists for the effectiveness of reorientation and reparative therapies.

Having talked to a number of ex-ex-gays myself, I think this discussion of their perspectives are highly over-simplistic. While some may have held a number of unrealistic expectations — expectations that are often promoted by ex-gay ministries themselves — most whom I talked to had more realistic expectations. They just found the prospect of living with those expectations unrealistic.

When discussing possible harms of attempting to change, it will be essential for this study to also follow the experiences of those who drop out of ex-gay ministries, and to talk to ex-gay survivors directly.

Jones and Yarhouse have collaborated before. They wrote “The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science in the Ecclesiastical Homosexuality Debates,” which appeared in the 2000 anthology Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture” (edited by David L Balch and published by Eerdmans). This article, which largely limits its focus on the “misuse and abuse” by the gay-affirming side rather than the anti-gay side, clearly shows their biases in discussing whether homosexuality is a pathology and in dealing with the possible biological and environmental causes of homosexuality. I’ll have more on this later.

This latest study will be released during a press conference at the American Association of Christian Counselors World Conference on September 13 in Nashville, Tennessee. And what a coincidence. Exodus will be holding their regional conference in Nashville that same weekend. Gee, what are the odds?

Cameron Promoter George Rekers: New Ex-Gay Study “Meets High Research Standards”

Jim Burroway

September 9th, 2007

Certified Cameronite AwardWhen InterVarsity Press issued this press release announcing upcoming release of “Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation, by Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse, they included this endorsement:

George A. Rekers, Professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science Emeritus at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, states that the study “meets the high research standards set by the American Psychological Association that individuals be validly assessed, followed and reported over time with a prospective, longitudinal outcome research design.”

I would question Rekers’ ability to recognize studies which “meets the high research standards set by the APA.” In 2002, he held one of Paul Cameron’s studies in pretty high regard:

In the study of homosexual parenting with the best research methodology to date, Cameron and Cameron obtained a random sample by a one-wave, systematic cluster sampling of six U.S. metropolitan areas… [emphasis mine]

I reviewed that study that impressed Rekers so much here.

    

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When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

Paul Cameron’s World

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths

At last, the truth can now be told.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.

Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count

Daniel FettyThe FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.