Box Turtle Bulletin

People with unwanted same-sex attractions should be allowed to live according to their values

One of the claims that ex-gay organizations and reorientation counselors indignantly demand is that people with unwanted same-sex attractions should be free to try to live the life they want. And they deserve counselors to help them. They should not be forced to be “gay”.

And we agree.

If someone wants to form a life that appears heterosexual, as long as they are being completely honest with themself and their spouse, then we have no problem. If they want celibacy, that’s fine too. We may have doubts about how wise or ultimately realistic these goals are, but we never oppose freedom of choice.

In our criticism of ex-gay groups, counselors, political activists, slogans, claims and methods, we never seek to limit the rights of the individual. What we do demand is that the individual is told the truth and not fed a false hope or a distorted message (as happened at the Bachmann clinic). Much of the harm done in reorientation therapy is the result of unrealistic expectations and the perversion of faith.

It’s funny. While the groups and counselors claim to be defending the individuals, it is the gay community that is really trying to protect them. Because while they may be unhappy with their attractions and may today want nothing to do with the gay community, they still are ours and we care about them.

Utah Dems Elect First Openly Gay Man As Party Leader

And he wants to assure the state’s Mormons that they are also welcome in the “big tent” party:

“I want to speak directly to the LDS people in our state,” Jim Dabakis said Saturday after being nominated for state party chairman. “I want you LDS people to participate in our party. We want your spirit, we want your contributions and we want to earn your votes. I will do whatever I can as chair to see that our big tent is comfortable to LDS people because it’s the right thing to do.”

Dabakis co-founded Equality Utah and The Utah Pride Center. Shortly after his nomination for the top job, he joked, “This is a historic moment. Utah may elect its first out Greek-American party chair.”

Where Did The Ex-Gay One-Third “Success Rate” Come From?

E. Daniel Blatt, otherwise known as GayPatriotWest, responded to the Marcus Bachmann exposé with his thoughts on ex-gay therapy. He didn’t exactly defend ex-gay therapy per se, defending instead the right of Christian groups to “set up such companies, provided they do not coerce anyone to enter treatment.” He doesn’t go into what constitutes coercion in conservative Christian culture, but that’s not the debate he was entering. He adds “that critics of such outfits continue to have the freedom to question the methods of said companies and should continue to exercise that freedom,” but he doesn’t enter into a debate of their methods either. He merely posits those two statements as a prelude to the debate he does enter, the so-called success rates of ex-gay therapy. Blatt concluded that the reported success rates are likely highly self-selecting and consisting of those whose sexuality is more fluid that those who don’t seek to change.Very reasonable assumptions, both, strongly backed by the evidence itself. But then he says this:

The only objective studies I have read of such programs show they have a “success” rate (as defined by them) no greater than 33% (and even that number is likely inflated).  And that, let me stress, is not 33% of all gay people, but 33% of those who seek counseling in such facilities.

The caveat is taken, but even with that caveat, the numbers are definitely inflated. And it’s the first sentence that gave me pause: “The only objective studies I have read…” Which studies would those be?

Blatt probably did what many people do in the blogosphere. Most who say they looked into studies almost never actually read the studies. Blatt wrote about the “objective studies I have read,” but he likely should have written about the “objective studies I have read of” — the key point being that he probably relied on others whom he trusted to describe those studies on the assumption that they read them — or that they read of them from others who they trusted, who read them or who read of them from others who they trusted, and so on.

You see where this is going. I suspect that about as many people have actually read studies on efforts to change sexual orientation, whether they support ex-gay therapy or oppose it, as those who have actually read Kinsey’s 1948 Sexual Behavior In the Human Male. Everyone quotes from them and are absolutely certain that their quotes are accurate, but almost nobody has actually read the sources that they claim their quotes came from. (The same argument can be made for other important books like, say, the Bible.) And so I’ve learned a long time ago not to rely on other people’s characterizations of whatever they say they’ve read — or what they said they read of someone else who read it, or who read someone else who read it, etc. I actually have those books and studies in my collection (visitors to my home find my library “interesting,” to say the least) and I have not only read them, but I refer to them more often than I care to.

The 33% statistic, in fact, is not based any any systematic objective studies, but is rather an artifact of lore (much like Kinsey’s 10%) which has a ring of credibility for those who believe it (much like Kinsey’s 10%) but which doesn’t have much of a rigorous statistical basis behind it (much like Kinsey’s 10%). Further, the 33% statistic often appeared more as a rule of thumb than as a reliable statistic. Back when homosexuality was still considered a mental disorder, it was generally believed among mental health professions that about a third could be “cured” and induced to enter heterosexual marriages, a third could become either celibate or bisexual, and a third were more or less hopeless. The one-third/one-third/one-third lore — specifics of the lore varied — became more or less accepted fact despite the absence of evidence to support it.

Exodus no longer touts the 33% statistic on their revamped web site, but before that remodel Exodus claimed (via archive.org) that a success rate of between 30% and 50% was “not unusual.” A similar range of success was repeated by NARTH, the National Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality, while a 1997 unpublished, non-peer-reviewed NARTH study conveniently arrived at the the 33% figure right on the nose. In 2009, NARTH appeared to have traced the 33% statistic to Edmund Bergler’s 1956 book, Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? I’ll let NARTH  describe Bergler’s finding from their “journal.” It’s not online, but I have a copy. On page 20, NARTH writes:

Bergler (1956) reported that in his 30 years of practice, he had successfully used psychoanalysis to help approximately 100 homosexuals change their orientation, and that a real shift toward genuine heterosexuality had indeed occurred. Using psychoanalysis, Bergler and his associates reported a 33 percent cure rate-that is, following treatment these patients were able to function as heterosexuals, whereas before treatment they were exclusively homosexual.

I have combed through Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? but cannot find the 33% statistic. On page 188, Bergler does write, “In nearly thirty years, I have successfully concluded analysis of one hundred homosexuals (thirty other analyses were interrupted either by myself or by the patient’s leaving)” That’s about as close as I can get to finding a statistical citation. I haven’t found NARTH’s claim for a “33 percent cure rate.” Instead, Bergler actually implies that all of those 100 cases were “successfully concluded” and on the next page he triumphantly states, “The theoretical and therapeutic obstacles to curing homosexuals has been surmounted” — all with nary a statistic or measurement in sight. I’m willing to concede that the statistic may be hidden somewhere else in the 302-page volume. But if it’s in there, Bergler himself doesn’t make much of it, and neither do his contemporary book reviewers.

But while I have Bergler’s books off the shelf and on my desk, an examination of his views are illuminating. Bergler wrote some of the most damning books and essays on homosexuality ever published. In 1959’s 1000 Homosexuals, (again, no mention of cure rates that I can find) Bergler describes gay men as “psychic mascochsts,” as he explains in the very first chapter:

Imagine a man who for some mysterious reasons unconsciously wants to be mistreated by a woman, though consciously unaware of this wish. Imagine, further, that this person inwardly fears his own wish, but instead of giving up the wish itself give sup its alleged or imagined central figure, woman. Since there are only two sexes, this leaves him only one alternative in his frantic flight: man.

In Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life?, Bergler described gay men as acting on utter hatred of women:

The homosexual takes flight to man as an antidote for the woman he fears; the antidote is only secondarily elevated to the status of an attraction. This attraction is mingled with contempt; the hatred and scorn for women shown by the most vilent heterosexual misogynist appears to be benevolence when compared with the contempt shown by the typical homosexual for his sexual partners. This attitude is so marked that frequently the whole personality of the “lover” is obliterated: many homosexual contacts take place in comfort stations, in the obscurity of a park, in Turisk baths, where the sex object is not even seen. This fully impersonal means of achieve “contact” makes even a visit to a heterosexual whorehouse see, like an emotional experience.

In his 1953 book Fashion and the Unconscious, Bergler gave an example of how this so-called hatred of women played out:

It may be surprising but the existence of constrictive and “uncomfortable” fashions can be traced to the paradoxical fact that women are dressed by their bitterest enemies. Male homosexuals, who are inwardly terrified of women, are predominant in designing women’s clothes. Whatever their rationalizations, they hate women, as a defense.

So now that you you know where he’s coming from, let’s leave this digression and get back to the rule of the thirds. If Bergler wasn’t the source, then the next probably source might be Irving Bieber’s 1962 Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study. He touted a 77% “cure” rate, which is at least in the one-third ballpark.  More significantly, Bieber’s tome was wildly influential throughout the mental health profession. Anyone who was even mildly interested in trying to cure homosexuality was aware of Bieber’s book. It cared a weight in the psychological world similar to that which Kinsey’s books caried in popular culture. There were other studies which claimed a 33% success rate, but none of them came close to approaching the reach that Bieber’s 358-page book had. If Bieber wasn’t the source of the 33% statistic, he most certainly was the inspiration for the one-third/one-third/one-third lore. His numbers make a good approximation. After treatment, 27% of his sample of 106 gay and bisexual men became “exclusively heterosexual”, 32% became bisexual or inactive, and 41% remained uncured. And thus, the very rough one-third/one-third/one-third rule of thumb was born.

(It’s interesting to note the role that the 30 bisexuals played in this composite statistic: of them, 50% became “exclusively heterosexual”, while 43% of them remained bisexual and two became “inactive”. Meanwhile, only 19% of “exclusive homosexuals” before the study became “exclusively heterosexual” afterwards. Fifty-seven percent of the “exclusively homosexuals” remained stubbornly “exclusively homosexual” after treatment, with the rest reportedly becoming bisexual.)

Bieber’s anti-gay rhetoric was considerably more restrained than Bergler’s but his views of gay people were nevertheless similar. During the 1973 debate over the APA’s removal of homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, Bieber told a reporter, “a homosexual is a person whose heterosexual function is crippled, like the legs of a polio victim.” Bieber died in 1991, but his wife Toby Bieber, who was one of the book’s nine other co-authors, continued her husband’s legacy and helped to create NARTH, where today she sits on their so-called Scientific Advisory Committee. She also backed Paul Cameron’s abandoned online “journal.”

So what about the ex-gay success rate? Well, the more I look personally at the studies, including Bieber’s and Bergler’s, the less I find that any of them are objective. The few that are, are burdened with poor methodologies, missing or inconsistent definitions of what “success” means, and minimal or absent long-term follow-up — also like Bieber’s and Bergler’s. And it’s not just me saying so. The American Psychological Association agrees. An APA task force in 2009 concluded (PDF: 816KB/138 pages) that “enduring change to an individual’s sexual orientation is uncommon,” and that “there was some evidence to indicate that individuals experienced harm” from such therapies.

Oh, and it’s not just the APA saying change is extremely rare and much, much lower than 33%. It’s ex-gay proponents themselves, when you take the time to dig into their data and ignore their press releases. In 2007, Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse, two proponents of ex-gay ministries, published their study in a book titled, Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation. (An important caveat to note is that this book was not peer-reviewed. It was also funded and supported by Exodus International.) As I noted then, one of the diffuculties of that study was that, despite Exodus’s boast that they have helped “hundreds of thousands” find “freedom” from homosexuality, Jones and Yarhouse had a very difficult time finding people to study:

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.”

Fewer than a hundred is a tiny sample on which to assess the efforts of an entire movement, but let’s press on. In 2009, Stanton and Jones issued a follow-up with updated figures for that study. So overall, here’s what happened:

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

And what was “Success: conversion?” Stanton and Jones defined it in their book as — and this has to be my favorite definition of all time — “satisfactory, if not uncomplicated, heterosexual adjustment.” Let’s just pause here and let that sink in. It’s not heterosexuality. It’s a close-enough-for-hand-grenades adjustment to heterosexual behavior, with complications.  I’ll bet, because when looking at average changes in Kinsey scores during the study, the prospective sample (a critical subset of the overall study — they were the only ones measured from the beginning of their entry into ex-gay therapy and were thus less self-selecting) reported, on average, virtually no change in attractions and a small increase in homosexual behavior. That’s probably why Jones and Yarhouse gave this caution:

[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.

Somehow, that doesn’t sound like anything close to being a “cure” to me. And as for defining chastity as “success,” well, I’ll let you decide if a lifetime of loneliness is acceptable to you.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, July 18

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Justice Department To Explain Itself to Ninth Circuit Court over DADT: Pasadena, CA. Last week, the Justice Department belatedly decided that they would continue to uphold the constitutionality of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — even though the discriminatory policy is (supposedly) on its way out the door toward repeal — and asked that the court’s stay blocking a lower court finding that DADT was unconstitutional and unenforceable be put back into place by Friday. The DOJ had earlier refused to address DADT’s constitutionality, and in a confusing filing stated only that the repeal was constitutional. That led the appeals court to decide to lift the stay upholding a law that the DOJ had refused to defend. Except now, to the court’s apparent annoyance, the DOJ has done an about face and defended the constitutionality of DADT after all. So the court only partially re-imposed the stay: the military can refuse to enlist gay servicemembers, but they would remain barred from expelling them.

But in a sign of the court’s annoyance, the order demanded that the Justice Department explain its late motion for reconsideration by 5 p.m. (PDT) today “to address why (it) did not present in (its) May 20, 2011 opposition to lift the stay the detailed information now presented in the motion for reconsideration.” That means the Justice Department lawyers would have to work over the weekend to meet the tight deadline, while the Log Cabin Republicans were given until the close of business on Thursday to respond. I’m sure in law school there are a lot of courtroom tactics covered in the textbooks, but I imagine one of them involves a cardinal rule against pissing off the judge. Oral arguments are set for September 1.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Psychiatrist Denounces Anti-Gay Witchhunt: 1950. A Senate subcommittee under Joseph McCarthy investigating the federal employment of gay Americans was warned that their investigation would have negative consequences on government functioning. “The immediate effect of the probe is to threaten the emotional security and mental health of many government employees, warned Dr. Henry P. Laughlin of the Washington Psychiatric Society. “This is indeed unfortunate, tending to lower the efficiency and work production of those who have some actual or imagined basis for concern, and especially for those people whose homosexual experiences have been isolated or of a token nature or perhaps never occurred.” Laughlin however emphasized that he was only speaking for himself and not the Society, before continuing on a line rarely heard in 1950: “Sexual orientation doesn’t enter into a person’s ability or capacity to do work. I am sure that many persons in government, as well as in industry and other areas of endeavor, have made significant contributions, although their orientation happens to be homosexual.” Laughlin’s testimony would fall on deaf years. Tens of thousands of people would be hounded out of their jobs over the next several decades, whether they were gay, suspected of being gay, or simply accused of being gay for other reasons.

President Clinton Unveils DADT Policy: 1993. “Let me say a few words now about this policy. It is not a perfect solution. It is not identical with some of my own goals. And it certainly will not please everyone, perhaps not anyone, and clearly not those who hold the most adamant opinions on either side of this issue.” With those words, President Bill Clinton unveiled a new “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in compliance with a law that had been passed by Congress earlier that year.

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Giuliani: GOP Should Stay Out of Marriage

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who himself thinks that marriage equality is “wrong,” nevertheless thinks the GOP should stay out of marriage:

I think the Republican Party would be well advised to get the heck out of people’s bedrooms and let these things get decided by states. We’d be a much more successful political party if we stuck to our economic, conservative roots. I think it’s wrong, but there are other things that I think are wrong that get decided by democratic vote. I see more harm, however, by dwelling so much on this subject of gays and lesbians and whether it’s right or wrong in politics.”

By the way, Giuliani is still not gonna preside over the marriage of his gay friends who opened their home to him when he split from his second wife. In gratitude for the gay couple’s hospitality, Giuliani had earlier promised them he would do so if marriage equality were to become legal in New York.

Update 7/18: There had been a video accompanying this post, but I removed it since it doesn’t contain the quote. I’m not sure what happened between the time I first saw the video and posted it and this morning when I learned that it didn’t apply. Sorry for the confusion

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, July 17

TODAY’S AGENDA:
International AIDS Society World Conference: Rome. The IAS kicks off its Sixth Conference on HIV Pathenogenesis, Treatment and Prevention today in Rome. The conference is being held in partnership with the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italian National Institute of Health), which is the leading technical and scientific body of the Italian National Health Service. The biennial conference attracts about 5,000 delegates from all over the world, providing an opportunity for the world’s leading scientists, clinicians, public health experts and community leaders to examine the latest developments in HIV-related research, and to explore how scientific advances can inform the global response to HIV/AIDS. The conference will continue through July 20.

AIDS Walks Today: San Francisco, CA.

Pride Celebrations Today: Budapest, Hungary; Charlotte, NC (Black Pride); Colorado Springs, CO; Peel, ON; Portland, OR (Latino Pride); Reading, PA; Rochester, MN; and San Diego, CA.

Also Wrapping Up Today: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
APA Refuses To Meet With Gay Rights Groups: 1963. One of the top goals of the early gay rights movement was to get the mental health professions to remove homosexuality from their list of mental disorders. As long as homosexuality remained listed, governmental agencies and private companies had all the excuse they needed to discriminate against gays and lesbians. In 1957, Psychologist Evelyn Hooker began publishing the results of a series of tests which demonstrated that gays and lesbians who weren’t patients of mental health professionals were indistinguishable from heterosexuals. Before then, the mental health community thought that gays were mentally deficient because all of the prior research had only studied people who were confined to mental hospitals or were seen in clinical settings.

Despite the strength of this new evidence, it would still take many years for it to sink in. In 1963, the American Psychological Association was preparing to meet in Philadelphia for their annual convention. Leading gay activists, under the banner of the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) also planned to meet in Philadelphia at the same time, and proposed a meeting with members of the APA. But the APA convention’s organizing committee declined the invitation. In a very brief letter to leading gay rights activist Frank Kameny and the Washington, D.C., Mattachine Society, the APA simply said, “This problem” — yes, the APA saw the meeting as a problem — “has already been considered by the Convention Committee and it was decided that it was not in the best interests of the APA to meet with you, nor to publicize your meetings.”

Another nine years would pass before Kameny and Daughters of Bilitis New York activist Barbara Gittings would appear with Dr. John E. Fryer (as “Dr. H. Anonymous.”) on a panel discussion on homosexuality with the American Psychiatric Association (the other APA, which is the keeper of the list of mental disorders known as the DSM). That appearance nearly a decade later would wind up being a key moment leading to the elimination of homosexuality as a mental illness.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, July 16

TODAY’S AGENDA:

AIDS Walks This Weekend: San Francisco, CA.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Budapest, Hungary; Charlotte, NC (Black Pride); Colorado Springs, CO; Kitsap, WA; Peel, ON; Portland, OR (Latino Pride); Reading, PA; Rochester, MN; Rochester, NY; San Diego, CA; and Sheffield, UK.

And Also: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Tony Kushner: 1956. He is most acclaimed for his Pulitzer prize-winning play, Angels In America, the seven-hour epic about the AIDS crises in the Koch- era of New York. Kushner wrote the play for eight actors, but stipulated that each of the actors was to play multiple roles (including multiple genders) throughout the production. When he adapted the play for an HBO miniseries starring Meryl Streep and Al Pacino, the same construct was applied. In addition to the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Kushner one the Tony Awards for Best Play in 1993 and 1994 (Angels In America is actually in two parts, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, each having its own separate Broadway debut.)

After the turn of the new millennium, Kushner began writing for film, co-writing the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Munich. He is currently reportedly working on another screenplay for Spielberg, this time an adaptation of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln In 2006, a documentary about Kushner, Wrestling With Angels premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. His latest play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures has opened in New York to somewhat mixed reviews.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

Hardball Confirms Bachmann’s Barbarian Comments Weren’t “Doctored”

Meanwhile, there has been considerable controversy over whether Bachmann called gay kids “barbarians” needing discipline, or if he was talking about children in general. Given the context of the interview — which was about gay kids and not kids generally — I think the transcript speaks for itself. Others see it differently, including Ken Avidor, who posted the audio originally:

Avidor does, however, somewhat defend Bachmann against the accusation that he explicitly called gays “barbarians.” Avidor says he’s listened to “a lot of Marcus Bachmann audio,” and he’s heard him say before that “children are barbarians, and somehow they have this innate desire to do, I think in his point of view, wild and crazy things, very un-Christian things in his point of view,” and these things need to be “civilized out of them.” So Bachmann wasn’t really calling gay children barbarians, necessarily — he was merely calling homosexuality one of the many barbaric traits children sometimes exhibit. Not much better.

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

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:

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.

Lavender Scare Documentary In The Works

If you’ve been following the historical items in our Daily Agendas, you may have noticed several references to the Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s “red scare” anti-communist campaign that also targeted gays in a concurrent “lavendar scare” campaign. The witch hunts against gay Americans lasted well into the 1960s, as gays were prohibited from federal employment. The Lavender Scare is the first feature-length documentary film to tell the story of the U.S. government’s ruthless campaign in the 1950s and ’60s to hunt down and fire every Federal employee it suspected was gay. The documentary is based on the award-winning book by David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government,which I highly recommend. The documentary is currently in production.

Major Ex-Gay Conference Headed to St. Paul in 2012

Exodus International, the nation’s largest ex-gay umbrella group, has announced that they will hold their annual conference in St. Paul next year:

Plans are underway already for the 37th Annual Exodus Freedom Conference being held June 27-30 in the Twin Cities of Minnesota at Northwestern College.  Please consider giving now towards our scholarship fund so that we can make sure everyone who wants to be there can be there.  And, please consider being there yourself. It is a transforming experience!

They will be holding their conference in the Bachmann’s home turf. Now that will be interesting.

Update: Others are reporting that this is the same ex-gay conference in which, in 2004, Michele Bachmann gave her welcoming remarks. That’s not accurate. Bachmann gave her opening remarks at a Love Won Out conference, which is a one-day roadshow put on about six times each year marketing ex-gay therapy to gay people and — much more often, according to the typical attendance — to their parents.

On the other hand, the so-called “Freedom” conference is Exodus’s annual five-day conference, and is their signature flagship event. It is not a marketing event. It is the real deal, where ex-gay people from all over the country — and even around the world — come together for five days of conferences, worskshops, lectures, and worship. Think of it this way: where LWO is the infomercial, the Freedom Conference is the actual Clapper. What Bachmann spoke at was the theater poster; this is the second act. The third act, too often, ends badly.

Marcus Bachmann Defends His Ex-Gay Practice

In an interview with The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Marcus Bachmann, husband of GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann, defended his psychological clinics, saying they are not focused on ex-gay conversion therapy. He also denied calling gay people barbarians in a 2010 radio interview.

Late last week, John Becker of Truth Wins Out revealed that he attended Bachmann’s clinic in Minnesota, where he was counseled over the course of five treatment sessions that he could change his sexuality. Counselor Timothy Wiertzema told Becker:

“…it’s possible to be totally free of [same-sex attraction]. For sure.” and that “It’s happened! It really has happened to people.” In the fifth session, Wiertzema says, “…obviously your goal is not to have any feelings of attraction for men…And I really am going to recommend that we start working on how you can develop your attractions towards women.”

…During session 5, Wiertzema advised Becker to “further develop your own sense of masculinity.” Reparative therapy reinforces strict gender roles and works to erase outward appearances of femininity in men and masculinity in women. Because these programs do not genuinely change sexual orientation, much focus is placed on changing behavior so an individual can “pass” as heterosexual, even if the gay person has not changed on the inside.

According to The Star-Tribune:

Marcus Bachmann said counselors at his clinics follow the wishes of patients and don’t force any treatment “This individual came to us under a false pretense,” Bachmann said. “The truth of the matter is he specifically asked for help.”

…He didn’t deny that he or other counselors at Bachmann & Associates have attempted to convert gay patients, but he said it is not a special interest of the business and would only be attempted at the client’s request.

“Will I address it? Certainly we’ll talk about it,” Bachmann said. “Is it a remedy form that I typically would use? … It is at the client’s discretion.”

TWO’s John Becker responds:

Marcus Bachmann wants Americans to believe that giving me reparative therapy was acceptable because I specifically asked for it. This is patently absurd. Responsible counselors refuse to provide ex-gay “therapy” because it is scientifically baseless and morally bankrupt. Bachmann & Associates, though, was more than happy to hold out false promises of change with one hand and collect the cash with the other.

Wayne Besen adds:

The notion that a counselor is required harm a client just because he or she asks is patently absurd, asserts TWO. Similarly, if a bodybuilder had asked a doctor to help him or her inject steroids, the practitioner could refuse. If an African American asked a doctor for a skin bleaching, he or she could decline. If a physician is urged to help manage a model’s anorexia, he or she could turn the model away and instead offer real medical help.

Every major mental health and medical organization opposes therapies intended to change sexual orientation. In an exhaustive review of the professional peer-reviewed literature, the American Psychological Association concluded (PDF: 816KB/138 pages) that “enduring change to an individual’s sexual orientation is uncommon” and that “there was some evidence to indicate that individuals experienced harm” from such therapies.

Bachmann also claimed that the tape of his 2010 interview with a Christian talk radio program “must have been doctored“:

“I was talking in reference to children. Nothing, nothing to do with homosexuality. That’s not my mindset. That’s not my belief system. That’s not the way I would talk,” Bachmann said.

…”I think the strongest myth. … is the myth that I have ever called a homosexual a barbarian,” Bachmann said.

The audio, provided by the Dump Bachmann Blog, includes annoyingly loud sound-effects where edit points occur. Beginning at around the two-minute mark, there is one such edit point, after which the program returns from a commercial break. At that point, the interviewer begins asking Bachmann — “since you pay attention to the culture wars” — about a a letter from the anti-gay front group calling themselves the “American College of Pediatricians” (not to be confused with the legitimate and mainstream American Association of Pediatrics) and a then-recent Wall Street Journal article titled, “What do you say when your teenager says she’s gay?” The interviewer asks Bachmann:

Interviewer: (at 2:45) What do you say to Christian parents that come up with this?

Bachmann: Well I think you clearly say, what is the understanding of God’s Word on homosexuality? And I think that this is no mystery that a child or pre-adolescent, particularly an adolescent, will question and wonder about sexuality. That’s nothing new under the sun since the beginning of time.

Inteviewer: (laughs) yeah…

Bachmann: But I don’t think we should take that, as because we wonder or we  think or we question, does that take us down the road of homosexuality?

Interviewer: Could you add the word “experiment” to that?

Bachmann: Well certainly, there’s that curiosity. But again, we, like… It is as if we have to understand barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That’s what is called the sinful nature. We have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps.

And let’s face it: what is our culture, what is our public education system doing today? They are giving full, wide-open doors to children, not only giving encouragement to think it, but to actually encourage action steps. That’s why when we understand what truly is the percentage of homosexuals in this country, it is small. But by these open doors, I can see and we are experiencing, that it is starting to increase.

There does not appear to be any edit points or tampering with this portion of the interview. Bachmann told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he was speaking of children generally, but it appears that in the full context of the interview the focus very specifically on gay children when Bachmann uttered his “barbarians” remark.

On Monday, Michele Bachman refused to comment on her husband’s clinic, except to characterize his business as “jobs creation.”

Michele Bachmann’s Lesbian Sister at Obama’s Inauguration

This video shows Helen LaFave, Rep. Michele Bachmann’s lesbian stepsister at Obama’s 2010 Inauguration in Washington, D.C. talking about what Obama’s presidency means for her. It certainly is a sharp contrast to Bachmann’s view of Obama:

In the 2006 City Pages profile of the Bachmanns, G.R. Anderson, Jr., wrote about how Michele Bachmann’s anti-gay obsessions drove a split in her family (via archive.org):

But Michele Bachmann’s Christian testimony has not endeared her to everyone in her family. When Bachmann held a hearing on the gay marriage ban at the Capitol last April, she got a rude surprise: Sitting just a few feet away was her stepsister, Helen LaFave, who chose the occasion to come out publicly for the first time, with her partner of 20 years in attendance. “This issue has been very hurtful to me personally, and divisive for our family,” LaFave told the Star Tribune at the time. Bachmann said at the time that she had taken a family vote on the gay marriage ban, and that family members favored it by a 6-3 margin. But both Michael and Helen LaFave insist she never spoke to them about it. Helen LaFave added that Bachmann ignored letters LaFave had sent her about the matter.

(Helen LaFave, 46, declined to be interviewed for this story, saying, “My dad is in his 80s now, and it’s too much to have all of this out there for him.”)

“I’ve got to be clear that I’ve always been kind of proud of Michele,” Michael LaFave says cautiously. That all went sour, though, as Bachmann increasingly became the face of the efforts to ban gay marriage at the Capitol. LaFave had no choice but to take things personally: “I wrote her an e-mail, and asked very nicely why she had to carry the water on this, knowing that my father has a gay daughter. How could she discriminate against Helen?

“She’s out there courting a family values agenda, but she’s saying things about her own family that’s not true,” he claims. “She could have been talking to the voters the whole time about having a gay sister,” he says. “That at least would have been honest. Dick Cheney had the good sense to do that with his daughter. He had the good sense to know not to engage the base, to not get involved in the debate, because he knew how much it would hurt his daughter. If anyone spent the most time together between the LaFaves and the Ambles,” LaFave concludes, “it was Michele and Helen.

“What I’d say to Michele is that you’ve got a situation here that you didn’t have to create. You didn’t have to go about it this way,” he says, and pauses before announcing he’ll likely vote for Patty Wetterling. “I’d say, ‘Michele, for all of this, you’ve lost your family. You’ve lost my vote.'”

The Daily Agenda for Friday, July 15

TODAY’S AGENDA:

AIDS Walks This Weekend: San Francisco, CA.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Budapest, Hungary; Charlotte, NC (Black Pride); Colorado Springs, CO; Kitsap, WA; Peel, ON; Portland, OR (Latino Pride); Reading, PA; Rochester, MN; Rochester, NY; San Diego, CA; and Sheffield, UK.

And Also: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Samuel Reber: 1903. He was a well-regarded American diplomat who spent twenty-seven years in the Foreign Service. During World War II, Reber scored a significant diplomatic success by getting Vichy France to agree that French colonies and possessions, ships and planes in the Caribbean would not be used by the Axis powers, an agreement which underscored Vichy’s weakness as a French power. Reber then joined the Allied Control Commission in Italy, and from there he served as the U.S. representative to the Allied French government in 1944. By 1946, he was a political adviser to the U.S. delegation at the Council of Foreign Ministers Conference in Paris, and in 1947 he was director of the State Department’s Office of European Affairs, and in 1950 he joined in the Allied High Commission as an adviser for the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany.

Beginning in 1948, Reber faced his greatest diplomatic challenge while working tirelessly for an Austrian peace treaty, enduring years of threats and insults from the Soviet Union. His work ultimately laid the groundwork for an independent Austria remaining outside of the Soviet block. But the treaty guaranteeing that independence wouldn’t come about until two years after Reber was forced out of the State Department in 1953. That’s when Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare — and the accompanying Lavender Scare — was in full force in the U.S. Senate. McCarthy charged that the upper ranks of the State Department were filled with communists and homosexuals, prompting a wide-ranging witch hunt within the department. Reber was called in for a polygraph test and interviews on March 17 and 19, 1953. That investigation uncovered “a lot of admissions” about homosexuality. When McCarthy threatened to reveal allegations of Reber’s homosexuality, Reber promptly announced his retirement in May 1953, effective July 15 when he turned 50.

But because of Reber’s high profile, the reasons for his resignation quickly became well known in diplomatic and political circles. In 1954, McCarthy would use Reber’s resignation against his brother, Major General Miles Reber, who was called to testify on the first day of the Army-McCarthy hearings. According to Time magazine:

Returning to twist the dirk already thrust into the Reber brothers, McCarthy asked General Reber: “Are you aware of the fact that your brother was allowed to resign when charges that he was a bad security risk were made against him as a result of the investigation of this committee?” Jenkins roared in protest. McClellan roared in protest. McCarthy talked on, stuck to his question. General Reber sat in silence, gripping the edges of the witness table until his knuckles showed white. Finally, McCarthy, having made his point over radio and television, dismissed the entire question as unimportant, and grandly said he would withdraw it.

But West Pointer Reber would not have it so. In a voice thick with emotion, he asked to be allowed to answer the “very serious charge” made against his brother. After another long argument, Reber said simply: “. . . As I understand my brother’s case, he retired, as he is entitled to do by law, upon reaching the age of 50 … I know nothing about any security case involving him.” With a sigh of relief, Chairman Mundt dismissed Reber, thanking him for his frank manner—a remark to which McCarthy, who seemed determined to resent any civility, made a formal objection.

David Cicilline: 1961. When he was elected mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, in a landslide in 2002, David Cicilline became the first openly gay man to become mayor of a state capital. in 2010, he was elected to Congress to represent Rhode Island in the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming one of four openly gay representatives in the House.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

The champions of the bullies

In recent years bullying of gay children and those perceived to be gay has caught the attention of the nation. While this is not a new phenomenon, the rise of “new media” has allowed for stories that individually may have received little notice – or may have been intentionally misconstrued – to be seen as a pattern and an ongoing problem. And as the list of names of children tormented to the point of suicide grew, so too did a collective awareness that our culture has a serious problem with bullying.

Secular concern has been consistent and compassionate. Individuals, celebrities, corporations, and the President of the United States have all sought to give kids a message of hope that they should hold on because it gets better.

But the response to this problem from people of faith has been mixed. Some, mostly in Jewish and mainline Christian denominations, have condemned the bullying and expressed acceptance, love, and support for the gay and presumed gay victims. Others have agreed that bullying is not a good thing, but have dismissed its seriousness and resisted anti-bullying programs as being homosexual propaganda.

But generally there has been agreement that slurs are not appropriate behavior for Christian youth.

Yet there are those among conservative evangelical Christianity who don’t just downplay slurs and expressions of contempt but engage in such behaviors themselves. One such person is Daniel Beckworth, youth pastor at Union Grove Baptist Church in Opelika, Alabama and regional representative of Youth for Christ.

David Rattigan, at Ex-Gay Watch, chronicles an email exchange between himself and Beckworth which was initiated by a slur that Beckworth left on the site. When David reached out to Beckworth to remind him of the consequences of bullying kids who are “different”, he was met with a particularly telling rebuttal:

Maybe you should speak to the young boys who wish they had someone to help them be manly. You dont need to reply. You have no chance of convincing me that we need to pamper young boys.

David does not see Beckworth as an isolated instance. Rather he traces his views to rhetoric and example from Mark Driscoll, pastor of Seattle’s mega-church Mars Hill Church. Driscoll too, it appears, practices a religion that values contempt over compassion and arrogance over kindness.

But while Driscoll engages in a pattern of insult followed by pseudo-apology, his example gives cover to those like Beckworth who find virtue in abusing the weak. Go read the entire story at Ex-Gay Watch and keep it in mind for the next time that some conservative Christian tells you, “It isn’t us, it isn’t kids from our churches that are doing the bullying!”

In coming commentaries I’ll be discussing some things I’ve observed about a growing tension in a conservative denomination as well as how some recent correspondence illustrates the peculiar logic and self-deception required to justify cruelty.