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Changing Sexual Orientation Is Possible, New Research Says
Randy Hall
Staff Writer/Editor
(CNSNews.com) - The results of a three-year study challenge the idea that homosexuals cannot change their sexual orientation and that attempts to do so are harmful. But an opponent of "ex-gays" dismissed the findings as the result of "a deceptive sham" perpetrated by "right-wing therapists."
While writing their book, "Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation," researchers Stanton Jones of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., and Mark Yarhouse of Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va., chronicled the experiences of 98 people who contacted Christian ministries in an attempt to become heterosexuals.
"What we found by following these subjects over time is that not everyone is successful, not even a majority is successful, but a very substantial group of people report fairly dramatic change," Jones said while discussing the research during the annual conference of the American Association of Christian Counselors last Thursday in Nashville, Tenn.
"Fifteen percent of our sample of about 100 claimed to actually have changed from homosexuality to heterosexuality," said Jones. "It needs to be said that this process is not like flipping a light switch. Life is still complicated for these people, and some still have some residuals of their homosexual attractions."
"However, they report being able to function as heterosexuals, they're happy with their marriages, and they feel that their lives have changed dramatically," he said.
The study also examined the question of whether or not attempts to change were harmful to the subjects.
"We administered a standard psychological inventory that measures distress to our subjects at every point along the way," Jones said, adding that they found that there was "essentially no change" in the participants' emotional well-being.
Because both of them are from Christian colleges, Jones and Yarhouse addressed skeptics of religious researchers who deal with matters of science.
"We are evangelical Christians committed to the truth-seeking activity of science," they said in a joint statement.
"In conducting and reporting this study, we took seriously the words of one of our heroes, C. S. Lewis, who said that science produced by Christian persons would have to be 'perfectly honest. Science twisted in the interests of apologetics would be sin and folly,'" the researchers said.
Initial reaction to the research has varied dramatically along social and cultural lines.
Alan Chambers, an ex-homosexual who serves as president of the Christian ministry Exodus International - which was the source of many subjects in the study - praised the survey. In a Friday news release, he praised the work as "the first longitudinal, peer-reviewed, scientific research of its kind on this topic to date."
"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," Chambers said. "For years, opponents of choice have said otherwise, and this body of research is critical in advancing the national dialogue on this issue."
Mat Staver, president of the Christian group Liberty Counsel, said in a news release of his own that the study is "groundbreaking" and would have "profound reverberations for counselors."
"The debate about homosexuality has too often been driven by political rather than scientific considerations," said Staver. "The American Psychological Association (APA) and other, similar organizations may no longer silence dissent."
The APA responded to the research by pointing to a recent statement made by the organization on its Web site: "Efforts to repathologize homosexuality by claiming that it can be cured are often guided not by rigorous scientific ... research, but sometimes by religious and political forces opposed to full civil rights for gay men and lesbians."
However, former APA President Nicholas Cummings praised the research methods of Jones and Yarhouse. "This study has broken new ground in its adherence to objectivity and a scientific precision that can be replicated and expanded, and it opens new horizons for investigation," he said.
Nevertheless, Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, which describes itself as "a non-profit organization that counters right-wing propaganda, exposes the 'ex-gay' myth and educates America about gay life," called the study a "deceptive sham with the goal of making it appear as if science backs fundamentalist beliefs on homosexuality."
"It comes as no shock that anti-gay 'researchers'" would produce a study claiming "you can pray away the gay," Besen said. "I suppose their next study will provide support for Pat Robertson's theory that homosexuality causes meteors and hurricanes."
Besen also criticized the size of the study sample as "unusually small" and asserted that people "should be extremely skeptical of such a mockery of the scientific method."
The 414-page book "Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation" is being published by InterVarsity Press and will be available to the public in October.
Make media inquiries or request an interview with Randy Hall.
Subscribe to the free CNSNews.com daily E-brief.
E-mail a comment or news tip to Randy Hall.
While writing their book, "Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation," researchers Stanton Jones of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., and Mark Yarhouse of Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va., chronicled the experiences of 98 people who contacted Christian ministries in an attempt to become heterosexuals.
"What we found by following these subjects over time is that not everyone is successful, not even a majority is successful, but a very substantial group of people report fairly dramatic change," Jones said while discussing the research during the annual conference of the American Association of Christian Counselors last Thursday in Nashville, Tenn.
"Fifteen percent of our sample of about 100 claimed to actually have changed from homosexuality to heterosexuality," said Jones. "It needs to be said that this process is not like flipping a light switch. Life is still complicated for these people, and some still have some residuals of their homosexual attractions."
"However, they report being able to function as heterosexuals, they're happy with their marriages, and they feel that their lives have changed dramatically," he said.
The study also examined the question of whether or not attempts to change were harmful to the subjects.
"We administered a standard psychological inventory that measures distress to our subjects at every point along the way," Jones said, adding that they found that there was "essentially no change" in the participants' emotional well-being.
Because both of them are from Christian colleges, Jones and Yarhouse addressed skeptics of religious researchers who deal with matters of science.
"We are evangelical Christians committed to the truth-seeking activity of science," they said in a joint statement.
"In conducting and reporting this study, we took seriously the words of one of our heroes, C. S. Lewis, who said that science produced by Christian persons would have to be 'perfectly honest. Science twisted in the interests of apologetics would be sin and folly,'" the researchers said.
Initial reaction to the research has varied dramatically along social and cultural lines.
Alan Chambers, an ex-homosexual who serves as president of the Christian ministry Exodus International - which was the source of many subjects in the study - praised the survey. In a Friday news release, he praised the work as "the first longitudinal, peer-reviewed, scientific research of its kind on this topic to date."
"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," Chambers said. "For years, opponents of choice have said otherwise, and this body of research is critical in advancing the national dialogue on this issue."
Mat Staver, president of the Christian group Liberty Counsel, said in a news release of his own that the study is "groundbreaking" and would have "profound reverberations for counselors."
"The debate about homosexuality has too often been driven by political rather than scientific considerations," said Staver. "The American Psychological Association (APA) and other, similar organizations may no longer silence dissent."
The APA responded to the research by pointing to a recent statement made by the organization on its Web site: "Efforts to repathologize homosexuality by claiming that it can be cured are often guided not by rigorous scientific ... research, but sometimes by religious and political forces opposed to full civil rights for gay men and lesbians."
However, former APA President Nicholas Cummings praised the research methods of Jones and Yarhouse. "This study has broken new ground in its adherence to objectivity and a scientific precision that can be replicated and expanded, and it opens new horizons for investigation," he said.
Nevertheless, Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, which describes itself as "a non-profit organization that counters right-wing propaganda, exposes the 'ex-gay' myth and educates America about gay life," called the study a "deceptive sham with the goal of making it appear as if science backs fundamentalist beliefs on homosexuality."
"It comes as no shock that anti-gay 'researchers'" would produce a study claiming "you can pray away the gay," Besen said. "I suppose their next study will provide support for Pat Robertson's theory that homosexuality causes meteors and hurricanes."
Besen also criticized the size of the study sample as "unusually small" and asserted that people "should be extremely skeptical of such a mockery of the scientific method."
The 414-page book "Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation" is being published by InterVarsity Press and will be available to the public in October.
Make media inquiries or request an interview with Randy Hall.
Subscribe to the free CNSNews.com daily E-brief.
E-mail a comment or news tip to Randy Hall.
Most Recent User Comments
ldunson@afo.net
10/24/2007 4:45 PM
I think your article is wonderful, I have read other studies, and articles from "ex-gays". We agree that homosexuality is a sin and also any other sexual activity outside of a marriage between one man and one woman. When a man and a woman get married they are not blinded nor deafened to the world around them. A husband might cheat on his wife if he has an opportunity to have a hottie on the side and if he has no will power, or true commitment to his marriage. Also being in the wrong places can make or help a man forget right from wrong. Looking at porn can be addictive and cause a person to go where no man should ever go...married or not. This also goes for women too, we are subject to this sin also. I think in this society in which we live it takes a real commitment to oneself and to others to do the right thing. A person without will power will surely fail and should not place themselves in situations that are to overpowering to conquer. Then there are those that love their sin!
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caspks
9/21/2007 11:58 AM
MrCorey
I appreciate your statements, especially that although you have a homosexual attraction, that you do not practice since you see it as a sin. It is the most honest answer I believe I have ever seen from anyone, basically, on either side of the issue.
The Bible states it as a sin, along with many other things that we all do. Paul does speak of sexual sin being more damaging, so there is a difference in lying and anger versus adultery and homosexuality, but the wages of both are the same - death.
Having the attraction and not acting upon it is the combat that occurs when one is confronted with sin. Sin is our nature, the one we are born with, we have a choice - to remain in sin and give ourselves over to that nature, or live as we should - free - and not be bound by that sin nature. I will pray for your strength MrCorey, if it be honestly intact.
I appreciate your statements, especially that although you have a homosexual attraction, that you do not practice since you see it as a sin. It is the most honest answer I believe I have ever seen from anyone, basically, on either side of the issue.
The Bible states it as a sin, along with many other things that we all do. Paul does speak of sexual sin being more damaging, so there is a difference in lying and anger versus adultery and homosexuality, but the wages of both are the same - death.
Having the attraction and not acting upon it is the combat that occurs when one is confronted with sin. Sin is our nature, the one we are born with, we have a choice - to remain in sin and give ourselves over to that nature, or live as we should - free - and not be bound by that sin nature. I will pray for your strength MrCorey, if it be honestly intact.
HeVn BD
9/21/2007 9:31 AM
It really matters not what I think, but what God says. And the Lord says this lifestyle is unacceptable, a complete perversion of His holy nature. We were created by God, in the image of God, and lastly "for God." I do not and will never believe that some are born "gay" as this is a lie from the pits of hell seeping out into the mainstream. This lie is not orchestrated by Satan to make you homosexuals feel good about yourselves, but this lie is meant for your complete destruction as this sin pulls you down into the abyss while offering you "no way out." I, as a Christian, have never said that "God hates homosexuals." But that is exactly what ya'll choose to fabricate. Jesus loves you. He died for homosexuals, as well as any other sinner. But just because He loves us, and just because He died for us does not mean that we can live "contrary" to His teachings and live. We need to change our hearts, not our gender.
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