Despite claims by some mental-health experts, new research indicates that a change in sexual orientation is possible for some homosexuals. In the book Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation, which was released today, authors Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse address two of the most disputed questions in the homosexuality debate: Is change possible and can the attempt to change be harmful?
C. S. Lewis said that science produced by Christians would have to be “perfectly honest. Science twisted in the interests of apologetics would be sin and folly.” Jones and Yarhouse took Lewis’ advice to heart as they conducted their research, which produced what publisher InterVarsity Press claims to be “the most scientifically rigorous study of its kind to date.”
Jones, a provost and professor at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., spoke with CitizenLink about the research.
Q. What prompted you to conduct your study?
A. The ever-increasing pessimism expressed in the professional world that sexual orientation could ever be changed. This was in contrast to the fact that I occasionally met individuals in Christian circles who claim to have experienced precisely such change. When the mental-health field actually began to say that change is impossible — that sexual orientation cannot be changed — it formed the perfect scientific hypothesis to be able to conduct a study.
Q. How did you do the research?
A. The research on change is very complicated. Over the years, there have actually been dozens of studies conducted suggesting that change is possible for some people. However, the research is not of the highest quality and has been deeply and highly criticized. So, we first studied all the criticisms of those studies to look at what a high-quality study would look like, concluding that our proper methodology would need to be both prospective and longitudinal. Prospective means that you catch people before they begin the change process and follow them through the process, while longitudinal means that you’re actually following people over time to see if the change is stable. The scientific characteristics of the study are unique, in that no one has ever started early and then followed people over a long period of time like we did.
We then went out to a variety of ministries and asked for research volunteers that we could track over time. We then conducted long, detailed interviews with them at three stages: as they began the change process, a year and a half later, and again, a year and a half after that. In our new book, we’re reporting on the changes we observed in these subjects over roughly a three-year period.
Q. Can you share two or three key findings from your study?
A. We framed the whole study around two key hypotheses taken from claims made by the secular mental-health community that change is impossible and that the attempt to change is harmful. 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.
We found that 15 percent of our sample of about 100 claimed to actually have changed from homosexuality to heterosexuality. These people experienced significant enough change that they really felt like they had left one sexual orientation to shift into another. It needs to be said that this process is not like a light switch that switches from one switch point to the other. Life is still complicated for these people, and some still have some residuals of their homosexual attractions. However, they are people who report being able to function as heterosexuals, they’re happy with their marriages and they feel that their lives have changed dramatically.
The other type of success that we found in almost a quarter of the sample were the people who left the homosexual lifestyle and experienced very substantial reductions in homosexual attraction by embracing the Christian discipline of chastity, not acting on their sexual impulses. These were people who felt like they were free now to orient their lives not on their sexual, erotic desires and needs, but on their relationship with God and on healthy, nonsexual intimacy with other people. These two groups together — those who experienced what we call “conversion” to heterosexuality and the others who experienced chastity — made up about 38 percent of the sample. We feel these changes observed over this substantial period of time provide clear indication that the opinions of the secular mental-health field that change is impossible are simply wrong.
As I mentioned, the second area of our research focused on the secular mental-health community’s claims that the attempt to change is harmful. We administered a standard psychological inventory that measures psychological distress to our subjects at every point along the way. We found that there was essentially no change in their psychological distress over time. On that basis, we feel that there is no evidence that the change attempt is harmful, and we found evidence that change is possible for some people. I would hasten to add that our research doesn’t prove that anybody can change. It doesn’t prove that no one has ever been harmed from the attempt to change. It just suggests that the forceful way in which the secular mental-health community is saying change is impossible and harmful is just not well-advised.
Q. What are the implications of your findings?
A. I think the implications are multiple, but to pick one, the American Psychological Association has a blue-ribbon panel right now that’s examining the question of how the APA should formulate its formal policies about the attempt to change sexual orientation. Certain members of that group have already said publicly before the group comes to its conclusion that change is impossible and harmful, and we feel there has never been a good, empirical basis for saying that. We just simply hope that there will be enough of an open mind on the part of the secular mental-health community that they will not continue the movement towards banning these kinds of attempts to change sexual orientation, harassing them out of existence, and labeling as unethical any professional person who cooperates with them. There is a need to respect the autonomy of individuals who are distressed about what they have experienced sexually and for religious or moral reasons want to try the attempt to change. Those people first need to be fully informed about just how complex and difficult that process is and then they should have the right as individuals, as an exercise of personal and religious freedom, to seek support in their attempt to change sexual orientation.
Q. There are those who have tried to leave homosexuality, who were not successful. What would you say to them?
A. The heart of my response would be to say that the change process may be easier for some people and more difficult for others, and it might, in fact, be impossible for certain people to change meaningfully. I think our study says that change is possible for some people and that we need to keep an open mind about that. So, for an individual who feels they need to pursue change, particularly on a religious basis, our study encourages them to pursue that path.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To read an excerpt or to purchase a copy of the book, visit the InterVarsity Press Web site.
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