Ex-Gay Watch

Family News in Focus reported Wednesday on Exodus International’s church network initiative. Exodus hopes to grow its network, launched in 2006, from its current membership of 70 churches to 10,000 by 2010. The network offers training and resources to churches seeking to provide a conservative evangelical approach to “reach[ing] out to those struggling with their sexual identity.”

According to Exodus’ website, churches must meet the following requirements to join the network:

1. The Church must express agreement with Exodus’ doctrinal and policy statements.
2. The Church must designate a contact person for this area of ministry, and that contact person and anyone else in the leadership of this ministry must be free from immoral sexual behavior for a minimum of three years.
3. The Church must have a governing body in place.
4. Exodus strongly recommends that a representative of the Church attend the annual Exodus conference at least once every three years.
5. Payment of an optional $50.00 annual membership fee.

Whether the $50 fee is truly optional or an actual requirement is not clarified.

Exodus’ material refers repeatedly to helping churches minister to those who “struggle with unwanted homosexuality,” and promises to “exhort the church at-large to stand confidently and boldly on the truth of scripture with regard to homosexuality.” From there it becomes clear that there is no room within Exodus-approved churches for those who do not regard their same-sex attractions as “unwanted” – quite possibly even for some of those committed to lifelong celibacy.

When asked how Exodus plans to reach its goal of adding 9,930 churches to its network over the next two years, Exodus VP Randy Thomas had no comment. Exodus President Alan Chambers is on an extended vacation and currently unavailable for interviews.

Given the increasingly negative image that evangelicals have among younger Americans (both Christian and non-), it comes as little surprise that conservative leaders would seek new ways of keeping their members inside the fold on this issue. Should the Exodus church network reach its membership goal, it could become a formidable force in both the theological and political arenas.

Warren Throckmorton recently posted excepts from an article by social psychologist Carol Tavris called Mind Games: Psychological Warfare Between Therapists and Scientists (The Chronicle of Higher Education, paid account only). The point was made that, by and large, therapists are not scientists. There is such a “split between the research and practice wings of psychology,” that much of what we came to think of as fact over the past decades — simply because therapists said it was — turned out not to be so. Here are some examples from the original quote:

• Low self-esteem causes aggressiveness, drug use, prejudice, and low achievement.
• Abused children almost inevitably become abusive parents, causing a “cycle of abuse.”
• Therapy is beneficial for most survivors of disasters, especially if intervention is rapid.
• Memory works like a tape recorder, clicking on at the moment of birth; memories can be accurately retrieved through hypnosis, dream analysis, or other therapeutic methods.
• Traumatic experiences, particularly of a sexual nature, are typically “repressed” from memory, or split off from consciousness through “dissociation.”
• The way that parents treat a child in the first five years (three years) (one year) (five minutes) of life is crucial to the child’s later intellectual and emotional success.

Often these types of claims originate as the idea of a therapist or therapists who, while attempting to avoid dissonance between their theory and the evidence, begin to seek out situations which will fit their theory, dismissing all others. They begin to see all situations in light of their theory and act accordingly, sometimes defending it vehemently in what can become a self-serving battle. This is the antithesis of the scientific method.

Dr. Joseph Nicolosi of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) insists that boys can become homosexual (actually, have “homosexual problems” since he doesn’t believe there is any such thing as a homosexual) if they don’t get enough attention from their fathers, or if they were abused as children. Further he insists that they do not trust men, and that upon learning to do so they will no longer have the alleged homosexual problem. Read more…

Dr. Chapman gives his concluding remarks in a series which began with his three part critique of Ex-gays?: A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation by Dr Stanton Jones and Dr Mark Yarhouse. What follows is a response to the author’s comments on the original critique. We thank all three for their participation.

I appreciate Dr Stanton Jones’ willingness to exchange comments on his recent co-authored book and for the spirit of collegiality that is represented in the exchange. Bias is an issue that all researchers are subject to and strive to overcome. It is sometimes difficult to separate one’s emotions from an objective critique of a work that hits close to home. As such, one can sometimes accidentally misrepresent aspects of a study. I appreciate the minor corrections Stanton Jones provided regarding my original critique. However, we remain in discord regarding the substantive points discussed.

In science it is important to be precise, something the Jones and Yarhouse study lacks. The focus of my original critique was the sloppy and biased scholarship, demonstrated partly by imprecision. I highlighted that Jones and Yarhouse:

• reference the entire study as prospective when it is not;
• assert participants are at the start of the change process instead of just being at the start of the Exodus program, although even this is not entirely correct;
• assert the study cannot ascertain if permanent and enduring long-term change occurs, contrasted with their conclusion that change is possible;
• portray specific results as indicating change, specifically Tables 7.4 – 7.6, when those actual results do not support the conclusion;
• employ a moving target regarding what sexual orientation change entails;
• misstate the APAs’ position on the potential harm of reparative therapy;
• and have a moving target regarding if the therapy causes harm.

I would like to further discuss each of these points, addressing the rebuttals provided by Jones in his response. Before I do so, however, I wish to show the sloppy and biased scholarship is not unique to this book; it also exists in Jones and Yarhouse’s previous work, Homosexuality: The Use of Scientific Research in the Church’s Moral Debate.

In that book the authors discuss the relevance of twin studies to causation. They correctly present the concordance rate for female identical twins in the Bailey and Pillard study as 48%. Based on how concordance rates are calculated, in a representative sample of 30 pairs of identical twins one would expect both co-twins to be homosexual in only nine or ten cases. This means that even if the first 20 pairs in a representative sample demonstrate negative concordance, one could still obtain the target concordance rate. However, to counter the 48% concordance rate the authors reference a study with a sample size of four, in which in no cases were both co-twins homosexual. They then state: “The lack of shared homosexual preference for female homosexuals is quite striking when compared to Bailey and Pillard’s remarkably high rate of shared homosexual preference for lesbians” (2000:74; emphasis added). For PhDs in the behavioral sciences to make such a declaration using an incredibly small and non-representative sample is “quite striking” and cannot be attributed to an innocent ignorance of statistical theory. The sloppy scholarship, rooted in what I believe is a predisposed religious bias, is also a significant issue in the current study.

Prospective vs. retrospective and what do the results say?

Jones and Yarhouse claim their study is “prospective.” In my critique I argued: “technically the study is not prospective because 41 individuals were involved in the Exodus program for one to three years prior to the study.” Jones responds that my logic is not compelling and suggests: “If the reader insists on a tighter understanding of “prospective,” then you can narrow the focus to the Phase 1 results. These results were not as positive as those for the population as a whole, but were still statistically significant and meaningful.” I believe even this is not appropriate and once again misrepresents the results. Read more…

Dr James Hemming, a child psychologist, humanist and gay rights campaigner, has died at the age of 98.

He was Vice President of GALHA, the UK’s Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, as well as a former President of the British Humanist Association. In the 1980s, he was an outspoken critic of Section 28, the inisidiously discriminatory Tory legislation that effectively robbed gays and lesbians of respect and tolerance in British schools. The law was finally repealed in 2003.

Hemming passed away in Kingston upon Thames, England, on 25 December.

Daniel Gonzales of Box Turtle Bulletin took his camera with him to see Eric Leocadio of Two World Collision and came away with some great video testimony. Much of this echoed my own life and Eric tells it with his usual sweet, humble manner. He explains his journey through Ex-Gay programs Desert Stream and Living Waters, and the despair of having Christian friends distance themselves from him as he “came out.”

Do you see yourself in any of this?

“Suicide & The Porcelain Punisher” – Part 1

Read more…

The Christian Post listed homosexuality as the #4 story in its Top 10 Christian News of ’07 review, ahead of the passing of Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy (#6), the joint calls for peace and “common ground” by Muslim and Christian leaders (#7), the negative image that most young Americans now have of the evangelical church (#8) and the chronic problems of poverty and disease around the world (not on the list). Only the rise of “militant atheism,” Mike Huckabee’s presidential bid and Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith ranked higher.

Among the news items mentioned were the APA’s decision to review its stance on reparative therapy, ex-gay converts Charlene Cothran and Michael Glatze, and the Jones and Yarhouse study. No mention was made of Ted Haggard’s alleged three-week transformation from gay to straight, the Ex-Gay Survivors’ Conference or the outing of multiple anti-gay Republican politicians.

In short, there appears to be little reason to hope that 2008 will be any different than previous years where the right wing of the evangelical church is concerned. Odds are that their rhetoric (“homosexuality is no worse than any other sin”) will continue to be belied by the time, energy and money that they pour into anti-gay political crusades.