Who Wants to Turn Her Straight Again
Some Gays Can Go Straight, Study Says
May 9, 2001 -- Can gay men and women become heterosexual?
A controversial new study says yes — if they actually desire to. Critics, though, say the study'south subjects may be deluding themselves and that the subject group was scientifically invalid because many of them were referred by anti-gay religious groups.
Dr. Robert Spitzer, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University, said he began his study as a skeptic — believing, as major mental wellness organizations exercise, that sexual orientation cannot be changed, and attempts to do so tin can even cause harm.
But Spitzer'due south study, which has not yet been published or reviewed, seems to indicate otherwise. Spitzer says he spoke to 143 men and 57 women who say they changed their orientation from gay to direct, and ended that 66 per centum of the men and 44 pct of women reached what he called proficient heterosexual operation — a sustained, loving heterosexual relationship within the past year and getting enough emotional satisfaction to charge per unit at least a vii on a 10-point scale.
He said those who changed their orientation had satisfying heterosexual sex activity at least monthly and never or rarely thought of someone of the same sexual activity during intercourse.
He also found that 89 percent of men and 95 per centum of women were bothered non at all or merely slightly by unwanted homosexual feelings. Even so, only eleven percent of men and 37 per centum of women reported a complete absence of homosexual indicators.
"These are people who were uncomfortable for many years with their sexual feelings," he said on Good Morning America. Just they managed to alter those feelings, he added.
The written report reopens the debate over "reparative therapy," or treatment to change sexual preference. Spitzer argues that highly motivated gays can in fact alter that preference — with a lot of endeavour.
New Study, One-time Argue
Just critics have challenged the study, even before information technology was formally unveiled at today's session of the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in New Orleans, which was jammed with television cameras reporting on the presentation.
Some other report presented today fifty-fifty contradicted the finding. Ariel Shidlo and Michael Shroeder, two psychologists in private practice in New York City, found that of 215 homosexual subjects who received therapy to modify their sexual orientation, the bulk failed to do and then.
A small subset reported feeling helped.
That study has also non been published or reviewed.
Psychologist Douglas Haldeman besides said the experiences described by Spitzer'south subjects "should be taken with a very big grain of table salt."
The people in Spitzer's sample, he said, may be fooling themselves.
"People try to modify their sexual orientation not because there's something wrong with [the] sexual orientation, but because of social factors, because of religious dogma, because of pressure from family," he said.
"And believe me, I have worked for xx years with people who have been through some kind of conversion therapy, and the pressure that they experience tin exist excruciating."
Hurt by Therapy
Spitzer doesn't question that many gay people take been hurt past therapy.
"There's no dubiousness that many homosexuals who have been unsuccessful and, attempting to change, get depressed and their life becomes worse," he said. "I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is that is invariably the outcome."
In fact, he said, many of his subjects had been despondent and even suicidal themselves, for the contrary reason — "precisely because they had previously thought in that location was no promise for them, and they had been told by many mental health professionals that in that location was no promise for them, they had to just learn to live with their homosexual feelings."
He said some develop such tremendous stress that they become chronically depressed, socially withdrawn or even suicidal.
Simply Spitzer says his report shows that some homosexuals making some effort, ordinarily for a few years, make the change.
Findings from the report also verify other work about female person sexuality, Spitzer says. "We found that women in our sample moved from a less extreme homosexual to a more than heterosexual level than did men," Spitzer says. "Now that's actually what you might expect from the literature. It is known that female sexuality is more fluid.
"If this was all something fabricated upwards or suppressed, why would at that place exist differences in males and females."
A Religious-leaning Sample?
Haldeman, however, noted that some 43 percent of those sampled were referred by religious groups that condemn homosexuality. Another 23 percentage were referred by the National Association for Inquiry and Therapy of Homosexuality, which says most of its members consider homosexuality a developmental disorder.
"The sample is terrible, totally tainted, totally unrepresentative of the gay and lesbian community," said David Elliot, a spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Strength in Washington.
Just Spitzer says while the people in his sample were unusual — more than religious than the full general population — it doesn't mean their experiences can be dismissed. And, he said, it doesn't hateful they aren't telling the truth.
A well-designed survey, he said, can make up one's mind whether or not a respondent is credible. And his respondents, each of whom was asked some threescore questions over 45 minutes, take all the earmarks of credibility.
In fact, he said, to dismiss his survey would be to dismiss an awful lot of psychological and psychiatric enquiry. The method used in designing his study are the same equally those used to determine the effectiveness of drugs, he says.
"It's [the method] used for instance to evaluate the effectiveness of antidepressants," Spitzer says. "When people say they experience amend later using Prozac [an antidepressant] nosotros don't ask, 'Are they biased?'"
He said he asked very detailed questions not only about sexual attraction, but almost fantasies during masturbation and sex, and yearnings for romantic and emotional interest with the aforementioned sexual activity and a diverseness of other variables that betoken sexual orientation.
"And on nearly of those variables, about of the subjects made very dramatic changes which lasted many, many years.
Battling an Calendar?
Rick McKinnon, who is openly gay and works as an editor at the weekly Seattle Gay News, is concerned the study results can exist used to forrard an anti-gay agenda.
"Conservative, anti-gay, anti-multifariousness folks are going to embrace it and they're gonna use it for their own agenda to push button their point of view that, yes, you don't need equality in American society for gay people because they can change," he said. "And I think that'south then bogus."
But Spitzer — who described himself equally a "Jewish, atheist, secular humanist" with no axe to grind — says maybe there are gays who are happy existence gay and ex-gays who are happy existence direct, and that both sides deserve more than respect.
Ironically, Spitzer had until at present been something of a hero in the gay customs. In the early 1970s, he spearheaded the try to get homosexuality removed from the American Psychiatric Clan's list of mental disorders.
ABCNEWS Radio contributed to this report.
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Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Sex/story?id=117465&page=1