Ex Gay People Back Off “All Can Be Cured” Stance
Stanton Jones of Wheaton College initiated the study.
Christian conservatives once latched on toExodus International as proof that God could cure homosexuality.
Now Exodus itself, which has a Nashville affiliate, says that’s not always the case.
Ninety-eight of its longtime members participated in a study published in the October issue of the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. After seven years, 72 still were participating in the study, and of those, nearly a quarter said their orientation had changed. A third said they had lessened same-sex attraction and were celibate.
Even with its mixed results, both the researchers and the American Psychological Association fear the study could be used to force people into ex-gay ministries like Exodus, which neither group believes is appropriate.
Stanton Jones, a psychologist and provost at Wheaton College, an Illinois evangelical school, said he initiated his research to show whether people who claimed their sexual orientation had changed were anomalies. Jones co-authored the new report with Mark Yarhouse, a professor of psychology at Regent University, a Christian school in Virginia Beach.
He said his study shows that people’s sexual orientation is flexible and some change is possible if it isn’t forced.
“If change is difficult, then mandatory change is impossible,” he said.
People who have emerged from ex-gay ministries have long cited varying results. John Smid, former director of Memphis-based Love in Action, an Exodus partner that promised that God could cure same-sex attraction, said he used to be a poster child for the Christian ex-gay movement. He had overcome his attraction to other men, he said, and was happily married to a woman.
Today, he acknowledges he remains attracted to other men but says he is faithful to his wife. He also says that he no longer believes a person’s sexual identity can change and that promising otherwise was a lie. That’s one reason he left Love in Action in 2008.
“The banner of the ministry was ‘You can Change,’ ” he said. “That was duplicitous.”
But Richard Holloman, who runs a Nashville-based program called the Sight Ministry, said ex-gay ministries helped save his life. He used to have two lives — one as a happily married Baptist preacher, another in secret, having one-night stands with other men.
Hiding his same-sex feelings made him miserable, he said.
“I felt I had to earn God’s love — because I was sure that he didn’t love me because of what I was doing,” he said.
Being involved in Exodus, he said, taught him that God loves him despite his faults. He’s now open about being attracted to men but has decided to remain celibate.
The Sight Ministry teaches that God’s plan is for people to be heterosexual, but it doesn’t judge people who say they can be gay and Christian. Changing people’s orientation is not the goal, Holloman said.
“We don’t cure people,” he said.
Psychologists warn of harmful effects
The American Psychological Association warns that therapies promising to change sexual orientation don’t work and contends they can be harmful, especially to teenagers and young adults.
“The research evidence does not support the idea that such efforts work,” said Clinton Anderson, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns Office for the American Psychological Association.
Researchers who studied members of Exodus say their goals were modest. They wanted to see if change in orientation was possible, even if rare.
Anderson contends the study’s scope was limited because it included no control group of people without ties to Exodus. He believes ex-gay ministries do cause harm because they reinforce the idea that being gay is wrong, he said, and they shame people who drop out.
“Our concerns are people get into a situation where they are highly likely to fail, but their failure is blamed on a lack of faith,” he said. “That plays into their self-loathing.”
That was the case for Peterson Toscano, who spent 17 years in the Christian ex-gay movement. Two of those years he lived at Love in Action’s residential program in Memphis. He was ashamed of being gay and of not being able to change his orientation.
“It was a terrible, awful, soul-sucking experience,” Toscano said.
Toscano wrote a play called Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo’ Halfway House about his experiences at Love in Action.
He also co-founded beyondexgay.com, a website for other survivors of ex-gay ministries, with Christine Bakke of Denver. Bakke and Toscano are skeptical of the new study. Many of their friends from ex-gay ministries have since left the movement, and the study doesn’t look at those dropouts.
They said they’ve noticed the recent change in the ex-gay ministry world to not insisting God will change everyone with enough faith, but they are suspicious of this kinder, gentler approach because the ministries still think homosexuality is sinful.
Toscano said he hopes Christians change their minds about homosexuality the way they did about slavery and divorce.
“The Bible didn’t change,” he said. “But the way they interpreted the Bible did.”
Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, said he’s not ashamed of his group’s beliefs that God wants people to be heterosexual.
He said he’s grateful for the new study because it shows that human sexuality is complicated. That means change is possible, he said.
A married man, Chambers said that he has chosen not to be defined by his attraction to other men. But that doesn’t make living according to his beliefs easy.
“I am married, but that doesn’t mean that I am never tempted or that I don’t have some residual same-sex attraction,” he said. “Change is really living in congruence with your faith.”
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