Choosing research to prove your point

Alex Johnson Reporter • Profile

When advocates of reorientation therapy for gay men and lesbians talk about their discipline, their contentions fly in the face of more than 30 years of research that supports the belief that sexual orientation cannot be altered.

“The reality is that homosexuality is not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable,” according to the American Psychiatric Association, or APA.

But psychologists and researchers who practice reorientation therapy can point to a small number of studies that they say establish just the opposite. The most commonly cited research was conducted in 2001 by Dr. Robert L. Spitzer of Columbia University, one of the leading psychological authorities in sexual orientation.

The research, which was presented at the annual meeting of the APA that year and published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2003, drew on the responses of 200 men and women who reported that they had once been homosexual but now were not.

Although the research relied on the self-reported testimony of the respondents, which Spitzer acknowledged made assessing their accuracy problematic, even critics agreed that he was able to devise a rigorous series of questions to zero in on the central question: “Can some gay men and lesbians change their sexual orientation?”

His answer: “Like most psychiatrists, I thought that homosexual behavior could not be resisted and that no one could really change their sexual orientation. I now believe that to be false. Some people can and do change.”

Heavy-hitting report
Spitzer was a highly credible authority: A professor of psychiatry at Columbia, he was chief of psychiatric research at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Moreover, he could not be marginalized as a Christian opponent of gays and lesbians.

For one thing, Spitzer has said that he is an atheist, and he was for many years a leader in the movement to regard homosexuality as an innate characteristic, not a psychological condition. In 1973, he prodded the APA to drop homosexuality from its roster of mental disorders.

Reorientation therapists and Christian-oriented reparative therapists alike embraced the report.

“Historic Gay Advocate Now Believes Change is Possible,” said a press release from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, a leading secular proponent, which cites Spitzer’s study in several dozen articles on its Web site. Other pro-therapy organizations identified Spitzer as a “world-renowned researcher” and noted his influence within the APA.

Reaction from gay and lesbian activists was equally vocal. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force called Spitzer’s report “snake oil,” while Wayne Besen, author of “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth,” wrote that Spitzer was either “an over-the-hill stage horse galloping toward the limelight or a court jester hoodwinked by a scheming religious right.”

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