Has a Gay Person Ever Legitimately Turned Straight Again

Some Gays Can Go Direct, Written report Says

May nine, 2001 -- Can gay men and women become heterosexual?

A controversial new written report says yes — if they really want to. Critics, though, say the study's subjects may be deluding themselves and that the bailiwick grouping was scientifically invalid considering many of them were referred by anti-gay religious groups.

Dr. Robert Spitzer, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University, said he began his study equally a skeptic — believing, as major mental health organizations exercise, that sexual orientation cannot be changed, and attempts to do so tin fifty-fifty crusade impairment.

But Spitzer's 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 straight, and concluded that 66 percent of the men and 44 percent of women reached what he called good heterosexual performance — a sustained, loving heterosexual relationship within the past year and getting enough emotional satisfaction to charge per unit at least a seven on a 10-bespeak scale.

He said those who changed their orientation had satisfying heterosexual sex at least monthly and never or rarely idea of someone of the same sex during intercourse.

He also found that 89 per centum of men and 95 percent of women were bothered non at all or just slightly past unwanted homosexual feelings. All the same, only 11 per centum of men and 37 percent 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 Skillful Morning America. Only they managed to change those feelings, he added.

The study reopens the debate over "reparative therapy," or treatment to change sexual preference. Spitzer argues that highly motivated gays can in fact change that preference — with a lot of effort.

New Study, Former Debate

But critics take challenged the written report, even before it was formally unveiled at today's session of the American Psychiatric Association'southward annual meeting in New Orleans, which was jammed with tv cameras reporting on the presentation.

Another study presented today fifty-fifty contradicted the finding. Ariel Shidlo and Michael Shroeder, ii psychologists in individual practice in New York Metropolis, found that of 215 homosexual subjects who received therapy to change their sexual orientation, the majority failed to exercise so.

A small subset reported feeling helped.

That study has too not been published or reviewed.

Psychologist Douglas Haldeman also said the experiences described by Spitzer'southward subjects "should be taken with a very big grain of salt."

The people in Spitzer's sample, he said, may be fooling themselves.

"People endeavor to change their sexual orientation non because there's something wrong with [the] sexual orientation, only because of social factors, because of religious dogma, because of force per unit area from family," he said.

"And believe me, I take worked for twenty years with people who have been through some kind of conversion therapy, and the pressure that they feel tin be excruciating."

Hurt by Therapy

Spitzer doesn't question that many gay people have been injure by therapy.

"There's no doubt that many homosexuals who have been unsuccessful and, attempting to change, become depressed and their life becomes worse," he said. "I'm non disputing that. What I am disputing is that is invariably the event."

In fact, he said, many of his subjects had been despondent and even suicidal themselves, for the opposite reason — "precisely because they had previously idea at that place was no hope for them, and they had been told by many mental health professionals that there was no promise for them, they had to but learn to alive with their homosexual feelings."

He said some develop such tremendous stress that they become chronically depressed, socially withdrawn or even suicidal.

But Spitzer says his written report shows that some homosexuals making some try, commonly for a few years, brand the change.

Findings from the report also verify other piece of work about female sexuality, Spitzer says. "We establish that women in our sample moved from a less extreme homosexual to a more than heterosexual level than did men," Spitzer says. "Now that'southward actually what you might expect from the literature. Information technology is known that female sexuality is more fluid.

"If this was all something made upwards or suppressed, why would there be 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 percent were referred past the National Association for Research 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.

But 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 mean they aren't telling the truth.

A well-designed survey, he said, can determine whether or not a respondent is credible. And his respondents, each of whom was asked some 60 questions over 45 minutes, accept all the earmarks of brownie.

In fact, he said, to dismiss his survey would exist to dismiss an awful lot of psychological and psychiatric enquiry. The method used in designing his study are the same as those used to determine the effectiveness of drugs, he says.

"Information technology's [the method] used for case to evaluate the effectiveness of antidepressants," Spitzer says. "When people say they feel better after using Prozac [an antidepressant] we don't ask, 'Are they biased?'"

He said he asked very detailed questions non only almost sexual attraction, only near fantasies during masturbation and sex, and yearnings for romantic and emotional involvement with the same sexual practice and a variety of other variables that indicate sexual orientation.

"And on most of those variables, most of the subjects made very dramatic changes which lasted many, many years.

Contesting an Calendar?

Rick McKinnon, who is openly gay and works equally an editor at the weekly Seattle Gay News, is concerned the study results can exist used to forward an anti-gay agenda.

"Bourgeois, anti-gay, anti-multifariousness folks are going to embrace information technology and they're gonna use information technology for their own agenda to push their point of view that, yes, you don't need equality in American society for gay people considering they tin can change," he said. "And I remember that's so bogus."

But Spitzer — who described himself as a "Jewish, atheist, secular humanist" with no axe to grind — says maybe there are gays who are happy being gay and ex-gays who are happy being straight, and that both sides deserve more than respect.

Ironically, Spitzer had until now been something of a hero in the gay community. In the early 1970s, he spearheaded the try to become homosexuality removed from the American Psychiatric Association's listing 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

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