Warren Throckmorton

I think what this evidence supports is that people who are harmed by reparative therapy are hard to find.

How many people who seek reparative therapy reject it so completely that they'd be easy to contact for a glb study?

The closet is a wonderful thing if you're a researcher seeking to prove an outcome the religious rightwing is willing to pay for.

There are all kinds of ways to rig a study just by using people's unwillingness to publicly identify as gay.

The only products of reparative therapy that are going to voluteer for this kind of study are the Wade Richards who get so pissed off at the way they've been manipulated that they come out loud.

How many of the failures go back to their churches, and do what they've always done: have homosexual sex on the downlow and cover their tracks with insincere occasional opposite-sex dating or a flawed marriage?

Could it be that what the low numbers illustrate is that a high percentage of the people who pass through these programs enter in the shadows and leave in them. I'm surprised that 176 people could be found in 5 years who even realized what they went through was harmful. In a strange way, these people were probably helped far more than many who couldn't be found.
 

pbcliberal:

Jack Drescher says he thinks people being harmed are growing in numbers. If this was true then there must be people who are coming forward. So you're thoughts would not be supported by his statements.

The closet is a wonderful thing if you're a researcher seeking to prove an outcome the religious rightwing is willing to pay for.

This statement is baseless and untrue. No one has paid me for the research I have done. I have done it on my own time at my own expense.

There are all kinds of ways to rig a study just by using people's unwillingness to publicly identify as gay.

What study was rigged? I am reporting on peer reviewed studies done by gay researchers. Shidlo and Schroeder are gay men active in gay political causes. The study was supported by money from gay organizations. I think you are speaking from ignorance here.
 

Jack Drescher says he thinks people being harmed are growing in numbers. If this was true then there must be people who are coming forward.

I think the interesting part, also, with this study is the fact that there is no definition of how one define harm, the extensiveness of this harm, and the background of those who felt uncomfortable with their sexual orientation.

Its all very well coming up with a study, but when the weight is equal to that of a feather, it really leaves more questions opened than answered.
 

I'm talking in the general here. These studies don't have a large enough sample size to draw any significant conclusions. The Botsko and Gorman study appears from your description to be a general study on the effectiveness and outcome of all therapy on glb clients. Six hundred subjects its the bare minimum you need to draw conclusions assuming its a statistically valid sample.

But who is in the sample? Those who identify as glb. But the point of reparative therapy is to get rid of those nasty same sex attractions in a population that doesn't identify as glb. So the people who you are trying to draw conclusions about are the very people who are paying good money to not be considered as members of the group studied.

What would be interesting, though certainly not statistically significant, would be how many of the 13 out of the 600 who were in reparative therapy were dissatisfied or even angry at the outcome. I don't see that anywhere in your description.

What I do see, is the argument that this isn't a problem because it doesn't happen to many people. Of course it doesn't; have you forgotten that you're in the small minority that believes in this treatment modality? There are only 13 because most responsible therapists don't do it. Aren't you the guy trying to change the mind of the public and treatment community that the majority opinion is wrong?

I do think you're rigging your reportage by drawing a conclusion from this study that was not intended to be drawn, and I do think you're being paid by people who would not countenance homosexuality or a professional conclusion that it was an acceptable practice on staff or in the student population. That's the flipside of your attack that gay money paid for Shidlo and Shroeder; in making it you take the chance of impeaching yourself.

The big problem here is that we don't know what the total gay (evangelical translation: same sex attracted) population is.

Both sides work this to what they believe is their advantage. In the day when the anti-gay folks wanted to minimize numbers, they dressed women in conservative clothes, sent them door to door in the suburbs and asked men who answered the door, "are you gay?" That's like putting an IRS cap on a guy with a clipboard and sending him out to ask "Do you cheat on your taxes?" Guess what? The gay percentage in the population was almost nil.

The Simmons study designed to pitch the gay community as rich DINKs to ad agencies did the reverse. They did interviews at the gay movable feasts of the 80s and 90s. The March on Washington, Stonewall, et al. These places were full of gay yuppies who used their frequent flier miles to party for their rights, and was completely misrepresentative of the gay population.

We still don't know much about the gay population: there is no clear universe. So its easy to get the answer you desire by how and more important where you ask the question.
 

Did you read the part of my post that said half of the subjects were either conflicted or confused about their sexual orientation when they entered counseling? If there was increasing harm out in the real world from therapists exploiting confused clients, we would expect to see it in naturalistic studies like this. I think that harmful things are done in the name of reorientation therapy but I see no evidence of widespread harm nor of substantial percentages of the gay & lesbian community that have been effected. Just as some in the ex-gay world say their experience should be normative for all, some of those who have been harmed want to generalize their experiences to everyone. Most of what passes as discussion on this issue is due to attempts to generalize one or a few instances to everybody else.
 

I did indeed read that clients were conflicted; what troubles me is this seems the wrong argument for somebody who produced I Do Exist! to be making.

I probably should go read the study for myself, but from your description, it appears that everybody in the study population identifies as glb, or they wouldn't be in the study. But reparative therapy generally promotes terms like "same sex attraction" and "homosexual tendencies" in a population who would sometimes rather die than identify as glb.

So your argument seems to be a ringing endorsement for mainstream therapy consistent with the APA et. al's guidelines that you spend a great deal of time traveling around attacking.

You're right. There's no evidence of widespread harm among people who identify as glb. From the numbers, most of them probably weren't even offered it as an option, considering only 13 out of 600 got any such counseling. But isn't that one of the talking points against the APA policies themselves?

The therapists exploiting confused clients don't take their clients to where they'd be participants in this study, at least if its a study of people who identify as glb.

This study is a ringing endorsement for everything you eschew. You seem to be bragging that we are all safe because you haven't been very successful in achieving your goals.
 

The study participants were gay identified at the time of the study not at the time they went to counseling. You continue to obscure the reason I even brought the study out. Critics say reorientation harm is increasing and that it is widespread. Where is the evidence? If the charges were true, one would expect more than 13 episodes to show up. I recognize that if you asked ex-gays (as I have done) you get more episodes. But I am wondering where the evidence of widespread harm is.
 

Was there a median age for the 600 clients? (I can't get a full-text online through my university, so I'll have to look in the library when I'm there next).

I am curious about other factors involved--education level, age, etc.--all of which (I assume...) can play into the impact of counseling and one's ability to respond to potential harms.

It might be of interest to determine how the percentage of clients reporting a negative impact trends with the initial age of entry into a re-orientation counseling, and with the surrounding circumstances. (I am thinking, of course, of the circumstances related to Zack and Love in Action.)

Are there studies related to that that you are aware of? Thanks.

And to pbcliberal, while I think some of your generalizations may be true, there are also stories of drug use, rampant infidelity, etc. as integral to the 'homosexual lifestyle' ...which get used against us. Vignettes are only so helpful in seeing the big picture.
 

RE: CK

And to pbcliberal, while I think some of your generalizations may be true, there are also stories of drug use, rampant infidelity, etc. as integral to the 'homosexual lifestyle' ...which get used against us.

Which is also used by ex-gays to justify their stance; it would be nice for once, for adults to stand up and say, "I made the choice to take drugs - it has nothing to do with my sexuality, income bracket etc. etc." - but then again, thats probably asking too much - when someone is at the lowest they can go, they tend to grasp onto any straws that seem to have some sort of good excuses attached to them.

Hence the reason I am sceptical about re-orientation therapy, where by the counsellor would simply be treating the symptoms or the 'most obvious' when in reality, the same sex attraction isn't causing the downward spiral of self destruction, but something completely different altogether.
 

CK - Average age of 41 at the time of the study and 26 when they first consulted a counselor (range 5 to 58). 65% were women which is probably relevant. Ninety percent were college grads. I do not know of any work with teens outside of anecdotes from NARTH therapists. I am aware that Mark Yarhouse from Regent is currently doing such a study.
 

Thanks--that answers my question.

Kawai: I was agreeing with you... !? 'Us' in my comment = gay people who don't want to be ex-gay.
 

I participate in a Christian support group for people with depression. They too often have complaints about how they've been harmed in counseling of one type or another. It seems to me that people who fail to find relief in their emotional conflict or distress over their emotional or mental states, whatever those states are, are looking for someone, anyone, to blame for them not feeling 'normal' and happy with themselves. Usually they are unwilling to look within themselves and trust God with that inward looking process. It says more about the individual than it does about any counselor or counseling philosophy, it seems to me.
 

Kawai: I was agreeing with you... !? 'Us' in my comment = gay people who don't want to be ex-gay.

Sorry about that, sometimes I don't aways read all the post fully :*(
 

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Orionsbelt: I assume you're addressing me. We obviously aren't going to agree, so just some quick links and comments.

The "door to door" study was from Alan Guttmacher Institute, entitled The Sexual Behavior of Men in the United States, and was conducted in 1992.

I could quote any number of gay publications on the wide varience of gay percentages, but you'd probably discount them as tainted. Or I could do mainstream stuff, but I suspect you'd find that to be political. So here's Kirk Cameron
"http://www.familyresearchinst.org/FRI_AIM_Talk.html"> saying it.

You want to argue all kinds of claims that I haven't made. If you want to change the subject, argue with somebody else.

These are social studies. They're essentially opinion surveys, and they're not the same as gene research. Pardon me, but I'd like to assume that you really know the difference but just have to act like you don't, because anti-gay folks--and let's face it that's what the ex-gays mostly are either directly or fronts for--are taking the same tack as the creation science folk. You're using junk science and intentional obfuscation and bogus claims to try and use diversity to preach a message of intolerance.

The difference between gene research and these studies is the difference between determining what happens when you mix ammonia and chorine by trying it, or by asking people what happens when you do it.

If you're trying it, you can do it a few times and when you can constantly replicate it, and when it doesn't work exactly the same way every time, you can pinpoint exactly why, your research is done.

But if you're trying to find out what the average person believes will happen when you mix them, you have to ask a lot of people. You have to ask at least 600 if its an otherwise representatitive sample to get good data.

With hard data, is replicability. But with opinions and beliefs, its sample size. These studies quoted by Throckmorton are opinion. Studies with small sample sizes that depend on opinion will be flawed no matter who pays for them or what they find.

The "how happy are you with your therapy" study which had a sample size of 600, had a sample size of 17 when used the way Throckmorton tried to use it. If that's not bad enough, it was a 17 from a universe that was biased with respect to what Throckmorton was trying to pull out.

I'm not disturbed you don't agree with me. I'm not upset that your path was different than mine. But I am very concerned that you see the problems when they're inherent in the gay studies, but not when they're in the ex-gay ones.

It suggests that you're trading your intellectual honesty for your desired outcome; that is usually a short term solution at best.
 

pbcliberal -

1. The study I quoted was not an ex-gay study, it was done as an inquiry by gay affirming authors into practices and preferences of 600 gay clients.

2. Six hundred in social science is a pretty large N. While this study is not representative of the population, one cannot consider it small.

3. There are a number of problems methodologically with the study and so I would not make absolute conclusions based on it. However, professional associations have made definitive statements (e.g., reorientation therapy is harmful) based on such scanty evidence. I wanted to point out that even the research they rely on does not support their conclusions.

4. Thirteen is a small sample and that is exactly my point. A very small number of people rated their 13 courses of reorientation counseling low in satisfaction. If harm from the practice was more widespread, then I would expect more people (remember half were not solidly gay at the time of the study) to say they had been encouraged to consider this. I further recognize that perhaps this researcher just missed all of the people who are seeing Jack Drescher but given how long it took Shidlo and Schroeder to find their 176 participants, I don't think so.