Gay actor John Barrowman submitted himself to brain scans to gauge his brain activity for signs of arousal, when shown pictures of nude men and nude women. He began by claiming that he was 100% gay.
What did his brain say?
I agree with Rob Tisinai here: I’d like to see Alan Chambers, Randy Thomas, Richard Cohen, Greg Quinlan and all the rest of the supposedly “ex-gay” leaders take just such a test. I would also expand it to all anti-gay Religious Right leaders, such as Peter LaBarbera, Bryan Fischer, Matt Barber, Robert Knight, and all the rest.
The brain doesn’t lie, folks.
The “ex-gay” leaders would say that having gay sex had altered John Barrowman’s brain. The corollary of that would be that abandoning the “gay lifestyle” had “de-homosexualized” their own brains. But I bet you any money that no “ex-gay” leader would ever dare to attempt to substantiate that by submitting to such a test himself.
I would also love to see these “ex-gay” leaders and anti-gay politicians submit to this test.
But the video raised one question for me … why was this guy so *afraid* of being told his brain was responding more to women than to men? Surprise, shock, I could understand. I just have trouble understanding where the fear was coming from. But he seemed certain of his own orientation beforehand, so when they show a histogram and tell him he has a uniformly higher arousal response to one sex over another, why would he be worried it was women his brain preferred? Maybe it was just edited to seem like that was his dominant reaction, to play up the drama for the TV show.
I’m sorry for not understanding; just wondering if anyone has more insight into this and might be willing to help me “get it.”
It’s possible, NFQ, that for John Barrowman coming out and accepting his natural sexuality was the result of a difficult struggle, as it has been for many of us. Once you’ve got there, even the remotest possibility that you might somehow have got it wrong and have to start over again might well make you a bit anxious.
We will never know how these so-called “ex-gay” frauds would perform because they have refused to take a No Lie MRI. On at least two occasions, TWO has challenged them — and, like cowards, they refuse to reply.
http://www.truthwinsout.org/pressreleases/2010/07/9970/
http://www.waynebesen.com/2007/08/putting-lies-to-test.html
Interesting. But I also think its kind of funny. They designed an expensive series of tests to prove what I instinctively knew at age 12? I also experience “zero” sexual attraction to women, never have. I myself would be amazed to discover I was actually a closet heterosexual male. That would be news to me.
What I would be really interested in seeing are the brain scans of the two types of self-identifying straight men: Those who have messed around with another guy before (more common than I first thought), and those who have always been extremely homophobic. I’ll wager the guys who’ve tried it actually have lower levels of attraction to other guys than the homophobic males. Just a hunch.
@William: Thanks a lot. That makes a bit more sense to me. I guess I was thinking that, if you know your own preferences, who cares what a brain scan says? Maybe there are some other physical factors … what should matter is how it adds up and becomes what you actually feel.
Though, hmm — that has interesting implications on our hypothetical “ex-gay” leader (et al.) test subjects. They could just say, “I know I’m straight; who cares what your neuroscience tells me?” So I guess the real question is, how accurate is this test at describing people’s self-reported sexual orientation? Does it fail only when testing outspoken homophobes? ;)
They could just say, “I know I’m straight; who cares what your neuroscience tells me?”
Yes, NFQ, and I think that that’s exactly what they would say. I think we’re all agreed that none of the “ex-gay” leaders would dare to submit to a test like the one that John Barrowman had, but even if they did and it showed that they were still “SSA”, as they call it, it wouldn’t make any difference. Remember the “ex-gay” director of Love in Action, John Smid, who said that he’d insist that his office wall was blue if he believed that blue was the colour that God wanted it to be, even if he and everyone else could see that it was gold. “God can help me make that wall blue.”
Many of these “ex-gays” belong to the “name-it-and-claim-it” school of Christian fundamentalism. A couple of weeks ago a booklet came through my door about a series of evangelical revival rallies to be held in London. It contained the following pieces of advice:
“Now, faith means that you see the end-result of an issue from where you are, and then you speak it into existence. In other words, you picture the future according to the Word of God, and you proclaim it into being through your spirit.”
“As I hold the picture of the future that I desire and proclaim it, circumstances are re-organized for my good.”
“Or maybe you’ve been battling with sickness in your body. His reasoning is that you’re the healed and not the sick. Accept this truth, and keep confessing your healing.”
“It’s not for you to wonder how the mountain will move into the sea after you’ve commanded it to move. Yours is to focus on the result and refuse to vacillate; be fully persuaded that your confessions of faith will surely come to pass.”
People who think like that – if you can call it thinking – are impervious to evidence.