As Brian at Right Wing Watch points out, the idea that reparative therapy is a discredited and ineffective practice is nothing new. Mainstream researchers have been showing in their work for years that “praying away the gay” simply doesn’t work, and that you can’t change your orientation by marrying someone of the opposite sex [the "equality" that trolls like Bryan Fischer like to suggest that LGBT people already have]. But in a significant development, one of the Religious Right’s in-house studies seems to have just shown the same thing. A new study from Regent University [yes, Pat Robertson's outfit], looked at mixed-orientation marriages, where one partner is straight and the other one isn’t, to measure changes in their actual sexual orientation vis a vis their sexual behavior, over time. What they found will not be surprising to any readers here:
Unsurprisingly, they found on the Kinsey scale that measured sexual behavior that gay, bisexual or queer spouses had more heterosexual behavior when they were involved in a monogamous marriage to someone of the opposite sex. But they found that heterosexual behavior did not mean changes in sexual attraction, emotions or fantasies in the Kinsey scale (Kinsey Expanded) which measured sexual orientation. Essentially, while their sexual behavior changed, their sexual orientation remained the same.
In other words, not only can you not pray away the gay, but you also can’t expect to marry someone of the opposite sex and fake it until you make it. [Haha.]
The idea that people’s sexual behavior changed is unsurprising. People force themselves to do things that are unnatural for them all the time. But for the Religious Right, this argument has always been about sexual behavior, as they like to claim again and again that sexuality is really about behavior anyway, and that it’s a choice. It’s significant for a wingnut school to release a study refuting that notion and acknowledging that sexual orientation is a separate entity and that it can’t be changed simply by modifying one’s behavior.
File this under “Look, they just moved the goalposts closer to our position again.”
I assure you the TalEvangical response to this will be that Ripofferative “Therapy” DOES work because its victims aren’t ACTING on those icky urges.
They aren’t out to “fix” anyone or “save” anyone. They’re out to make as many people as miserable as possible while raking in the big bucks and blaming Jesus for their bigotry. Given half a chance they’d go back to torturing people until they confessed and repented of their sins, then burning them at the stake for being sinners. (At least he died forgiven!)
Honey, just f**k me. I know, you only get an erection of you fantasize about that hot hunk next door. I just fantasize that you are that hot dyke of my favorite restaurant with a strap-on…..
[...] the phonies at Exodus International and NARTH. It seems reasonable and intelligent Christians are starting to abandon this giant hoax in droves. According to CNN: While many evangelicals once [...]
Wait. Regent University. That Regent University? Whoa — mind, blown.
I could be wrong, but I think the writer of this piece needs to read the study again.
“This is not to say that orientation cannot change (see Jones & Yarhouse, 2007). Rather, the behavioral changes in a mixed orientation marriage should not be taken to signal orientation change as such.”
[...] Regent University Study Undermines Reparative Therapy. Read more [...]
@ Jeremiah
You are indeed, as you thought you might be, wrong.
This study joins innumerable others which have proven time and time again that orientation CANNOT change (I strongly suspect that examples of ‘genuine change’ are in fact bisexual people who have simply chosen to ignore their same-sex attraction, or are gays in DEEP denial).
What’s wrong with live and let live Jerry? WHY do you find us so offensive? HOW are we adversly affecting your life/love/marriage? WHY does our demand to be treated equally, and with a little respect and decency, provoke your ire?
Put simply, if you are not gay, what on earth does it have to do with you?
I’s all about the money, kids. If constantly babbling on about the horrors of being gay didn’t produce a flood of money from their dupes, would they actually keep doing this? Not for a minute. They’d have to find something else to get the fools to part with their money. How about you religiously bigoted, lying, charlatan’s get real jobs and see how the world continues to hum along even though some of the people you are sweating with are gay. You won’t give a damn, honestly. You’ll be too tired from actually working.