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.”

It always sneaks up on me because down South, so many of our Pride celebrations have been moved to the month of October, due to the fact that the heat becomes overwhelming by June, which leads many of us to not want to do anything outside that doesn’t involve a swimming pool.  But it is June, which means that it’s time for Pride!

We have a lot of things to celebrate this year.  The tide has truly turned, as for the first time, a majority of the American people, in multiple polls, support true equal rights for gays and lesbians, all the way up to marriage.  People are starting to speak up and speak out like never before on behalf of gay kids, due to things like the “It Gets Better” project.  Celebrities and other well-known figures are coming out of the closet in areas once considered “The Final Frontier,” and even professional athletes are starting to express their support for the LGBT community.

But there remains much work to be done.  Teddy Partridge has an important piece up at FireDogLake which reminds us that, while we’re celebrating, we must remember that in certain very important ways, we still have disadvantages in this society that we must fight to fix.  For one thing, despite myths to the contrary, the LGBT community, on average, makes less money than the greater population.  Teddy points to an APA report on the socioeconomic status of the gay community:

Gay men earn up to 32 percent less than similarly qualified heterosexual men.

Up to 64 percent of transgender people report incomes below $25,000.

While 5.9 percent of the general population makes less than $10,000, 14 percent of LGBT individuals are within this income bracket.

Moreover, it sort of depends on where we live. In Tennessee, bigots just passed a big government bill designed to hurt the gay community, prohibiting cities from establishing their own nondiscrimination policies. And these problems still exist in many places across the country:

Termination of an employee based on sexual orientation remains legal in 31 American states.

Termination of an employee based on gender identity remains legal in 39 American states.

Up to 68 percent of individuals identifying as LGBT report experiencing employment discrimination.

Those are big numbers. And while there are many of us who are mobile enough to look at those numbers and say “screw it, I’ll move to a real state where we aren’t treated like crap,” many more of us simply don’t have that option.

This is without even getting into the differences that exist for LGBT youth, and the fact that, according to the same report, twenty-six percent of youth that come out to their parents are kicked out of their homes. ["Pro-family" parents are amazing, aren't they?]

Go read Teddy’s piece, and this month, as you are celebrating, however you are celebrating, if you are celebrating, keep in mind the good and the bad, the jobs finished and those yet to be tackled.

Last week on our Facebook page, Truth Wins Out pointed to a newly released “study” by the antigay Family Research Council (PDF document). FRC claimed that a 2002-2003 research study by the Centers for Disease Control supported the Christian Right’s contention that sexual orientation is determined by whether or not children are raised by a mother and a father and made to attend a “Christian” (aka ideologically and politically conservative) church every week.

Our friends at Box Turtle Bulletin have helpfully confirmed that FRC was lying about the earlier study.

1. FRC misled its audience about the ideological and sexual makeup of the churches being studied.

2. The difference in upbringing resulted in a statistically insignificant — virtually non-existent — difference in orientation, a difference far too small to suggest any relationship, much less causation.

Due to unexpected Volcanic Activity in Iceland The Event Has Been Postponed

New Date of Event TBA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Wayne Besen
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org

U.S. Based Ex-Gay Program On Global Crusade to Convert Gays, Says TWO

Truth Wins Out founder Wayne Besen will give a presentation in Belfast on the harm caused by the so-called “ex-gay” industry, which unsuccessfully tries to turn gay people straight through prayer and therapy. The multi-media event is sponsored by Changing Attitudes Ireland and will occur on Wednesday, April 21 at 7:30 PM in the Central Hall of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, Rosemary St.

The following day, American ex-gay activist Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, will host the “Leaving Homosexuality Celebration”. The anti-gay event is sponsored by Core, a fundamentalist ministry that claims to, “support local churches in their efforts to provide appropriate pastoral support for those with unwanted same sex attraction. The service recognizes God’ grace for many individuals making the journey out of homosexuality.”

“Exodus is targeting Ireland and other countries because they have been thoroughly debunked and discredited in America,” said Wayne Besen, founder and Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “Their antiquated efforts are rejected by every respected medical and mental health organization and they have left a trail of hurt and suffering. Having failed at home they are now looking for fertile territory abroad where they can exploit desperate and vulnerable people and profit from their pain. We urge people to explore the group’ dismal record and history of scandal before giving Exodus money.”

Wayne Besen is the Founding Executive Director of Truth Wins Out and author of “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth” (Haworth, 2003). In 2006, Besen was named one of the Advocate Magazine’ “People of the Year” for his work with TWO. (Read More)

Two days after CNN uncritically aired the disbarred ex-gay therapist Richard Cohen as an expert on sexual orientation, the network finally aired a response from a real expert: Dr. Clinton Anderson of the American Psychological Association.

Hat tip: Queerty

When pop singer and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Ricky Martin disclosed Monday that he is a “fortunate homosexual man,” responses ranged from sincere congratulations to “what took so long?” Christian Right organizations have been slow to respond; no doubt they will in the coming days.

Martin, 38, has been a celebrity since his days in Menudo in the 1980s, and since 1991 as a solo artist. That is a long time to endure the dilemma that confronts most LGBT public figures: Shall I be sexually honest — or concede to the twin pressures of a lucrative opposite-gender fanbase that wants to dream of romance with me, and a socially conservative marketplace that rewards secrecy or, worse, faux heterosexuality.

There are valid reasons (besides prosperity) for celebrities to preserve their private lives.

Sanity, for one — it’s difficult to carry out a healthy social and romantic life when it’s conducted under the glare of floodlights and the roaming eyes of TMZ, the National Enquirer, and countless gay gossips.

Avoidance of typecasting is another. Someone whose private life is unknown finds it much easier to secure and succeed with a wide range of different themes and audience demographics, whereas Ellen Degeneres and Elton John — successful as they are — have few options.

Some may argue that, for political reasons, celebrities who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender should come out for the benefit of the “community.” I, for one, think celebrities should take their time and come out on their own terms — not simply because activists like us might want them to.

The good folks over at Queerty are mad at the Human Rights Campaign for opposing the inclusion of “ex-gays” as a distinct sexual orientation subject to protection under Disney’s non-discrimination policies.

Um. Okay. First let’s read what they had to say on the subject. They start off so good:

In October we learned about the effort from Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, the organization for those cured of The Gay, to get Disney to ban discrimination against ex-gays, the semi-legally protected sexual orientation class. It didn’t go so well.

A shareholder meeting this week saw the proposal get shot down, which Disney’s board recommended, and because there weren’t enough votes to reach a 3 percent threshold the matter cannot be brought up again for another four years.

Good work, shareholders!

The idea of “ex-gays” as a sexual orientation is a little bit silly for a few reasons. First, it suggests that sexual orientation can be changed, which is a farce. Second, if somebody was gay, but is now straight, that person is in theory a heterosexual, and would fall under any existing sexual orientation protections, because one’s sexuality cannot be a reason for termination.

Correct! If ex-gays exist, they’re now heterosexuals, and thus already protected under sexual orientation protections! I can only guess that the original writer of the piece was at this point incapacitated in some way (get well soon?), because the person who completed the piece went completely off the rails:

In a blog post, the Human Rights Campaign calls the shareholder vote a “victory.” Which is a little funny, because isn’t the Human Rights Campaign in favor of prohibiting all types of discrimination?

Us? We support banning workplace discrimination based on any sexuality. And that includes someone who believes he is ex-gay. We don’t want anyone forcing us to fit into the boxes they created, and we refuse to do the same to anyone else. If ex-gays want to be protected, great! We’ll support it! We don’t really believe anyone can ditch homosexuality, but if deep down you think you did, you shouldn’t be targeted in the workplace for identifying as a former ‘mo. Even if PFOX is a laughable institution, there are people out there who believe they are ex-gay, and they should not suffer the torment of workplace harassment for the same reasons gays, bisexuals, and transgender employees should not: because it isn’t right.

GUYS. You won the argument against yourselves in the first paragraphs of your piece. The Human Rights Campaign is indeed against all kinds of discrimination based on sexual orientation, but you just conceded that “ex-gays,” if they exist (!), are heterosexuals! There is no room in the current policies for discrimination against people who say they’re not gay anymore! They’re already covered! To give an inch on this merely (and quite na?Øvely) plays into Regina Griggs’ and PFOX’s inane strategy to create some phantasmagorical parallel reality where people who identify as HETEROSEXUALS are the real victims of discrimination.

Think this through, because the argument you’ve put forth is just as inane as when Tony Perkins flagellates around the television screen complaining about hate crimes laws being used to punish Christians, since religion is protected under hate crimes laws as well.

The Human Rights Campaign (and we at Truth Wins Out) are solidly against discrimination of any sort based on sexual orientation. “Ex-gay” is not a sexual orientation. Even if we were to pretend for a second that “ex-gays” were a real and lasting phenomenon, and even if we were to pretend for a second that there was a shred of truth to anything that comes out of the maws of Regina Griggs and PFOX, then “ex-gays” would be, by definition, HETEROSEXUAL, and again, protected.

Put another way: What the hell kind of discrimination would Richard Cohen and his wife be subjected to if he decided to somehow parlay his pillow tennis racket beat-off extravaganza into a career dressing up as Cinderella during the nightly parade/fireworks show? The wife would get benefits under their family plan, he couldn’t be fired for being married to a woman, etc.

Queerty people: this entire thing from PFOX is a publicity stunt, and you fell for it. I don’t know if this is what you all think of as “encouraging conversation” or being a “dissenting voice,” but there are ways to do that without embarrassing yourselves.

In 2007, Mark Yarhouse of Pat Robertson’s Regent University co-wrote an informal study of ex-gay therapy. The study was funded by Exodus International — the North American network of evangelical ex-gay activists — and co-written by Stanton Jones, another evangelical who is employed by the conservative Wheaton College in Illinois.

Exodus falsely marketed the study as “peer-reviewed” — it wasn’t — and Yarhouse and Jones were criticized for rigging the sample of subjects and standards of success or failure in order to guarantee a result that would satisfy Exodus.

Specifically, Jones and Yarhouse’s work suffered from the following flaws:

• The study originally sought 300 participants, but after more than a year of seeking to round up volunteers, they had to settle on only 98 participants.
• During the course of the study, 25 dropped out, and one participant’s answers were too incomplete to be used.
• Of the remaining 72 only 11 reported “satisfactory, if not uncomplicated, heterosexual adjustment.” Most of these 11 remained primarily homosexual in attraction or, at best, bisexual, but were satisfied that they were just slightly more attracted to the opposite sex, or slightly less attracted to the same sex.
• After the study ended, but before the book was finished, one of the 11 wrote to the authors to say that he lied — he really wanted to change, had really hoped he had changed, and answered that he had changed. But he concluded that he hadn’t, came out, and is now living as an openly gay man.
• Dozens of participants experienced no lessening of same-sex attraction and no increase in opposite-sex attraction, but were classified as “success” stories by Jones and Yarhouse simply because they maintained celibacy — something many conservative gay people already do.
• The study purposely declined to interview any ex-gay survivors: people who claim to have been injured by ex-gay programs and who have formed support groups such as Beyond Ex-Gay. Despite — or because of — this omission, Yarhouse and Jones made the unfounded claim that there is little or no evidence of harm resulting from unproven, unsupervised, unlicensed, and amateur ex-gay counseling tactics.

In short, the study design was so flawed that no mainstream, peer-reviewed, mental-health journal would publish it.

Nevertheless, Exodus, Focus on the Family, and other Christian Right political groups immediately cited the study as proof that anyone can change their orientation without fear of ill effects from disproven methods or disreputable amateur counselors.

Now, however, Yarhouse is backing away from some of the early reactions to the study.

At a Sept. 25 symposium at Regent, Yarhouse said — according to The Virginian-Pilot — that while same-sex attraction may be changeable in some individuals, not everyone can change.

“For me, in my own practice, I would not focus on change of orientation,” said Yarhouse, a psychologist and counselor who teaches at Regent, an evangelical Christian school. …

Yarhouse’s study focused on those who said their same-sex attractions collided with their religious beliefs. He said his research found that there was “modest” movement away from homosexuality among some Exodus participants, but categorical conversions to heterosexuality were rare.

Yarhouse recommended that counselors avoid uniformly steering struggling gays toward heterosexuality and focus instead on the best outcome for the individual.

That could include celibacy or exploring different faith groups with various attitudes toward gays and lesbians, he said.

Despite Yarhouse’s statements, no one on the Christian Right who misreported the study’s findings in 2007-2008 has yet retracted their false boasts. Until Yarhouse becomes much more vocal, the public in general and Christian Rightists in particular will remain purposely misinformed about the inability of most same-sex-attracted persons to change their orientation.

A new article in Scientific American explores issues of sex behavior-role labeling among men who have sex with men (a category that includes ex-gays). The article, written by Jesse Bering, refutes some assumptions among heterosexuals about what men do behind closed doors, and how they label themselves:

…Survey studies have found that many gay men actually self-identify as “versatile,” which means that they have no strong preference for either the insertive or the receptive role. For a small minority, the distinction doesn’t even apply, since some gay men lack any interest in anal sex and instead prefer different sexual activities. Still other men refuse to self-label as tops, bottoms, versatiles or even “gay” at all, despite their having frequent anal sex with gay men. These are the so-called “Men Who Have Sex With Men” (or MSM) who are often in heterosexual relations as well.

The article observes that predominantly insertive and predominantly passive partners tend to be honest in labeling their role — but not necessarily their sexual orientation.

Tops were more likely than both bottoms and versatiles to reject a gay self-identity and to have had sex with a woman in the past three months. They also manifested higher internalized homophobia—essentially the degree of self-loathing linked to their homosexual desires.

Attitudes among predominantly insertive partners appear to differ substantially from those who identify as “versatile”:

Versatiles seem to enjoy better psychological health. Hart and his coauthors speculate that this may be due to their greater sexual sensation seeking, lower erotophobia (fear of sex), and greater comfort with a variety of roles and activities.

The article cites one 2003 Centers for Disease Control study, published in the Journal of Sex Research, which observed that while labels do not directly correlate to unsafe sexual behaviors, they do reflect upon individuals’ likely awareness of safer-sex protocols:

Although self-labels were not associated with unprotected intercourse, tops, who engaged in a greater proportion of insertive anal sex than other groups, were also less likely to identify as gay. Non-gay-identified MSM [again, "Men Who Have Sex With Men"] may have less contact with HIV prevention messages and may be less likely to be reached by HIV-prevention programs than are gay-identified men. Tops may be less likely to be recruited in venues frequented by gay men, and their greater internalized homophobia may result in greater denial of ever engaging in sex with other men. Tops also may be more likely to transmit HIV to women because of their greater likelihood of being behaviorally bisexual.

Another study, published in Sexual and Relationship Therapy in 2008, warns that gay male couples “might want to weigh this issue of sex role preferences seriously before committing to anything longterm. From a sexual point of view, there are obvious logistical problems of two tops or two bottoms being in a monogamous relationship. But since these sexual role preferences tend to reflect other behavioral traits (such as tops being more aggressive and assertive than bottoms), ‘such relationships also might be more likely to encounter conflict quicker than relationships between complementary self-labels.’”

Hypersync wonders why ex-gay activists are conning Christian conservatives into yet another round of false labeling. Instead of acknowledging that persons’ sexual and romantic attractions are real, ex-gay talking heads at Exodus and Focus on the Family want gullible churchgoers to think attractions and basic personality traits are as changeable as one’s label, hence all same-sex-attracted people are no longer same-sex-attracted, they are now “gay-identified.”

Hypersync says: “I’m curious of the round-table conversation that drove them to this most recent change in terminology. What went on, what argument was made, what are the reasons why? I suspect that once again, they determined that their arguments are not winning the day, so they have to mix up things a bit.”