"Spitzer admits that he had 'great difficulty' finding people who claimed to have changed their orientation from gay to straight. Ex-gay groups regularly claim to know of 'thousands' of people who have 'changed' or 'left homosexuality.' But after searching for nearly a year and a half, Spitzer could only find 274 possibilities." Virtually all were evangelical christians.
Dr. Robert Spitzer finally studied 143 "ex-gays" and 57 "ex-lesbians" who had reported that they had become "straight." During 45 minute telephone interviews with each subject, they were asked 60 questions about their "feelings and behavior before and after their efforts to change orientation. They discussed their motives for change; their strategies, which included counseling, support groups, prayer and mentoring; and their current relationships with the opposite sex".
Dr. Spitzer reported:
-- That 86% of the men and 63% of the female subjects emerged from therapy still having feelings of attraction to persons of the same-sex. That is, after therapy they are bisexuals, not heterosexuals.
-- That sixteen (11%) of the men and 21 (37%) of the women report that they now have a heterosexual orientation. It is not known how many of these had entered therapy as bisexuals and how many had been homosexuals.
-- "Of the 112 men (out of the total 143) who acknowledged that they masturbated, more than half (56 percent) said they used homosexual fantasies some of the time and about one-third (31 percent) said they seldom had opposite-sex masturbation fantasies."
I sure wouldn't want to be one of the poor christian women who find themselves married to one of these "recovered homosexuals." Or the guy who finds himself in that position, either!  |