“Homosexuality: What we know for sure” by Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse, Christian Counseling Today, Summer 1994; Jay L. Hollman, “The Future of Medical Science: Ethical and Theological Implications”, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, March 1995; The Newsletter of the American Scientific Affiliation & Canadian Scientific & Christian Affiliation, July/August 1995.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Why does misinformation or disinformation about homosexuality have such a persistent shelf life among Evangelical leaders? Do they really not get it? Or do they refuse to get it?
It’s been over two decades since the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality, as such, from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as part of a scientifically based revision of all DSM nomenclature. The APA defined mental disorder as “typically associated with either a painful symptom (distress) or impairment in one or more important areas of functioning (disability)”. Had homosexuality not been dropped, it would have been the only entry not meeting this standard. Yet evangelicals continue to claim that the revision on homosexuality “was attributable more to ‘the work of sociopolitical activists than to science,’ ” – as the newsletter of the ASA and CSCA puts it, citing Christianity Today as authority. This is done to propagandize for so-called reparative therapy. But the psychiatrist (Charles Socarides) quoted here is, himself, the loudest sociopolitical activist fighting the DSM revision. He is, albeit, the father of a sociopolitically active gay son.
It’s been almost as long since another psychiatrist (E. Mansell Pattison) peddled a Pentecostal “ex-gay” self-help claim in a journal of the ASA. He and his wife later wrote a report on 11 “successes” who were hand-picked by the “ex-gay” ministry’s “ex-gay” leaders (who then became lovers) from some 300 acknowledged failures. These 11 were further reduced, by their own proffered evidence, to but two self-styled “ex-gays”. Pattison called this alleged “religiously mediated change” an example of “generic … folk therapy”. But he finally admitted that there was still no scientific evidence of sexual orientation change, adding defensively: “Who doesn’t have homosexual fantasies, especially after a fight with his wife?!” (at a national meeting of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies).
In the ASA’s Perspectives, Hollman, a cardiologist, goes contrary to what even the Pattisons themselves claimed and asserts: “homosexuals have been shown to completely change their sexual orientation. Eleven homosexuals studied by Pattison showed an abrupt and radical shift in their sexual orientation following their conversion to Christianity.” They did nothing of the kind. Moreover, none of them was “studied by Pattison”. His wife, a non-clinician, did the interviews. The cardiologist extrapolates: “This study suggests that homosexual orientation could be a spiritual disease.” He contradicts the best evidence in social psychology and anthropology by insisting: “homosexuality is an abnormal life-style and, because of this, homosexuals are unhappy and depressed,” adding, “homosexual behavior is absent in many cultures.” Hollman misreads the Pattisons’ report and is either ignorant of the abysmal history of the “ex-gay” movement or he overlooks it in order to push it as “the Christian solution”.
Jones teaches psychology at Wheaton College and Yarhouse is his student. They say: “Christian clinicians have a unique responsibility to be well-informed. But when it comes to the prevalence of homosexuality – something nobody can get a handle on simply because all homosexuals are not about to stand up to be counted – these two are sure that “less than 2 percent of the population” is homosexual. When it comes to “change”, they say: “every study … on conversion from homosexual to heterosexual orientation has claimed some success” and spotlight “one empirical study reporting change through a church lay counseling and healing ministry”. It’s the Pattisons’ report. Jones and Yarhouse erroneously add that “reported success rates range from between 33 percent [referencing Bieber and Socarides] to 50 to 60 percent [referencing Masters and Johnson].” But Bieber merely reported the self-reports of some psychoanalysts in the early 1950s, speaking about their homosexual patients: of the 72 who began treatment as homosexuals, 14 (19 percent) “became heterosexual”, by which term Bieber subsumes “the inclusion of women in their social lives” and “attempt[ed] heterosexual intercourse, despite fears.” Twenty years later, Bieber said: “The therapeutic experience is not, as many think, … calculated to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals.” Why don’t Jones and Yarhouse report that? And Socarides now admits that his “patients may remain homosexual but not part of the gay scene. Now, after therapy, they still have same-sex sex, but they have more control over their impulses.” Why don’t Jones and Yarhouse report that? The Masters and Johnson work was really more about courting rituals than sexual orientation and besides, Johnson was, from its beginning, a Board member (along with Troy Perry of the Metropolitan Community Church and Wardell Pomeroy of the Kinsey Institute, and others) of the pro-gay counseling center I founded in New York in 1971.
Truth seems to matter less than the preservation of power presuppositions. In Veblenian terms, there seems to be a “trained incapacity” within the evangelical establishment to challenge itself and change. It’s condescending to say that evangelical leaders don’t know better.