“Homosexuals CAN Change” by Tom Minnery, Christianity Today, February 6, 1981.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Whatever the reason, Christianity Today assigned a cub reporter to the important work of investigating the claims of the “ex-gay” movement. That has resulted in what one writing teacher (a heterosexual) has called the closest thing to a “non-essay” she has ever seen. More deplorably, it has succeeded in perpetuating hurtful falsehoods.
Minnery begins with the fair and fretful observation that “most Christians with homosexual problems don’t dare run the risk of announcing themselves in their congregations for the purpose of getting help”. The rest of his article is an unwitting documentation of the many good reasons such Christians not only do not, but should not seek such help from their congregations. This article makes the sad situation even worse.
All the ballyhoo of a cover banner, “Homosexuals CAN Change”, the repeating of the all-capital “CAN” in the article, and the empty assertions: “The fact is, many people are experiencing deliverance from homosexuality. The evidence is too great to deny it”, cannot obscure the fact that Christianity Today nonetheless offers no validated evidence for the claim. Misquoting his main “evidence” (the very careless report by the Pattisons reviewed in REVIEW, Winter 1981), Minnery claims, contrary to fact, that, e.g., 11 men “changed their basic homosexual orientation”, “eight of them no longer have homosexual dreams, fantasies, or physical arousal”, “All Pattison’s subjects were true homosexuals”, “Four of Pattison’s subjects went from six to zero”, “one went from four to zero”, etc. All of these statements are false. Evidently, Minnery cannot read a simple table, though in fairness to him it must be said that his source material contains many inconsistencies and contradictions. If he would but look again at the Pattison data he would discover that only two men are said now, “after change”, to have no current intrapsychic homosexuality. The claims of two anonymous men, repeated by the Pattisons on the basis of retrospective data (they were not Pattison’s patients) and in the absence of any description of replicable method, are hardly worthy of the excitement Christianity Today seeks to generate. This is especially so in view of the fact that this is a claimed “cure” rate of 2 out of 300 who sought the “ex-gay” solution from the same group. All of this does not add up to the magazine’s false impression (meant as an imperative): “Homosexuals CAN Change.” Neither is such a wild promise substantiated by testimonies Minnery cites, to wit: an anonymous woman who says “she has been tempted many times to return [to lesbian practice] and she did fall once”, a pseudonymous man who married and says “I need my wife to know when I’m starting to fall away, and when she sees my eyes cruising some people, she needs to tactfully pull me back in”, and the “ex-gay” leader of the now discredited Love In Action program, still living with his old lover and admitting that “most people who attempt [to overcome homosexuality] don’t make it”, that they “repeatedly slip back into it”. Christianity Today seems so bent on its wishful thinking that it pays no attention to Pattison’s caution about “boomerang effects” from Christian counselors urging homosexuals to “pray about it and you’ll be able to suppress your desires. Act normal and you’ll be normal”. But concerning those about whom he reports, Pattison admits: “Homosexual behavior was simply defined as immoral, and they were expected not to engage in homosexual practices”. Obviously, Christianity Today follows Pattison in ignoring his own criteria: “The suppression of overt homosexual behavior or involvement in heterosexual activity does not constitute a ‘cure’ or change in sexual object choice”. Even the less-cautious Donald Tweedie is quoted and ignored by Minnery when Tweedie warns that he does not believe that a “cure” must result in “a life free from homosexual temptations”.
Minnery quotes an advocate of the “ex-gay” movement, Barbara Johnson of Spatula Ministry, as warning against the “name it and claim it” school of “deliverance”. Well she might. According to a letter from a former “ex-gay” counselor at Spatula and one who was a trainee at Love in Action: “My attempt to attain heterosexuality only brought me guild, depression, loneliness, and anger. I have seen the attempts others have made backfire, and one of the persons I was closest to in Spatula committed suicide because, as he told the leader of Spatula, “I wanted steak, but all I could have was jello’. His last words were, ‘Barbara, there is no deliverance from this’.” [Barbara Johnson would later back away from the “ex-gay” movement and become persona non grata at Focus on the Family, where Minnery would become an officer] Through the research of Verne Becker, former assistant editor at Christianity Today, the magazine has collected many similar reports from now ex-“ex-gays” and testimonies from Christian homosexuals (CT calls them “self-styled Christian homosexuals”) in loving and responsible gay relationships, but the magazine refuses to publish these reports. It is a shame the way what should be a responsible and Christian news analysis is made to be another instrument for the clobbering of homosexuals.
Maybe one day Christianity Today will grow up about homosexuality, as, e.g,, Billy Graham, a founder of the magazine, has matured to the point that he can now (as reported without disdain in the same issue) meet with the Pope in the Vatican and say: “We had a spiritual time”. Remember when Christianity Today and Graham did not feel so friendly toward “papists”, (to say nothing of the Pope!) and especially to the prospect of a “papist” in The White House?
Some time ago, Christianity Today published, even less soberly, the “ex-gay” claims of Guy Charles. Eventually, Charles’ testimony proved to be other than what he claimed. [He was forced out of the Virginia based “ex-gay” agency he’d founded at the Truro Episcopal Church. He’d been having sex with young men who came seeking the “ex-gay” experience. The church did not continue an “ex-gay” ministry. Charles eventually moved to Chicago, entered into a gay relationship with another man, and became a local gay activist.] The magazine never granted the truth by way of a retraction, apology to readers, or “correction”.
Sadly, perhaps the stake in its anti-homosexuality is simply too strong for Christianity Today to admit the truth – today or tomorrow.