Noli Irritare Leones

Disputed Mutability and Pam at Pandagon both blogged about this one; a study of participants in ex-gay programs reports 38% “success” in their efforts at change.

Exodus can describe 38 percent of its programs’ participants as successes, changing to either a “meaningful but complicated” heterosexuality (15 percent) or a stable chastity (23 percent).

My thoughts. First, if true, that “stable chastity” percentage is really impressive: how many straight people completely abstain from sex? Even until marriage? And here they’ve got nearly a quarter of their participants achieving total celibacy. Of course, this is among particularly motivated people, and I’m not sure how long the measured period of stable chastity is. It would offer some hope for the celibate Catholic priesthood, though, I suppose, if that many people can actually manage to be stably celibate long term.

Less impressive is the success rate at making people heterosexual: 15 percent “meaningful but complicated” heterosexuality, in a group particularly motivated to change, is actually pretty bad.

When subjects were asked to describe whether they thought of themselves as homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual, they showed clear changes after being involved in Exodus programs. Notably, the greatest average changes were found in the “truly gay” subpopulation—a surprising find considering the frequent accusation that ex-gay ministries mostly affect bisexuals who call themselves gay but have always had definite heterosexual feelings.

One needs to distinguish here between “greatest average changes” and “greatest chance of achieving a successful heterosexual marriage.” If I started out as a Kinsey 6, went through an ex-gay program, and reported myself now to be a Kinsey 4, that would be a greater self-report of change than if I started out as a Kinsey 3, went through the same program, and then reported that I was a Kinsey 2. But the second person still winds up straighter than the first. Also, the measure of “change” being used here is lessening of same-sex attractions and behavior, not increase of opposite-sex ones. So the study results may not be as much in conflict with the criticism as Christianity Today suggests.

Significant question here: Is it better to be celibate than to be partnered with someone of your own sex? I think all of us would happily accept these success rates over nothing for any form of sex life that we truly consider deeply intrinsically wrong.

This gets me to the Mother Jones article, “Gay by Choice? The Science of Sexual Identity,” that Disputed Mutability also cites. Gary Greenberg, in Mother Jones, examines arguments for and against sexual orientation being fluid, and concludes that

Medical science can only take its cues from the society whose curiosities it satisfies and whose confusions it investigates. It can never do the heavy political lifting required to tell us whether one way of living our lives is better than another. This is exactly why Kertbeny originated the notion of a biologically based sexual orientation, and, to the extent that society is more tolerant of homosexuality now than it was 150 years ago, that idea has been a success. But the ex-gay movement may be the signal that this invention has begun to outlive its usefulness, that sexuality, profoundly mysterious and irrational, will not be contained by our categories, that it is time to find reasons other than medical science to insist that people ought to be able to love whom they love.

It seems clear to me that how readily sexual orientation might change doesn’t, in itself, determine the question of whether “people ought to be able to love whom they love.” All you have to do is look at the favorite analogies of those who oppose and support acceptance of homosexuality: pedophilia on the one hand, and interracial marriage on the other.

In the past couple of decades, people have become less inclined to believe that pedophilia can be readily treated and changed. But does that lead to an increase in social acceptance of molesting children? Hardly. Has NAMBLA gained political ground in the last 25 years? Hardly. Rather, what happens when people become less confident that pedophiles can be cured is that we get all the more unwilling for them to be anywhere near children. That there’s all the more outrage at Catholic priests getting cycled back after time in treatment centers, etc.

Conversely, people are a lot more tolerant of interracial relationships than before. But only a few people say that they can’t be attracted to anyone but people of some other race. Most of us assume that what race you’re attracted to is pretty fluid, and we haven’t become any less likely to think it’s a fluid thing as we’ve become more tolerant.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter whether ex-gay programs actually work in changing people’s orientation. It does matter. It matters because truth matters, whatever that truth may be. It matters because marriage should, normally, be founded on some sort of sexual connection, and, though staying together through sexual difficulties can be part of what “in sickness and in health” means, and a sexless marriage isn’t always a loveless one, that still doesn’t mean people should be urged into marriages that won’t involve a normal marital sex life. You don’t have to be attracted only to your spouse to make your marriage work, but sex shouldn’t be something the two of you are hoping you can work up to, over time, as your attractions change more.

And it also matters because it makes a difference morally to people who neither see homosexuality as just as good as heterosexuality, nor yet as an intrinsic evil, but rather as something less good. I think that attitude is actually pretty common, and explains both why there’s a chunk of people who are swayed by reports that sexual orientation isn’t chosen and can’t be changed, and why there’s a chunk of people who are OK with civil unions but not so much with marriage. If same-sex partnerships seem less good to you than opposite-sex ones, but better than being alone, then you’ll care about how changeable sexual orientation is or isn’t.

But arguments about the fluidity or fixedness of sexual orientation don’t do the heavy lifting all by themselves.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 8:19 am and is filed under Sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.