Study: Some Gays Can Go Straight

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010509/aponline013921_000.htm ^

[joedownthestreet]

By Malcolm Ritter AP Science Writer Wednesday, May 9, 2001; 1:39 a.m. EDT

NEW ORLEANS –– An explosive new study says some gay people can turn straight if they really want to.

That conclusion clashes with that of major mental health organizations, which say that sexual orientation is fixed and that so-called reparative therapy may actually be harmful.

[scripter]

If you look at the article, phone surveys of a small self-selected group of people "proving" that homosexuality is "curable" is also a stretch.

What you may not realize is Dr. Spitzer used to believe homosexuals couldn't change. Dr. Spitzer was on the APA and played a pivotal role in removing homosexuality as a mental illness. Now he's changed his mind and believes homosexuals can leave the lifestyle. That's not a stretch, that's a fact.

Check out the following:

• The Great Escape (Mike Haley)
• God's Amazing Grace (Stephen Bennett)
• Matthew Manning's Testimony
• Canada: Seven ex-gay clergy and laity to make stand at General Synod
• Eagles Wings Testimonies

[beckett]

The most interesting thing about the report is the author of the study. Other studies have made similar claims over the years, but none came from the office of Prof. Spitzer, a man considered a saint by gays for his role in re-writing the DSM.

Now gay activists have to attack the credibility of the very man whose authority they've long relied upon to advance the claim that they enjoy "sound mental health."

How camest thou in this pickle? -- William Shakespeare

[aruanan]

NEW ORLEANS –– An explosive new study says some gay people can turn straight if they really want to.

Just like there are a lot of straight people who have become convinced through devious means that they are homosexual and told that they have no choice in the matter.

[scripter]

Now gay activists have to attack the credibility of the very man whose authority they've long relied upon to advance the claim that they enjoy "sound mental health."

That's it, exactly.

[capt. norm]

Gays trying to portray themselves as a minority have a major flaw in their reasoning. They are only gay upon their own say-so and if they wanted to, they could change their minds and profess themselves to be straight at any given time.

If you're black, you stay black your whole life (except for Michael Jackson) and you are easily identifiable as being black. The same is true of all the other minorities.

But a gay person would have no difficulty portraying himself as straight...there are no physical identifying signs.

[madprof98]

I see you just signed up for Free Republic. I'm guessing you did that in order to defend homosexuality. I wonder if you defend abortion with the same zeal. If so, it would certainly confirm the point to which you originally responded.

[Thommas]

Welcome to FreeRepublic, taotao,

Yes, the left does want to destroy the family as we know it, and of course that is an alternate viewpoint. Its a viewpoint with which I disagree. Who am I to disagree?

I'm one who abhors that viewpoint and will not yield to it.

[superiorslots]

My cousin who was my age was also a sissy at age 5 and admitted he was gay at age 16 or 17. All of us played together and we knew something was not right.We also knew he wasn't right at that age. He was never abused and had a good relationaship with his dad.

Like you I also believe some gays are born that way. Not all but a %. Maybe not enought testosterine etc at birth.

[Taliesan]

The vast majority of gay men were sexually abused as juveniles by adult males.

Cite, please.

[expatguy]

Of course gays can go straight.

Anyone can change their behaviour.

[Modernman]

Just like there are a lot of straight people who have become convinced through devious means that they are homosexual and told that they have no choice in the matter.

How in the world could anyone be convinced that they are gay?

Anyway, I think that sexuality is probably a continuum that runs from "Fully Straight" to "Fully Gay." What the last couple of decades have shown (especially with the increasing commonness of young women experimenting with other women) is that a good percentage of people might be willing to experiment before settling down to a straight lifestyle.

[Semaphore Heathcliffe]

Sexual abuse is as a child is a significant catalyst to adult homosexual orientation. But abuse isn't the only thing that can distort a young person's sexual identity. Any situation that somehow fails to affirm in the child an adequate sense of their own gender orientation can create, for example, a boy that overcompensates as an adult and becomes hypermasculine (body builder, sports freak, lady's man, etc) or cannibalizes desired masculinity from other men (homosexuality). Or both. (Or neither - but the "neither" options aren't relevant to this discussion.)

[cryptical]

What you may not realize is Dr. Spitzer used to believe homosexuals couldn't change. Dr. Spitzer was on the APA and played a pivotal role in removing homosexuality as a mental illness. Now he's changed his mind and believes homosexuals can leave the lifestyle. That's not a stretch, that's a fact.

So you disagreed with him in the past, and agree with him now, so his views now are more right than his views in the past?

Regardless of who is peddling this study, it looks like bad science to me. Using the same type of study, I could "prove" that werewolves can be cured. All I'd have to do is find some number of people that claim to have been werewolves in the past, and are not werewolves now to "prove" my thesis.

[tuesday afternoon]

Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong, pg 99:

Almost without exception the gay men I know (and that's too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood - molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as a adolescent by an adult.