Do efforts to change sexual orientation (‘conversion therapy’) cause harm?
The UK Government has been holding a consultation on the possibility of making illegal 'conversion therapy', a provocative term for what is more widely known (in the literature) as SOCE (sexual orientation modify efforts), which ends this evening (4th February 2022). Considering the term is poorly defined, and explicitly includes 'talking therapies' which could include pastoral conversation, several thousand Christian ministers from beyond churches and traditions have signed a letter of the alphabet to the Home Secretary which yous can read hither.
There accept also been serious questions raised nearly the methodology involved in framing the questions in the consultation itself, for example issues effectually the definition of terms, the language used, and the inquiry based, posed past Dr Vincent Harinam of the Cambridge Centre for Evidence-based Policing.
I was therefore very interested when I came across this new enquiry evidence, published two days ago, on the overall harm of SOCE amongst those for whom it has not had the desired effect. The paper concluded:
Despite higher exposure to factors predicting behavioral damage—minority stress, childhood arduousness, and lower socioeconomic groundwork—sexual minority persons who had undergone failed SOCE therapy did not suffer higher psychological or social damage. Concerns to restrict or ban SOCE due to elevated impairment are unfounded. Further report is needed to clarify the reasons for the absenteeism of impairment from SOCE.
Since this appears to be such a abrupt contrast to anecdotal accounts of stress and harm from SOCE, I was grateful to exist able to ask the author, Dr Paul Sullins, about his research.
IP: What is your background in this area? Why do you have an interest in the question of 'sexual orientation change efforts' (SOCE), sometimes described every bit 'conversion therapy'?
PS: I am a retired professor of sociology from the Catholic Academy of America. In my agile academic career I studied the intersection of gender and religion, publishing studies on such things as women clergy career paths ("The Stained Glass Ceiling", 2000) and why women are considered more religious than men ("Gender and Organized religion" 2006). In 2022 I retired early to devote myself to addressing issues of sexuality and gender that are entwined with Christian organized religion and witness today, such as child well-being with same-sex parents, the effects of divorce on children and of abortion on women, the link between homosexual clergy and kid sexual practice abuse in Catholic settings, and whether homosexuality is a fixed innate condition. The fence over "conversion therapy" goes directly to this last consequence. If someone can alter their sexual orientation, and do so intentionally with therapeutic help, and then it cannot be a fixed innate condition for that person, and mayhap persons are more gratis to reject being homosexual than is currently believed in mainstream civilization.
IP: How did you undertake this particular piece of inquiry? What was striking about its findings—and how does it differ from previous research? Is there an explanation for these differences?
PS: The premise of virtually all research on SOCE therapy outcomes is that homosexual orientation cannot actually exist inverse, so that an attempt to do and then results but in self-charade and serious psychological damage. We hear many stories of LGBT persons virtually having become suicidal after undergoing SOCE, which pretty accurately reflects the prevailing research evidence, almost all anecdotal or qualitative reports based on small samples.
IP: The article has been published in a peer-reviewed online journal. Why is this important in the electric current context?
PS: Peer review provides some level of assurance that a written report meets minimum standards for quality and objectivity. It will encourage those skeptical of the study to pay more than attention to it. Still, in research on same-sex issues peer review has become highly politicized, with the result that many weak studies are prominently published while stiff studies that claiming the prevailing narrative are rejected out of hand for spurious reasons.
On surveys, a bulk of secular social scientists say they would consider rejecting a study that they disagreed with, fifty-fifty if information technology had strong evidence behind information technology. Social scientist Jonathan Haidt has written a couple of books about the problem of trenchant confirmation bias throughout the social sciences, which often vitiates the value of peer review today. Some have already predicted that LGBT advocates volition call for this written report to be retracted. We volition see.
IP: Here in the Great britain, we read frequent reports of examples of 'conversion therapy' which those involved after regret and, with retrospect, feel were harmful or abusive. How practise these examples relate to your overall findings?
PS: Those frequent reports are highly biased and practise not present an accurate picture. This is obvious in two ways. Outset, all or almost all the persons we hear expressing regretful hindsight are currently LGBT, which means that (by definition) the SOCE was not successful in their instance. This is like evaluating matrimony counseling by getting reports only from couples who subsequently divorced. Could information technology be that persons who went through SOCE more successfully, and now identify themselves equally heterosexual or ex-gay, might have had a more positive feel? The LGBT fundamentalists, abetted past media who screen out and cancel such stories, want us to believe such persons don't be, merely several books of their stories have now been published. Ii bookish studies of successful SOCE alumni have come out in the past yr, both reporting net positive psychological effects (Sullins and Rosik 2021, "Efficacy and Risk of SOCE"; Pela and Sutton 2021, "Sexual Attraction Fluidity and Well-being in Men"). British population data tell the states that more people accept left same-sex partnerings to take upward heterosexual partnerships than take remained with that behavior (the linked commodity reports (p. 1784) that while 8% of currently sexually agile British men have e'er had a same-sex partner, merely 2.vi% have done and so in the past v years. The respective figures for women (p. 1786) are 11.5% lifetime, 3.2% past 5 years). But have you ever heard even one pop media story of a happy ex-gay who is thankful for his SOCE experience? We are only getting one side.
The other indication of bias is the infrequency of accounts, and the consummate absence of any negative accounts, of outcomes post-obit gay-affirming therapy. Nosotros know that affirming same-sexual practice allure or gay identity has negative results for some people. Ex-gays often report that this was true for them. In my recent findings, almost a tertiary of LGB persons, four times more than underwent SOCE, reported that they had tried to cease being attracted to persons of the same sex. A study by pro-gay scholars final Spring reported that suicide attempts were 45% higher among LGB persons who came of age in the early 2000s, when order was more affirming of homosexuality, than they were among those who came of historic period in the 1960s, when intolerance was much higher. This bias is accented in the scholarly literature; while in that location accept been dozens of studies of outcomes following SOCE, I do not know of a single study of outcomes following gay-affirming therapy. In the data I examined, which came from the Williams Establish, a large pro-gay advocacy and enquiry institute, they did not even ask most information technology.
Every therapy strategy has successes and failures, and y'all can always detect someone to praise or arraign it. The importance of my recent findings is that they look at a random sample of the relevant population, to compare the rate of benefit and harm for LGB persons who have undergone SOCE and those who haven't, and finds that, on balance, the ii groups are statistically identical for multiple measures of current behavioral harm, including suicidal morbidity, cocky-impairment (cut), and substance abuse. The probability of impairment is not increased by having undergone SOCE.
This finding is notable because the SOCE participants experienced higher minority stress, negative childhood weather condition and lower socioeconomic condition, all of which predict higher damage or lower well-being, nonetheless following SOCE their level of harm was no higher than their peers who had not experienced these conditions. This suggests that undergoing SOCE may alleviate or protect confronting harm from other causes.
This conclusion contradicts a large number of studies that report substantial harm following SOCE, particularly increased suicidal behavior. Only iv such studies used a representative (random) sample, however, and all four failed to distinguish suicidal behavior before SOCE from that following it. I found that suicidal behavior is much higher before SOCE (maybe prompting the recourse to therapy) but not later. In fact, suicide attempts are significantly reduced post-obit SOCE—the opposite of what is widely claimed.
IP: What tin churches and those involved in ministry building learn from both your research and the examples we hear virtually?
PS: I call up the most important consequence of my research for ministry is that it confirms that what the Bible teaches about homosexuality is true. Isolation, struggle, the importance of men and women for each other and for their children, the power of the truth of the body and consequences for rejecting it, all are highlighted both in scripture and in the empirical data. We are bombarded with so much propaganda to accept homosexuality as normal, even benevolent, for persons who feel it. In many settings in that location are calls for the Biblical understanding to exist "updated" with a supposedly softer approach to homosexuality that does not run across it as sinful. My research confirms the idea that this is actually more harmful to homosexual persons, whether struggling or not, than the Bible'due south account of sin, grace and redemption. If I don't remember my sin is really sin, then I am stuck in it forever, but when I learn the truth, even hard truth, I can exist set free. I recently saw a sign at a church building that says it well on this point: "Don't change the message; let the message modify you."
IP: You might be aware that the United kingdom Government is currently undertaking a consultation on outlawing 'conversion therapy'—and other countries have already enacted such laws. Does your research accept whatever begetting on these proposals?
PS: Certainly. To the extent that a ban is motivated by avoiding harm it is unnecessary, if my findings are correct. In fact, such a ban may practice more harm than good. For at least two of the four other representative sample studies in this area, the failure to account for pre-existing distress is non inadvertent, merely intentional, by scholars who maintain that even prior distress invalidates SOCE. This backwards logic may bring nigh the very impairment such scholars and advocates say they want to prevent. I argue: "Information technology would exist a perverse policy indeed, for instance, for heart surgery to exist discouraged or even banned because those undergoing it experienced higher rates of cardiac dysfunction than the full general population earlier the surgery." And conclude: "Concerns to restrict or ban SOCE due to elevated impairment are unfounded."
IP: What further areas of inquiry do you lot recall are needed hither? What further research are y'all planning?
PS: The politicized contend over SOCE has distracted enquiry and policy from the startling fact that the suicide rate for LGB persons is over five times that of the general population, and is growing. Almost a tertiary (30%) of under-thirty LGB persons have attempted suicide, compared to under 5% of all youth. Meyer (2021) calls that fact "alarming", and calls for further inquiry on why LGB persons are prone to suicide. I concur. I remember part of the trouble, though, is Meyer'south minority stress theory, the thought that negative outcomes for LGB persons are due largely or wholly to societal stigma, which forestalls research into the real reasons, or more probable causes, that LGB persons are prone to suicide. If yous have already decided that LGB persons' problems are due entirely to their social environs, you terminate up not exploring things that they could practise to better their ain health and wellbeing. I am currently working on this question, as well as an test of population trends in sexual orientation change.
IP: Thanks so much for your fourth dimension, and sharing the results of your research. I promise we can continue in touch and continue the conversation going!
Dr. Paul Sullins is Senior Enquiry Associate of the Ruth Plant and Research Professor of Sociology at the Catholic Academy of America. He has written 4 books and over 150 scientific journal articles, volume chapters and research reports on issues of organized religion and culture, including "Absence of Behavioral Harm Following Not-efficacious Sexual Orientation Change Efforts", "SOCE reduces suicide: Correcting a false research narrative" (conditionally forthcoming, Archives of Sexual Beliefs, 2022); "Efficacy and risk of sexual orientation change efforts" (F1000Research, March 2021; with Christopher Rosik and Paul Santero) and "The Example for Mom and Dad" (Linacre Quarterly, May 2021). He has also published "Invisible Victims: Delayed Onset Depression amongst Adults with Same-Sex Parents" (Depression and Research Handling, Sept 2016), "Emotional Issues amongst Children with Same-sex Parents: Difference by Definition" (British Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science 7(2):99-120 (Feb 2015), and "The Unexpected Harm of Same-Sex Marriage" (British Periodical of Education, Society and Behavioural Science (August 2015), all bachelor via Pubmed or at http://ssrn.com/writer=2097328. Formerly Episcopalian, Dr. Sullins is a married Catholic priest. He and his wife Patricia have an inter-racial family of three children, two adopted.
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