Ex Gay Movement | SOS Ministries

An Older, Wiser Ex-Gay Movement

The 30-year-old ministry now offers realistic hope for homosexuals.

Tim Stafford | posted 9/13/2007 02:19PM

Since its beginnings in the 1970s, the ex-gay movement has engaged gay advocates in a battle of testimonies. Transformed ex-gay leaders are the best argument for their movement. Likewise, those who’ve left the ex-gay movement in despair and disgust are the best counterargument. The debate continued this June, when Exodus International held its 32nd annual conference in Irvine, California, featuring dozens of speakers and seminar leaders who have quit homosexuality. Down the road outside the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, a news conference featured three former Exodus leaders saying “ex-gay” is a delusion.

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New research may change the terms of debate. Psychologists Stanton Jones of Wheaton College and Mark Yarhouse of Regent University released today a book detailing their findings from the first three years of an ongoing study. They are investigating participants in 16 different ex-gay programs associated with Exodus, the largest ex-gay ministry group.

The results show that some participants experienced significant change, though the change was usually partial, not complete. Furthermore, participants showed no additional mental or spiritual distress as a result of their involvement in the ex-gay program. This study is the first to use multiple interviews and questionnaires over a period of years, assessing participants from near the beginning of their involvement in an ex-gay program.

Jones and Yarhouse launched the study to try to resolve differences between their professional community, which warns that “reparative therapy” for homosexuals is both impossible and dangerous, and testimonies they have heard from those involved in ex-gay movements. Though critics of ex-gay movements sometimes cite research findings in warning against reparative therapy, Jones and Yarhouse found that published research did not actually bear out their claims. The existing research about homosexual change, though mostly dated, indicated some possibility of change. New research meeting contemporary research standards was needed.

Some of Jones and Yarhouse’s key findings:

By most measures, the average participant experienced statistically significant change in his or her sexual identity and sexual attractions.

Such changes were generally modest, though, with decreasing homosexual attraction more significant than increasing heterosexual attraction.

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).

Surprisingly, a “truly gay” subpopulation showed the clearest changes in sexual identity and attraction.

No evidence of increased mental distress was found.

Jones and Yarhouse take pains to emphasize that their study does not clarify the likelihood of successful change for any particular individual. Participants were self-selected—a highly motivated, highly religious group working with Exodus. (For a more complete review of this research, see “The Best Research Yet.”) Still, the study marks a crucial point in the ongoing maturation of the ex-gay movement. Once a small experiment, the movement has endured growing pains, learned from setbacks, and achieved a stable pattern of ministry.

Ex-Gay Comes of Age

The breadth of the ex-gay movement can be seen in PATH (Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality), which claims 13 groups from across the Judeo-Christian spectrum. PATH includes Courage (Roman Catholic, with an emphasis on chastity), Homosexuals Anonymous (modeled on aa as a confidential lay organization), JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality), and NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, a non-religious organization of mental health professionals). Largest of the groups is Exodus, a coalition comprising more than 100 local Christian ministries in the United States, linked to similar ministries overseas.

Exodus began in 1976. Frank Worthen, a San Francisco homosexual who found his life transformed by Christ in the early ’70s, joined forces with Melodyland Church. The Southern California church had begun counseling homosexuals through two men in their early twenties, Michael Bussee and Jim Kaspar. Exodus was born at a weekend conference sponsored by the two groups. At a second conference a year later, Exodus attracted gay protestors. Within three years, Bussee had renounced the group’s goals and recommenced a gay lifestyle, claiming that nobody ever really changes. Worthen, now in his seventies, has continued his ministry to homosexuals alongside his wife, Anita.

Exodus, at 31, has settled into adulthood. Its most prominent leaders—Alan Chambers, Joe Dallas, Sy Rogers, Andy Comiskey, and Alan Medinger, among others—have been out of homosexuality and engaged in ministry for decades. Most are married with grown children. Scandals among leaders are far less common than in the early days, probably due to increased organizational accountability and growing awareness that those ministering in their area of temptation are vulnerable.

Perhaps nothing has brought Exodus into the mainstream of evangelicalism more than its embrace by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Alan Medinger, the semi-retired founder of Regeneration (a sexual freedom ministry in Baltimore), remembers calling on Focus early on and finding the door completely shut. “I still don’t know why,” Medinger says. “When they swung around and began the Love Won Out conferences, it made a huge difference. They’re a tremendous support to us now.”

Focus’s endorsement is an important seal of approval for conservative churches. Focus sponsors regular conferences for church leaders, drawing pastors who might never attend an ex-gay event. Growing cultural acceptance of homosexuality has also, paradoxically, helped Exodus in its relations with churches. Joe Dallas, founder and director of Genesis Counseling, notes that ex-gay leaders help churches “articulate a response to pro-gay theology. … People in most denominations never thought they would have to address a biblical view of homosexuality, just as many parents never thought they would have to respond to a daughter who came home and said, ‘I’m a lesbian.’ ” Not only that, but “the prevalence of Internet pornography has opened up an honest discussion [about many sexual issues] within the church,” Dallas says. “More Christians are saying immorality is not just a cultural problem; we have a problem.”

As churches and Christian colleges have opened their doors to ex-gay ministries, the ministries have in turn begun to rethink their approach. “We do need sexperts, counselors who can do things that small groups cannot,” says Andy Comiskey of Desert Stream Ministries. “But for the church to say that help exists only outside our walls, that is not optimal. I think it has to be body life.”

“If I were completely successful,” says Exodus president Alan Chambers, “the church would take over. The traditional pattern within Exodus has been a stepping-stone or launching pad to leave the homosexual lifestyle or a life of secrecy, to find camaraderie with others facing the same struggles, and then to go on to embrace the church. What if a church was so dynamic that a Sunday school class could do the same thing? What if people in church could become transparent, and people in those Sunday school classes became comfortable to share their stuff as well?”

How Transformed?

An older, wiser ex-gay movement is certainly clearer about what it has to offer. Early hopes for instant healing have given way to belief that transformation occurs through a lifetime of discipleship.

Tanya Erzen, a professor at Ohio State University, spent 18 months studying New Hope Ministry, a live-in program led by the Worthens in San Rafael, California. Though unsympathetic to ex-gay goals, Erzen came to empathize with the people she met. In Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement, she describes their view of change.

“Ex-gays undergo a conversion process that has no endpoint, and they acknowledge that change encompasses desires, behavior, and identities that do not always align neatly or remain fixed,” she writes. “Ex-gay men and women are born-again religiously, and as part of that process, they consider themselves reconstituted sexually. … In the words of Curtis [one of the program’s participants], ‘Heterosexuality isn’t the goal; giving our hearts and being obedient to God is the goal.’ … Desires and attractions might linger for years, but they would emerge with new religious identities and the promise that faith and their relationships with one another and God would eventually transform them.”

As Alan Chambers puts it, “In the early days [of ex-gay ministry], nobody knew what to expect. They were hoping for something, and some went back because what they were hoping for wasn’t reality. Four decades into this ministry, people have a much better way to talk about change. I was once an immature person, and I responded immaturely. Now I’ve grown as a believer and as a mature man. It was inevitable that my feelings and outlook would change. When I set my goal not as being heterosexual but as being the best child of God I could be, accepting his grace, my identity changed.”

Chambers is frank that change does not eradicate temptation. He wonders if change is ever 100 percent complete in this life. “One thing we can expect as Christians is a life of denial,” he says. “I don’t think we’re afraid to tell people that they may have a lifetime of struggle. Freedom isn’t the absence of struggle, but the life of struggle with joy in the process.”

The ex-gay movement seeks to integrate the reality of same-sex attraction into a life of discipleship. In that lifelong journey, they expect many changes, including changes of feeling and attraction. But they emphasize that each person’s experience is different, and that instant transformation is extremely rare.

Not surprisingly then, ex-gay ministries appeal almost exclusively to Christians. Most participants come from evangelical backgrounds and can’t resolve their Christian faith with a gay identity. Jones and Yarhouse’s research found that many tenaciously seek help and invest years in the process.

The ex-gay movement does not speak with one voice on the causes of homosexuality, but most believe that early childhood deficits are crucial—often a poor or nonexistent relationship with a father, prepubescent sexual experiences, or sexual abuse, especially for women. Many believe that homosexuality is fundamentally a crisis of masculinity or femininity—a subconscious attempt to meet legitimate emotional needs for relationship and affirmation through sexual means. Ex-gay groups are usually single-sex, because supportive friendships within your own gender are believed to be an important component of repairing damaged sexual identity.

Given the uncertainty and difficulty of change, some like the Roman Catholic group Courage prefer to emphasize chastity over change. Exodus leaders speak positively about Courage and its goals. Nevertheless, Exodus leaders are reluctant to limit their hopes to a life of chaste celibacy. Andy Comiskey writes, “We must renounce the unbelief prevalent in certain evangelical circles that resigns homosexual strugglers to little if any release from their tendencies. That perception of God is too small!”

Common Struggle

On June 26, on the serene campus of Concordia University in Irvine, California, about 800 people gather for this year’s Exodus conference. Mostly young, mostly white, two-thirds male, dressed in SoCal casual, they might be a crowd at an Angels game. “Revolution,” as the conference is called, seems like any other Christian conference: hands raised for rock-and-roll worship, testimonies, prayer, speakers, seminars galore.

But this conference features little motivational hyperbole. Alan Chambers, the low-key opening-night speaker, emphasizes that there is no step-by-step formula for overcoming homosexuality. “Hear me loud and clear: You’re not going to get cured this week. … We don’t choose our feelings, but we do choose how we are going to live. I choose every day to deny what comes naturally to me. … I have to rely on Jesus Christ every day.” In a hundred different ways, conference speakers and seminar leaders say that healing only comes through a life of obedience to Christ.

Cheers greet Sy Rogers, who speaks on the second day. Rogers is extremely entertaining, but his rapid-fire staccato delivery communicates a serious message of Christian discipleship. “God didn’t say, ‘Stop being gay.’ He said, ‘Walk with me.'” Rogers talks with searing frankness of the contempt he has endured his whole life. His delivery is confident, almost aggressive, but his vulnerability is startling. Painful as this stuff may be, he seems to say, it is nothing more than what God knows about me—God who loves me and gives me life.

Which sums up much of ex-gay ministry today. No hype. Limited faith in techniques. No gay bashing. No detectable triumphalism, religious or political. Just serious discipleship. This may be the only group in America that realizes all the way to the bottom that when you decide to follow Jesus, you don’t always get to do what you want to do.

The ex-gay movement runs against the cultural tide. Given adverse public opinion, the ambivalent support of conservative churches, and the common assertion that ex-gays condemn themselves to a life of frustration, you would think the movement would shrivel. Yet Exodus affiliates have doubled in number over the last 18 years. Many of its leaders have been in the public eye for 20 to 30 years. They show every sign of stability.

They live by radical ideas about sexuality—that we are not, as our culture would have it, defined by our desires, heterosexual or homosexual. Rather, we are defined by our Creator and Savior. Our attractions, always disordered to some extent, must be submitted to Christ, who alone can redeem us. For those who feel strong same-sex attractions, that task is especially difficult. But it is the same basic struggle every Christian must face.

From Christianity Today online.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/october/5.52.html

The Best Research Yet

Two psychologists show that homosexuals should not be discouraged from seeking change.

Tim Stafford | posted 9/13/2007 02:20PM

Related articles and links | 1 of 3

When Stanton Jones first began to study psychology, homosexuality was a malady, listed and described in the official “diagnostic Bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In 1973, that diagnosis was dropped. Now the American Psychological Association’s official website states, “The reality is that homosexuality is not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable.” The website warns that “conversion therapy” is poorly documented and could cause potential harm. The American Psychiatric Association’s website adds, “[T]here is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of ‘reparative therapy’ as a treatment to change one’s sexual orientation. The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great, including depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior.”

What to make, then, of the apparently sincere personal testimonies of people claiming to be ex-gay? Longtime Wheaton College professor of psychology and provost Jones, working with Regent University professor Mark Yarhouse, found an anomalous situation. Professional opinion made unusually absolute statements of the impossibility of change, considering older studies of homosexuals under treatment that showed substantial evidence of change. Critics of the older research noted shortcomings but offered no better evidence in support of the contention that change is impossible, even dangerous.

Jones and Yarhouse address this lack of good evidence in their book, Ex-Gays?: A Continuing Study of Religiously Mediated Sexual Orientation Change in Exodus Participants. By taking a sample of people entering ex-gay programs under the Exodus umbrella and following them with detailed questionnaires over several years, Jones and Yarhouse tested the impact of ex-gay programs on participants—whether they actually experienced change, and whether the attempt to change caused additional distress. Participants are still being followed, but the findings to date clearly upset the professional consensus. A substantial minority of participants showed significant change from homosexual patterns of behavior and thought, and there was no overall evidence of additional mental distress. The change observed was generally modest, perhaps comparable to the results of therapy for alcohol and drug addiction, for troubled marriages, or for personality disorders.

Jones and Yarhouse emphasize the imperfections of their research, carefully noting points at which their method could be criticized. For example, they had hoped for 300 or more participants, but found many Exodus ministries mysteriously uncooperative. In the end, they settled for 98 people in their initial sample. (To boost the sample size, Jones and Yarhouse added a less-than-ideal cohort who had already been involved in the program for one to three years.) They also chose not to use physiological measures of sexual attraction, primarily because Exodus ministries would have found the use of pornography in research ethically abhorrent. Though humble in their presentation, Jones and Yarhouse conclude that their research is the most rigorous ever conducted on this subject.

Clear Changes

Nearly half of Ex-Gays? covers background information explaining the current controversy over ex-gay ministries. Jones and Yarhouse offer a careful survey of published research on homosexual change. They devote a chapter to explaining the religious views of Christians who seek help from Exodus, questioning whether psychological professionals are adequately trained to consider their concerns. They give a brief history of how homosexuality and its treatment have been viewed among psychologists and psychiatrists. Jones and Yarhouse explain at length how researchers have struggled to define boundaries between homosexuality and heterosexuality, and to define how change can be measured. These chapters are useful to anyone seeking a balanced understanding of the subject.

Naturally, research results will attract the most attention from readers. As Jones and Yarhouse themselves note, both skeptics and true believers will find evidence for their arguments. One reason is that, rather than choosing just one measurement tool for change, Jones and Yarhouse administered questionnaires for all the measurement tools currently used for sexual identity and attraction. Each of the six tools has a slightly different focus, and each tool yields slightly different results. They also reported results for three different populations: the whole group of 98 (whittled down by dropouts to 73), the “Phase 1” subpopulation (57 of the 98) who had been in the program less than a year when research began, and another subpopulation (55 of 98) they call “truly gay” because their prior behavior and inclination were distinctively one-sided.

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.

Jones and Yarhouse also conducted qualitative analysis, breaking subjects into six categories of response, ranging from “Success: Conversion” to “Failure: Gay Identity.” They found that 38 percent could be described as “Success: Conversion” or “Success: Chastity,” with another 29 percent continuing hopefully, even though they could not yet demonstrate convincing change. They compare this “success rate” to results shown in a recent, reputable study of drug therapy for depression.

As to the purported harmfulness of ex-gay ministry, they found no evidence to support this claim. Psychological distress actually diminished slightly, though the changes were too small to be statistically significant. Jones and Yarhouse found, contrary to professional consensus, that change is possible. But they did not find that change is possible for everyone. They write, “The fact that some human beings can break the four-minute-mile barrier establishes that running a four-minute mile is not impossible, but that same fact does not establish that anyone (every human being) can break the four-minute-mile barrier.”

Change was complex. “Most of the individuals who reported that they were heterosexual at Time 3 did not report themselves to be without experience of homosexual arousal, and did not report heterosexual orientation to be unequivocal and uncomplicated. Sexual orientation for the individuals in this study (and indeed for most of us) may be considerably more complicated than commonly conceived, involving a complex interplay of what we are instinctively attracted to, what we can be attracted to with proper attention and focus, what we choose to be attracted to based on how we structure our interpersonal environments, our emotional attachments, our broader psychological functioning, (of course) our religious and moral beliefs and values, and many more factors. We believe the individuals who presented themselves as heterosexual success stories at Time 3 are heterosexual in some meaningful but complicated sense of the term.”

Will the Jones-Yarhouse study dramatically change the way the ex-gay movement is regarded? That seems unlikely, given the firm ideological commitments of opponents and the limited changes observed. But Jones and Yarhouse have a more modest goal: respect for “the autonomy of individuals who, because of their personal values, religious or not, desire to seek change of their sexual orientation as well as those who desire to affirm and consolidate their sexual orientation.” Without evidence of harm, and with substantial evidence that some can find help on the basis of their religious values, on what professional or scientific basis can they be discouraged from seeking such help?

Tim Stafford is a CT senior writer.

Related Elsewhere:

Ex-Gays?: A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientationis available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

InterVarsity Press held a press conference on the book today in Nashville.

This article appears as a sidebar to “An Older, Wiser Ex-Gay Movement” in our October issue.

Previous articles on ex-gays and reversing homosexuality are available in our special section.

Mark Yarhouse is professor of psychology and director of the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity (www.sexualidentityinstitute.org) at Regent University

Stanton Jones‘s articles and reviews for Christianity Today include:

Homosexual Healing | Review of Coming Out Of Homosexuality (August 15, 1994)

The Incredibly Shrinking Gay Gene | By Stanton L. Jones, provost at Wheaton College, and Mark A. Yarhouse, assistant professor of psychology at Regent University. (October 4, 1999)

The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality published an interview with the authors about their previous work.

PATH (Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality) lists studies on reparative therapy and links to organizations, such as Exodus International, that work with people who have unwanted same-sex attractions.

ChristianBibleStudies.com has a Bible study on “Homosexuality and Gods Household

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