Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation (PDF; 385 KB)
Source: American Association of Christian Counselors (via InterVarsity Press)

We report here for the first time the findings of our longitudinal study of religiously mediated sexual orientation change in a sample of men and women involved in a variety of Christian ministries affiliated under the umbrella organization Exodus International. Our findings address directly two of the most contentious and disputed questions of our day: Is change of sexual orientation, particularly change of homosexual orientation, possible at all? And is the attempt to change sexual orientation harmful? We are evangelical Christians committed to the truth-seeking activity of science. In conducting and reporting this study, we took seriously the words of one of our heroes, C. S. Lewis, who said that science produced by Christian persons would have to be “perfectly honest. Science twisted in the interests of apologetics would be sin and folly.” In that spirit, we report here at the start that the funding for this study was provided by Exodus, and that we accepted this funding pledging to Exodus that we would be reporting publicly the results of our outcome study regardless of how encouraging or embarrassing Exodus might find those results.

In this study we found empirical evidence that change of homosexual orientation is possible for some through involvement in Exodus ministries. Success took two forms. One form of success was an embrace of chastity with a reduction in prominence of homosexual desire. These persons regard themselves as having reestablished their sexual identities in some way other than their homosexual attractions. The second form of success was marked by a diminishing of homosexual attraction and an increase in heterosexual attraction, with resulting satisfactory, if not uncomplicated, heterosexual adjustment. These latter individuals regard themselves as having changed their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. Further, we found little evidence of harm incurred as a result of the involvement of the participants in the Exodus change process.

+ InterVarsity Press website for Ex-Gays? book (with related downloads)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Gender and sexuality, Religion and spirituality, Social and cultural issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.