FAMILY RESEARCH REPORT	Journal of the Family Research Institute Founded 1982
Ex-Gays and Ex-Homosexuals			Vol. 15 No.6 Oct 2000

Two paid leaders of the ex-gay movement have run into rough spots. Wade Richards, 21, is 'off the wagon.' As recently as April of 2000, Richards was hosted in Washington, D.C. by Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, as an example of what "intensive therapy and prayer could do." At the time, Richards was employed by a "Los Angeles-based nonprofit Christian group for whom he traveled the nation touting the ex-gay movement to other teenagers and young adults." It seems that while "living in Los Angeles near West Hollywood, he began a romantic relationship with another young man." While he was on a radio show to argue with a gay activist who insisted that Richards was still gay, Richards decided to re-convert to homosexuality. In July, Richards signed a statement that "his sexual orientation had not in fact changed, that he is and always has been a homosexual, and that he does not believe that ex-gay ministries can ever change an individual's sexual orientation" (Advocate, 9/26/00, p. 18).

John Paulk is perhaps the most famous of all the ex-gays. He was on the cover of Newsweek and a number of national radio and TV shows. He was also until very recently in charge of homosexuality and gender issues for Focus on the Family, and the chairman of the board for Exodus International, the largest ex-gay ministry. On September 19, Paulk was photographed having a drink in Mr. P's, a gay bar in the Dupont Circle area of Washington, DC around 10:30 pm. Having been at Mr. P's less than an hour, Paulk left hurriedly when the photographer who took his picture was ejected for taking it.

Afterward, Paulk claimed that he was 'just trying to find a restroom.' (Washington Blade 9/22/00). A lot of people might think that 10:30 at night was a little late to be on the street, especially since most businesses except restaurants and bars close around 9 pm. Later on, Paulk changed his story and "said he knew he was going to a gay bar and went there to see if the lifestyle had changed" (Denver Post 10/6/00).

As it turns out, an insider at Focus on the Family told FRI (10/15/00) that Paulk not only admitted that he lied about the 'bathroom' routine, but more significantly, also admitted that while this was the first time he got photographed, it was not the first visit he had made to gay bars since his employment at Focus on the Family. Bob Davies, director of Exodus International was quoted as saying, "John's unwillingness to tell the truth from the beginning was most unfortunate, as it has further undermined his public credibility" (Denver Post 10/6/00).

To FRI's knowledge, Richards now becomes the 8th professional ex-gay leader who has 'fallen back into' homosexuality. The other 7 also got involved in homosexual trysts before re-converting to the gay lifestyle. It is uncertain whether Paulk will fall back in or not, but his decision to visit gay bars on the sly would indicate some temptation in that direction.

No matter how spotty the record of their leaders, is it true that 'ex-gay ministries can [n]ever change an individual's sexual orientation'? FRI doubts it after all, many people change their sexual preferences and for all kinds of reasons. Our staff has talked with a number of individuals who claimed to have abandoned homosexuality because of these ex-gay ministries. We know of no reason to believe that these ministries are not responsible for at least some success.

But Richards' experience is cautionary if you get 'saved' from a bad habit, it is terribly foolish to hang around that habit and to associate with persons who enjoy that habit. You may 'save' them then again, they may 're-convert' you. And since you once quite enjoyed what they do, they have an edge on you even if your paycheck is at stake. Richards is yet another young ex-gay who was given a position of honor and authority that he couldn't live up to. But he may also be a warning about "ex-gays" making a living out of being paid not to have homosexual sex.

Which brings us to the question, "how many people once were homosexual, but now aren't?"

Being a man or white are attributes with which one is born and are immutable without a visit to a surgeon or chemist. Unlike the immutable attributes, many adult attributes such as "being" a homosexual, a Democrat or Republican, or a smoker may be adopted, abandoned, and readopted at any time after childhood. People become and 'unbecome' smokers, homosexuals, Democrats, Republicans, etc. The process usually starts in their teens and doesn't end until death. Mutable attributes often carry behavioral expectations a homosexual is expected to engage in homosexuality, a Democrat or Republican to vote, and a smoker to smoke. But unlike immutable attributes such as sex or color which are obvious to both the possessor and others the mutable variety are usually invisible to others unless you declare yourself or are "caught in the act."

Ever since psychiatrists adopted the term 'homosexual' to mean a person who has to have sex with their own sex, there has been dispute as to whether individuals can "be" homosexual and then later "be" heterosexual. Today the two sides include on the one hand various clinical organizations
(e.g., National Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality) and ministries to homosexuals (e.g., Exodus International) which claim that they can 'treat' or 'convert' homosexuals to heterosexuality. On the other side are gay activists who contend that homosexuality is ingrained: 'once homosexual, always homosexual.'

Recently, major mental health organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have tended to side with the gay activists, labeling change treatments as somehow unethical, implying that changing from homosexuality to heterosexuality is impossible, and declaring that any attempt to get people to change their sexual proclivities is psychologically harmful.

The notion that a homosexual preference is unchangeable is 'built-in' to the mental health/psychiatric assumption that homosexual preferences are the inevitable result of a 'condition' whether genetic, or acquired because of family disturbance that 'makes' a person engage in homosexual acts.

In 1941, Kinsey¹ protested against this assumption. He reported that involvement in homosexual activity varied widely, with individuals frequently going from no, to some, to no involvement in homosexuality. Or exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality and many combinations in between. After interviewing even more homosexuals, he concluded in 1948² that it is a "fact that some individuals change from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual patterns in the course of their lives, or vice versa" (p. 663).

That is, Kinsey himself a homosexual argued that homosexuality was as rational a choice as any other. The 1969-70 follow-on of Kinsey's research³, reported many changes in sexual preferences and activities by homosexuals living in the gay community of San Francisco. So what proportion of the populace considers itself ex-homosexual?

What we did

In 1984, FRI performed an area probability survey in Dallas, Texas⁴, which because it included many reputationally 'gay' areas near downtown, was tilted toward homosexual respondents. Among the survey questions, adults were asked "Have you ever considered yourself a homosexual? no, never/ yes, but only before the age of 12/ yes, but only while I was a teenager/ yes, for a while when I was an adult, but not now/ yes, and still do." Respondents were also asked to state their sexual identity: "I am a: heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual." Altogether, 337 men and 398 women answered both these questions.

What we found

Eight (2.7%) currently-heterosexual men said that they were ex-homosexuals. Three considered themselves homosexuals as teenagers and 5 as adults. Five (33%) currently-bisexual men, 2 as teenagers and 3 as adults, also once considered themselves homosexual. Four (1.0%) currently-heterosexual women 2 who regarded themselves as homosexuals as teenagers and 2 as adults and one (25%) currently-bisexual women who changed as an adult said that they were once homosexual.

Thus, 12 (1.7%) of the 687 currently-heterosexual and 6 (31.6%) of the 19 currently-bisexual individuals in our survey said that they were ex-homosexuals. While none of the respondents in the FRI survey considered themselves homosexuals as children, most of those who claimed that they changed from being homosexual as teenagers (5 of 7) or as adults (7 of 11) reported at the time of the survey that they were now heterosexual, as opposed to being bisexual.

So what does it all mean?

These questions were only asked in Dallas in 1984, so it is uncertain to what degree the findings generalize to the American population. Nevertheless, other survey responses from the Dallas sample were similar to the responses from the other five cities in our study. Further, on the few points where our questions were similar to those asked by the University of Chicago and the National Opinion Research Center [NORC] in their joint effort, the responses in our overall survey, including all the urban areas, were similar to those reported by Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels⁵ in 1994.

For instance, 21% of the women in the FRI survey vs. 19% in Laumann et al reported an abortion; 8% of the gays and 5% of the lesbians in the FRI effort reported being virgins vs. 9% of the gays and 5% of the lesbians in the NORC/Univ. of Chicago study.

The Kinsey Institute investigators reported more "shifts" or changes in sexual preference from their 1969-70 survey in San Francisco than FRI found, but much of this discrepancy may be attributable to the way the questions were asked. The FRI survey measured changes in "identity." The Kinsey investigators, on the other hand, asked respondents separately about changes in one's "sexual feelings" and "sexual behavior" both of which are components of, but not the same thing as, "identity."

Further, the Kinsey Institute investigators employed a 7-point scale, whereas ours was "all or nothing." So while 84% of the homosexual men and 29% of the heterosexual men in San Francisco reported at least one sexual preference shift, only 14% of the Kinsey team's homosexual and 1% of their heterosexual men reported 5 shifts along a 7-point scale of "sexual feelings."

As with FRI's findings from Dallas, most of these shifts occurred in adulthood. For example, 76% of the 399 San Francisco gays reporting a second shift and 93% of the 399 gays reporting a third shift said that it occurred after the age of 18. However, the Kinsey results differed from ours in that they measured shifts in sexual proclivity in either direction, not just shifts away from homosexuality.

If we assume that those current-homosexuals who claimed at one time to have "exclusive heterosexual sexual desires" had moved from heterosexuality to homosexuality, 82 (12%) of the 665 gays and 80 (29%) of the 277 lesbians the Kinsey team interviewed were "ex-heterosexuals." On the other hand, if by the same criterion we examine those current-heterosexuals who claimed at one time to have "exclusive homosexual sexual desires," apparently no heterosexual interviewed by the Kinsey investigators was an ex-homosexual.

However, defining the level of sexual feelings necessary to identify one as a homosexual can be tricky. If "being a homosexual" means either having "exclusively homosexual" feelings or feelings that are "mainly [homosexual] with a small degree of heterosexuality," then 2 current-heterosexuals in the Kinsey Institute study, one man and one woman, were ex-homosexuals (i.e., 0.4% of all current heterosexuals).

Looked at from another perspective, of the 55 men in our Dallas sample who at some point in their lives considered themselves to be homosexual, 8 (15%) were currently heterosexual, 5 (9%) were currently bisexual, and 42 (76%) were currently homosexual (which would mean that 16% of our homosexually-tilted sample of 337 men either considered themselves to be or had at one time considered themselves to be homosexual).

Of the 11 women who at some point in their lives considered themselves homosexual, 4 (36%) were currently heterosexual, one (9%) was currently bisexual, and 6 (55%) were currently homosexual (which would mean that 3% of our sample of 398 women either were or had been homosexual). All told, almost one of every 5 people in our sample who ever considered themselves homosexual at any point were currently heterosexual!

Our findings suggest that:

• almost 2% of all heterosexuals may be ex-homosexuals;
• although adolescence is often considered the more turbulent time of life, more adults than teenagers appear to move from homosexuality to heterosexuality;
• more males than females may move from homosexuality to heterosexuality; and
• perhaps two thirds of those who abandon homosexuality 'become' heterosexual and a third 'become' bisexual.
  

Kinsey claimed that homosexuals often switched their sexual preference — and the Bell et al study and our Dallas study add more evidence supporting this position. The view that ‘once a homosexual, always a homosexual’ seems more like a political slogan than a summary of the facts.

Sometimes people suddenly stop drinking, taking drugs, smoking, or engaging in homosexuality. More often, the process is drawn-out. Further, the appeal of an old habit can ‘undo’ what had been accomplished, even after working to contain or suppress it over a considerable length of time. Wade Richards may change his mind again as might John Paulk. The bottom line is that this is yet more evidence that homosexuality is a choice. If homosexual activists are permitted to propagandize youth in school, it is highly likely that more kids will 'become' homosexual. You can choose it, abandon it (like Wade Richards above), re-choose it (like Richards), flirt with re-choosing it (like Paulk) and until you die change your mind. The primary goal has to be to keep kids from choosing to "be homosexual" in the first place.

References:

1. Kinsey, A. (1941) Homosexuality: criteria for a hormonal explanation of the homosexual. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology, 1, 424-428.

2. Kinsey A, Pomeroy WB, Martin CE. (1948) Sexual behavior in the human male. Philadelphia: Saunders.

3. Bell, A. P., Weinberg, M. S., & Hammersmith, S. K. (1981) Sexual preference: its development in men and women, statistical appendix. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

4. Cameron, P., Cameron, K., & Proctor, K. (1988) Homosexuals in the armed forces. Psychological Reports, 62, 211-219.

5. Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J. H., Michael, R. T. & Micheals, S. (1994) The social organization of sexuality: sexual practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

A number of Americans just missed the bullet. On September 14, by a 7 to 6 vote, the Blood Product Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration [FDA], decided to retain the voluntary ban on blood donations from men who have had sex with men at any time since 1977. This small step pushed by former Congressman William Dannemeyer and FRI chairman Dr. Paul Cameron (who suggested the 1977 date) has done something to protect the blood supply for the past 15 years. Unfortunately, since the FDA's policy does not have the force of law, breaking the ban in the U.S. has no legal consequence, and many gays have donated anyway.

Despite the voluntary nature of the ban, gay activists are rankled by any policy which discriminates against them, even for good cause. Saul Levin, president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, recently complained that "intravenous drug users and prostitutes are permanently barred from donation blood, as are men who have sex with men" and that the FDA is "stigmatizing gay men" (Washington Blade 9/22/00).

This concern over 'stigmatization' is why well after it was known by the late 1970s that IV drug shooters and men who had sex with men disproportionately carried hepatitis gays were still allowed to donate blood in San Francisco into the early 1980s. Over 200 San Franciscan citizens paid for this liberal notion with their lives. As it turned out, not just hepatitis but also a then-unknown germ HIV was also 'hitching a ride' in gay blood streams. HIV got carried around the world by homosexual tourists when it might have stayed in Africa for many more decades.

Why would a change now, in the year 2000 when the blood screening test is better than ever at detecting HIV be dangerous? Because men who have sex with men, in particular, are and will remain probably the most dangerous blood donors on the face of the planet. Why? Consider that survey after survey shows that the vast majority of gay men practice penile-rectal sex an act almost as dangerous medically as sharing a needle to shoot drugs.

But unlike IV drug shooters, who usually share works and drugs with their local buddies and seldom travel, gay men are high flying adventurers. Surveys consistently show that between 15% to 25% of gays visit a foreign country every year. Almost without exception they have sex with men in those countries, usually including anal sex . Whatever the new blood-borne disease on any continent, gay men are the ones most likely to catch it and ‘bring it on home.'

Thus, not only new variants of HIV are likely spread by the sexual habits of gays, but brand new germs - many of which we can not identify, much less screen for. Hepatitis C has rather magically ‘appeared' over the last decade. No one is sure where it came from, but we are sure that it - like other forms of hepatitis - can be spread through blood.

If IV drug abusers were as mobile as gays, IV shooters would be even more dangerous. But, as a rule, IV drug abusers tend to stay put, probably as a result of being too high to function normally and hold a high-paying job, and from spending so much money on their habit. Having sex with female prostitutes is dangerous, but a great deal of prostitution by females involves oral sex. Also, the vagina is a much less efficient conduit than the rectum for transmitting HIV or any other blood borne disease. For these reasons and the fact that prostitution tends to be highly territorial, with female prostitutes both protected by and confined by their local pimps, they are not as-a-class as dangerous as gays to the blood supply.

These are medical and social psychological facts. That the FDA would even be considering dropping the ban on gay blood shows how stupid our officials and intelligentsia can be when they fret over gay rights. What happened to the blood bands in San Francisco and New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s was repeated - albeit in somewhat muted form - throughout the U.S. Faced with the sickness and death of tens of thousands of Americans due to HIV-contaminated blood, the FDA finally called a halt to casual acceptance of gay blood in 1983 and a put ban on it in 1985. But the same egalitarian principal that informed the decisions by blood banks in San Francisco and New York City about gay blood in the late 1970s and early 1980s is still ‘alive' today. Witness the razor thin margin of the FDA's vote!

What a society. Our government is willing to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer and industry dollars to further ‘clean the air' of particulates - with no hard evidence that even a single life would thereby be saved. Yet the same government is nearly willing to open up the blood banks to homosexuals to promote the egalitarian notion that ‘homosexuals are just like us.' And this in the face of agreement from even those who support lifting the ban that a few people each year would undoubtedly get HIV and die because of the infection. This was the same general, but terribly flawed, rationale that was used in San Francisco and New York City by their blood donor screeners before HIV came on the scene.

Why this difference in willingness to accept loss of life? Somebody else's money (taxpayer, industry, etc.) can be spent in pursuit of the ideal of the ‘perfectly safe and environmentally pristine world,' yet everyone (including egalitarians and their friends and relatives) must risk getting contaminated blood in pursuit of a world in which ‘no homosexual ever has to feel bad about himself!' Poor IV drug shooters and prostitutes. When will the elite finally realize that those who shoot drugs and sell themselves also have feelings? In the final analysis, don't their behaviors make as much sense as what homosexuals do?

Corner

Putting the Fox in Charge of the Henhouse

We hear a lot about protecting children and changing public policy to save "even the life of only one child." Often the same people assert that gays ‘deserve equal treatment, and therefore equal chances to teach, be social workers, be... whatever.' What curious logic. ‘Gays' are defined by their sexual preferences, drawn as they are to homosexual activity. And history - both past and present - amply attests to the disproportionate way in which homosexuals are attracted to the young.

Remember the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network [GLESEN]? This is the gay organization that got all those professional groups to sign on to "Just the Facts"- a pro-homosexual tract sent to 12,000 school superintendents late last year (see Family Research Report December, 1999). Well, the membership chair of the Chicago Chapter of GLESEN, David P. Thomas, 33 - who is employed as a social worker with an Evanston public school district - made the news recently.

Seems Mr. Thomas was a tad lonely. So like any self-respecting homosexual, Thomas sought sexual relief. Unfortunately he sought it with a boy aged 13-16 over the internet. And that's not legal. So poor Thomas has been arrested in Chicago and is currently awaiting trial (Chicago Sun Times 8/31/00).

What a progressive school district! Why a school district needs social workers is a good question - isn't a truant officer enough? Do families need school social workers in addition to the regular county and city social workers? And is it just a cozy coincidence that social workers - who boast perhaps the highest concentration of homosexuals as a profession - now have greater access to school children as school social workers?

One thing in Thomas' favor - he wasn't charged for having sex with a kid in his own school district. But give the District Attorney some time. It's rather likely that if Thomas would cruise the internet to find youngsters for homosexual sex, he may have done some looking around home too.

Engaging in drug use, homosexuality, or prostitution ought to disqualify a person from supervising youth. And if only one pupil is saved from molestation per year, it will have been worth it.

Family Research Report critically examines empirical data on families, sexual social policy, AIDS, drug addiction, and homosexuality, digging behind the 'headlines' and breaking new scientific ground.

FRR is published 8 times/year by the Family Research Institute.

Dr. Paul Cameron, Publisher

Dr. Kirk Cameron, Editor

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