Anglican Mainstream

By Phelim McIntyre

On Sunday 29th Professor Michael King appeared on Radio 4’s Sunday programme to “debate” the issue of therapy for those wrestling with unwanted feelings of homosexuality. While Professor King put forward my name as someone to debate on air with him, I was unable to do so.  Even so, I was able to listen to the programme.

On listening to the programme there were a number of issues on which Professor King appeared to have decided the facts – and yet argued against himself. The first one concerns his attitude about reparative, or gender affirmative, therapy being harmful. While Prof King qualified his statement about the evidence for damage his attitude was that he is onvinced on the harm. In the submission to the Anglican Listening Process and in other writing Prof King has raised primarily the research by Schlido and Schroder “Changing Sexual Orientation: Does Counselling Work?” As he is probably are aware this was not a random study – the gold standard you talk about. As you are probably aware the title was changed to Changing Sexual Orientation: Does Counselling Work? from Homophobic Therapies: Documenting the Damage – for the simple reason that some of their respondents stated that these types of therapies had benefited them, and some had even experienced a greater or lesser change in their sexual orientation. We then add how the Schlido and Schroder study was advertised and commissioned – that amongst the adverts that went out in the gay press was the following:

Help Us Document the Damage of Homophobic Therapies: In association with the National Lesbian and Gay Health Association, we are conducting research on the outcome of treatments that claim to ‘cure’ homosexuality.

Our purpose is to document the damage that we believe occurs when a lesbian, gay or bisexual client receives psychological help from a provider who promises to change a person’s sexual orientation. We are looking for individuals who have experienced such a program and who are willing to talk about it confidentially by telephone, email or by filling out a written survey.
 

Schlido and Schroder were approached by the National Lesbian and Gay Health Association to do their research, and the stated aim was to document damage with the specific term homophobic research. Surely this study must be dismissed for being done in such a poor manner? It is not random, it is self-selecting. It had a specific aim. It was not independent research.

Now compare this to the Spitzer report. It was not a random study, born out of meeting people who claimed to have changed their sexual orientation. People were recruited via the ex-gay movement. In these two cases it has similarities to the Schlido/Schroder report. It fails where Schlido and Schroder fails. Yet, unlike Changing Sexual Orientation, the Spitzer report was not commissioned from a specific political process – it was a leading psychiatrist looking at what was being presented to him, something that challenged his views, which he went away and studied. When we compare the research and recruitment methods of both Spitzer and Schlido/Schroder we must either treat them with the same disdain or the same importance. Yet, Professor King, does not.

As Professor King said, there is no gold standard study into the damage caused by reparative therapy, so why proclaim that such therapy is damaging while at the same time dismiss evidence for change? His research with Professors Bartlett and Smith fails to reach the gold standard as well. Firstly, in the wording used on the website ‘Treatmentshomosexuality.org.uk’ is anti-therapy, as is the research they have recently released. Therefore it is unlikely that people who have benefited from reparative therapy will contact the website, as they will feel that their stories will be ignored . Any research carried out via the website will then fail on exactly the same grounds as the Spitzer report – it is not random, and it is not unbiased. Then there is also the report used by the American Psychological Association to prove harm by Joseph Nicolosi. Yet this report shows a high level of change. Why is it possible for people to dismiss the evidence of change in a report, yet use the same report to prove harm?

We now must move onto the issue of human rights. Let’s look at the recent paper (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/9/11)in a new light – 96 % of therapists are willing to breach human and ethical rights of a counselee/patient to self-actualisation and to choose the route of counselling that they need. Doesn’t sound as positive as ‘96% not willing to use therapy to help people change their sexual orientation’, does it? Looking further into the research the professional body who’s member are mostly likely to put push gay affirmative counselling onto the client is the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, the UK’s largest counselling body. This is concerning not just for the attitude but also that many counselling jobs look to BACP accrediation as a professional requirement.

There are dangers associated with this research beyond the encouragement of discrimination, breaches of human rights and ethics. This is the fear of therapists to deal with perceived psychological factors that could be causes of homosexual feeling. These may only be symptoms of problems and dealing with these may allow the counselee become more comfortable in their homosexuality. Yet through your research you may create an environment where these people who do not want to change their sexuality but want to deal with psychological issues related to their sexuality are unable to gain the help they need. People must not be forced into therapies that they do not want – yet that is exactly what your research is encouraging. There is no research into gay affirmative therapy, its effectiveness in either the short or long term or whether people are harmed by this type of therapy. If it is unethical to do an “unproven” therapy style that helps people change surely it is just as unethical to do a therapy where there is no research into it at all?

While I recognise that the few minutes available on Radio 4’s Sunday programme is not enough to really explore the issues, I am yet to see Prof King or his colleagues address them in their writings and research.

The belief that sexuality is fixed and a natural variant in nature is also one where the evidence does not really support that view. As far as I am aware, the variance of homosexuality in most species of animal is 1% (Resko et al 1996). Further to such a low variance, most of the research suggests that the environment has a large part to play. If we consider the research by Price et al (1988) into domesticated sheep we have a number of issues to face. The first is the large number of rams needed to find a suitable figure for homosexual behaviour in the given criteria that a ram had to mount another male in each of the five tests – the test being put through a rape rack where two ewes and two rams are were confined with hind-quarters exposed. This is not as simple as it seems as the test gave no manoeuvre for retaliation, an attempt to gain dominance over another ram or simply a defective sense of smell which could have affected as many as 1 in 32. Of the 400 to 500 rams Resko and his fellow researchers tested, only 6 were classifiable as homosexual – just over 1%. This figure is less when you realise that only one in five trails produced ejaculation. When compared to a US Department of Agriculture paper by Stellflug and Berardinelli (2002) which gives a figure of 1 in 84 for homosexual rams we can not use this research to support homosexuality as a natural variance in nature. Also in separate report it was noted that when the dominant males were removed, and during the mating season, homosexual behaviour ceased

Also when we compare the animal kingdom to humans we find major variations in behaviour – the abandonment of the elderly, cannibalism of children by their siblings, cannibalism of a parent, cannibalism of a partner. If we applied these natural variations in the animal kingdom to human beings we would have our sanity questioned, so why is it okay to do so with homosexual behaviour? Again we must look at issues of hormones, the system of domination by one male who has the right to mate with females, and the system of how dominance affects males. A simple example comes from my childhood where we had two male rabbits. One mounted and had intercourse with the other causing anal bleeding. As soon as dominance had been obtained the sexual intercourse stopped. Could homosexual behaviour in the animal kingdom play a similar role? This would also explain homosexuality amongst adolescent animals – they are trying to gain domination over others. In my own experience as part of the gay community I have not seen any situation where rape is used to gain dominance in order to have the choice of any female. It would appear then that homosexual behaviour in nature is not as good an argument as some would like.

If we are to discuss the issue of homosexuality as a natural variance then we must include the research undertaken by Professor King (1992) and others into monozygotic (identical) twins. A number of studies have been done, the most famous being under taken by Bailey and Pillard (1991) which gave a concordance of around 50% of pairs where one twin is homosexual the other is also homosexual. In Professor King’s study the concordance rate was 10% (25% if we include bisexuals). Bailey has since done another research into the issue of concordance of homosexuals with an identical twin brother who is also homosexual using the twin register in Australia (2000). This produced a concordance of 20% of homosexual men where an identical twin brother was also homosexual. All three results, plus those undertaken, raise an important question – why the variance? If monozygotic twins share 100% of genes we should see a 100% concordance if homosexuality is genetic, yet we do not. This argument has had an attempt to answer it in the book “Born Gay” by Wilson and Rahman (2005). While they quote Bailey with approval (something neither the ex-gay or pr-gay community do in general at the moment) they miss out his recognition of social factors. In fact they claim to have removed social factors from the debate altogether. Wilson and Rahman claim that same-sex attraction is 30% genetic and 70% hormonal. Yet evidence shows that both identical twins who have 100% the same genes and are exposed to the same hormones while in the womb, as far as we are aware, do not grow up gay. The evidence from science shouts loud and clear that there are other factors to homosexuality than biology! (Professor King’s paper also shows a relationship between pre-adolescent sex and homosexual behaviour.) Research, including that done by Alfred Kinsey, shows sexuality to be fluid – yet Professor King’s research implies that sexuality is fixed, and relies on that idea.

As I have said to Professor King, I would be willing to discuss and, if the environment was right, debate these issues properly (and I would want to include whether the research into the gay gene, gay brain and other biological causes are not a possible entrance to homosexuality being dismissed as a mental disability). I have also said, that I am concerned that his research on the web and his use of evidence is unbalanced, and I will be watching the Treating Homosexuality website and the conclusions he and his fellow researchers come to in order to see whether they are rigorous enough, and am willing to go to the BMC if needed about this. I do not want to do this, and hope that an intelligent and adult debate can be undertaken to get the truth rather than a politically motivated “research” into the public domain.

Phelim McIntyre
(the author is a qualified counsellor and life coach in private practice)
 

Since writing this letter Prof King has informed Rev Peter Ould that submissions to www.treatmentshomosexuality.org.uk from people with positive and successful experiences of reparative therapy are welcome. (http://wthrockmorton.com/2009/03/29/treatmentshomosexuality-website-open-to-positive-experiences/ )

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