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The Religious Conversion of Homosexuals: Subject Selection Is the Voir Dire of Psychological Research

ABSTRACT This paper examines a recent claim by Robert Spitzer, MD, that a small number of gay men and women he interviewed have changed their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual through prayer and Christian counseling. It traces the repressive anti-sexual movement of the nineteenth century and its influence upon the medical and psychological treatment of homosexuality in the twentieth century. Religious conversion is identified as a regression to a historical belief that sexuality is sinful and harmful to both the body and the mind. The paper critically analyzes the methodology of two studies: Spitzer's data that claims sexual conversion, and another by Shidlo and Schroeder showing that sexual conversion therapies can harm some patients. The paper further examines the ethical issues involved in sexual orientation change, the question of efficacy, as well as some deficiencies in the methodology of the cited research. Extreme bias in subject selection is identified as the primary motivation for the subjects to claim that they have religiously converted from homosexual to heterosexual. Some strategies for countering the potentially harmful effects of the study are suggested.