Alan Chambers spoke to Orlando Weekly reporter Jeffrey Billman:
By Chambers’ estimate, only 30 percent of those who seek to switch orientations succeed. Fifty percent abandon the program. The other 20 percent, he says, go back and forth.
“I would say it’s like [Alcoholics Anonymous],” Chambers says. “It’s in the 30-percent range [that] find a great degree of healing and move into heterosexuality, single or married.”
Not quite a month later, BPNews, the Southern Baptist daily news outlet, quotes Chambers in a story about Michael Johnston’s fall:
The percentage of people who change but then fall back into homosexuality is “minute,” Chambers said. But there is “a very high percentage of people who continue to stay true to the Lord and stay true to the fact that their sexuality has changed.”
Thus, new entries for our Exodus-to-English dictionaries:
- 20% = “minute”
- 30% = “a very high percentage”
- 50% = statistically insignificant?
Chambers might protest that he cited Johnston’s relapse as part of a miniscule subset of the 30% of success stories, or that in retrospect Johnston had always been in the 20% of back-and-forth ex-gays. Until independent research produces firmer statistics, ex-gay leaders are free to mold their anecdotal observations into whatever shape they choose.
— Steve B.
It appears that Alan is not statistically sophisticated. If one half drop out, that shows a failure rate of 50%. Of the remaining half, 40% will fluctuate in their identity. The stiking point is where the first dropouts appear. If they are in the initial weeks of the program, it might indicate a need for stricter admission criteria. If they appear throughout the process, one might cast doubts on the process itself. Or these might be part of the 20% who fluctuate. It would be useful to see when and where these events happen. Perhaps a flow chart showing the crisis points that are ordinarily found would be helpful. One wonders how many of the 30% who make it eventually are classified back into the other categories. Very puzzling presentation of stats.
Chambers is just throwing out numbers that have nothing to do with much of anything. The fact is that only the most desperate to “change” will go to any of these Exodus operations, although he would obviously like to leave the impression that these numbers of his can be extended to cover the entire homosexual population. The fact is that if, of those who are most desperate to change, they can only get a relatively small fraction to “change” (whatever that means), that suggests an amazingly low “success” rate given the fact that they can’t even get the majority of those who are desperate to “change” to actually “change.”
Chambers’s numbers are also highly questionable on several grounds, not the least of which is the fact they obviously result from self-reporting. As anyone knows, self-reporting is highly suspect. I’m sure that most if not all men who are married, with children, would report that they are heterosexual. Including those who are “ex-gay.” Yet, in an article last fall in a California newspaper regarding arrests made for men having sex with men in public places (parks, public rest rooms), a police spokesman was quoted as saying that 80% of those arrested were married, many with children. Query how many of them are “ex-gay.”
You guys seem very obsessed with putting people in little boxes. You have defined me as “ex-gay” even though I have never (and I have been explicit about this) defined myself in that way and you don’t seem to recognize at all the possibility that the degree of same sex attraction that a person might experience can and does wane (and can wax for that matter) over time.
By your definition an ex-smoker who still wants a cigarrette after dinner remains a smoker. This is not credible or accurate, in my opinion.
It’s not what tempts us, its how we live. People who live with same sex attraction have more freedom than ever to choose, now, how they will define themselves and frankly you have no right to impose your definitions on us.
David,
For what it’s worth, I only added your blog to my links late last night and haven’t begun to organize the links properly yet. I was going to post a favorable review of your blog when I get a chance, and I still will.
I recognize that sexual attractions change, wax and wane.
As for smokers, you are redefining “gay.” Gay is not an action, nor an identity, it is an attraction. A smoker is someone who acts on his desire; a gay person tends to be gay (same-sex-attracted) whether they do something or not.
Your suggestion that “gay” means something more than mere attraction or “temptation” is itself an act of putting people in a box. It implies to others that gays subscribe to a specific identity, lifestyle, or stereotype.
David, I know from experience on the Courage Online list that you’re capable of more open-minded thinking. If you’re essentially saying that people and sexuality defy easy categorization, then I totally agree with you.
I think it would be useful to exclude Roman Catholics from the category ‘exgay’. The teachings of the RC are both more sophisticated and more subtle than those of the run of the mill evangelicals most often associated with exgay type movements. From what I have read and experienced, RC gays are urged not to have sex in the same fashion that all those not married are urged. Which categories include the divorced and remarried. This is something not much seen or heard of within evangelical Christianity. To judge from what one can find of the evangelical view as publically stated there is not a whole lot of interest in opposite gender couplings. And unending interest in same gender. This is not the case with the RC.
Read the article and got a laugh when I saw Randy Thomas’s comment on finding a TV actress cute. I once saw a guy go from gay to heterosexual to gay again in 30 seconds! He was in a gay bar when the Brittany Spear Pepsi commercial came on. He shouted out with lustful glee upon seeing her dance upon the screen. He then got hold of himself and returned to his regularly scheduled homosexual life style. Maybe there’s hope for Brittany Spear’s career yet in the ex-gay ministry.She seems to have been quite effecitve in his case anyway.