NEW ORLEANS, La. (Reuters) - A study released on Wednesday concluded that many homosexuals can change their sexual orientation through counseling, but another said most attempts to counsel change fail and some are harmful.
The research, unveiled at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, quickly became part of a long-running debate over whether homosexuality is a matter of choice.
Columbia University psychiatrist Robert Spitzer said he interviewed 143 men and 57 women who underwent so-called "reparative" counseling and found that 66 percent of the men and 44 percent of the women reported "good heterosexual functioning."
"Like most psychiatrists I thought that homosexual behavior could only be resisted and that no one could really change their sexual orientation," Spitzer said. "I now believe that to be false. Some people can and do change."
Homosexuals had to be "highly motivated" for the counseling, which can be psychological or religious, to achieve the goal of changing their sexual orientation, he said.
The APA put out a statement distancing itself from Spitzer's findings, saying there was no "publishable scientific evidence" showing that therapy could change a person's sexual orientation.
In the second study, New York City psychologists Ariel Shidlo and Michael Schroeder said just six of 202 gay men and lesbians they interviewed reported changing their orientation to heterosexual after counseling.
Of the rest, 178 said they had not changed and 18 reported becoming asexual or sexually confused. Schroeder called for long-term research to determine the efficacy of counseling, which he said can leave patients depressed and suicidal if it does not change them.
"For those who fail, there is an enormous sense of internalized shame about it," Schroeder said.
Gay groups attacked the Spitzer study as tainted, pointing out that most of the patients were referred to him by groups which encourage homosexuals to become heterosexual.
Tim McFeeley, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, called Spitzer's study "snake oil packaged as science" and accused him of being in bed with the religious right, which crusades against homosexuality.
"The general public and virtually every legitimate medical group has come to know that sexual orientation is not a disease that can be cured by reparative therapy or by religious extremism," he said.
But supporters said Spitzer's study raised important questions. "We have always heard that homosexuality is innate and immutable. This suggests that it is neither," said Dean Byrd, vice president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH.
The study was particularly significant, he said, because Spitzer led a 1973 task force to remove homosexuality from the APA's official list of mental disorders, in effect saying it did not require treatment.
He downplayed the findings of Shidlo and Schroeder, saying: "You can get whatever you go after."
McFeeley said NARTH, based in Encino, California, was anti-gay,
but Byrd said it was an organization of scientists who believe homosexuality
may be a matter of choice.
©May 9 2001 9:03PM