Surfacing later this year, according to Truth Wins Out and the website Ex-Gay Watch, a new, biased, politically motivated, five-year "ex-gay" study called "The Thomas Project" will sing the praises of ex-gay therapy a la the controversial Dr. Stanton Jones. With this ultra-conservative, right wing religious "researcher" of Wheaton College at its helm, the study is promising to finally prove that ex-gay therapy actually works. But don't take it at its word. With its methodology involving phone calls to hand picked, ex-gay lobbyists and religious leaders, requesting information as to how and why they'd changed, these studies are absurd, at best, given the lack of clinical controls and lie detectors or other key physical measures to assess inaccuracy. Going one step further, while this anti-gay, homophobic cause already claims to cure hundreds of thousands of non-heteros, unconfirmed reports claim that the study recruited 150 participants at best! We pshaw any such non-academic and non-clinical research claiming to be worth a salt in terms of 'remedying' the 'curable' ailment of homosexuality.
In fact, despite 100 years of staunch effort, these "ex-gay" ministries, or shall we say miseries, have found no cure, as evidenced in human sexuality textbooks, the DVD Fish Can't Fly, and a recent episode of Fox's The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. Call it reparative, aversion, reorientation, or conversion therapy, you're not fixing anything, and there is no such thing as an ex-gay. As groups like the American Medical Association have stated, there is no published scientific evidence that supports the efficacy of treatment to change one's sexual orientation. Any therapies claiming such are not recommended for those with same sex attractions, especially given that since lesbians, gays, and bisexuals aren't ill, it makes absolutely no sense to cure them! Furthermore, groups like the American Psychiatric Association have stated that people who accept their sexual orientation are better adjusted. This isn't surprising when you consider that these ex-gay programs are often run by ex-gay workers who lack professional training, and who call their work "pastoral counseling."
Playing on the troubles of those struggling with their true sexual orientation, these programs have been decried unethical, unproven, unsafe, and abusive. With their either you-give-up-your- spirituality-or-sexuality sick game of forced choice, you're told that you're a failure, sinner, bad person, unacceptable, and not worthy of love if you choose the latter. Combine this emotionally abusive "there's something wrong with you" with the attitude of "my sexuality is superior to yours" and "God doesn't love gays" and you've got one form of covert sexual abuse. Deemed a fallacy and failure by even some open-minded religious leaders themselves, these efforts are based on false psychology and poor Biblical interpretation. You're not changing one's orientation; you're just making someone feel guilty about it.
In light of the ex-gay movement's track record thus far, the aforementioned study's credibility, as well as that of the ex-gay movement's, ought to fall under the harsh light of scrutiny if not outright ban. Given, too, its unscientific methodology and the fact that several ex-gay leaders, like John Paulk, who was busted in a Washington, D.C. gay bar after claiming he shed his homosexual desires, have been the center of highly public sex scandal cases, we think they may be the ones in need of a cure.