Straight Talk

Some people argue that heterosexuals change all the time. For example, when they're sent to prison.

Shidlo: If someone who started out as a heterosexual is sent to prison, they might change their behavior, but they haven't changed their orientation. For thousands of years, gay people have changed their behavior in order to adapt and hide-and that's feasible. If therapists say they can help people become celibate, that's a very different thing. But changing desire, that's difficult, and I don't think there's evidence that when heterosexuals leave prison, they don't resume being heterosexuals.

Your results seems to be directly at odds with Spitzer's findings. Why?

Shidlo: Spitzer only sought successes-he wasn't looking for failures. What's surprising is that only 66 percent [of those in Spitzer's study] turned out to be true successes.

Schroeder: You also have to be really careful about defining what success means. In addition to our six, there were an additional 18 people who deemed themselves successes, but they were continuing to struggle with homosexual desire, or were celibate, or didn't know how to describe themselves. Some were still in therapy-but considered themselves a success. That's like saying you succeeded at losing weight while on a liquid diet. The real question is, when you stop the diet, will the results last over the long term? We had a number of people who said that at one point, they were hopeful and happy and thought the therapy was a success. But later, they realized it hadn't worked. We had one person referred to us as a success. But 14 months after he stopped therapy, he did not see himself as a success anymore.

Your research seems to indicate that this kind of therapy can be harmful. Talk about that.