Straight Talk

Did the patients indicate whether their therapists had strong moral positions on homosexuality? Or were they neutral on the topic?

Shidlo: Empirically, we found the majority of the therapists these consumers saw were very anti-gay and thought homosexuality was really horrible and disgusting.

The bible of the psychotherapeutic world-the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-hasn't listed homosexuality for decades. So why do therapists still offer conversion help?

Shidlo: For one thing, there's a demand for the service. Secondly, there's a sizable group of people in our field [psychiatry] whose religious and moral beliefs tell them that a homosexual orientation is sinful or socially bad-and those are the therapists offering these services. We asked our subjects if their therapists had discussed the APA position with them, and the majority said no. The ones who said yes said their therapists spoke about it with contempt and told them it wasn't based on science but the activism of gays. There are a group of professionals out there who refuse to look at the empirical basis for these changes in the field.

Do you expect the APA to reconsider its position opposing conversion therapy as a result of these studies?

Shidlo: No-but we should consider doing a lot more studies with a lot of different samples. This kind of research is very hard to do, and it's hard to find a representative sample. We need to do more longitudinal studies that follow people from the beginning to the end of their therapy and for significant periods after that.