'Ex-gays': Religiously mediated change in homosexuals

Abstract

The authors evaluated 11 white men who claimed to have changed sexual orientation from exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality through participation in a pentecostal church fellowship. Religious ideology and a religious community offered the subjects a 'folk therapy' experience that was paramount in producing their change. On the average their self-identification as homosexual occurred at age 11, their change to heterosexual identification occurred at age 23, and their period of heterosexual identification at the time of this study was 4 years. The authors report 8 men became emotionally detached from homosexual in both behavior and intrapsychic process; 3 men were functionally heterosexual with some evidence of neurotic conflict. On the Kinsey 7-point sexual orientation scale all subjects manifested major before-after changes. Corollary evidence suggests that the phenomenon of substantiated change in sexual orientation without explicit treatment and/or long-term psychotherapy may be much more common than previously thought.