African-Americans have a higher incidence of hypertension (high blood pressure) than do Africans living in Africa. How ought we to solve this serious U.S. health problem?
Perhaps we should ship all hypertensive blacks back to Africa?
Such a proposal is extreme if not downright racist. But this, by analogy, is exactly what Yvette Schneider and her employer, the Family Research Council, propose for gay Americans: for the sake of their own emotional and spiritual health, ship all homosexuals back to the homeland of heterosexuality.
After her rambling retelling of her dysfunctional life, Schneider took a few questions before the meeting was abruptly halted. (Too bad Voces didn't figure out in advance how to maintain control during the Q&A period.) As part of one answer, Schneider cited a study that indicated that 71.6 percent of homosexuals seeking treatment have successfully managed the middle passage back to heterosexuality. But a look at this study shows how extremist and desperate Schneider and her supporters are.
"Masters and Johnson reported a 71.6 percent success rate for patients leaving homosexuality after a follow-up of six years." <www.frc.org/infocus/if98k2hs.html>. The statistic comes from M&J's 1979 Homosexuals in Perspective. A study already two decades old might give one pause as a major source for citation, all the more so given that M&J have been roundly criticized concerning their methodologies and supposed impartiality. (Clients paid M&J; M&J in turn sought to please their clients.)
Nothing, however, should stand in the way of a good statistic, and in the very last chapter the FRC finds gold dust. On pages 400 et passim, we read of a failure rate of 28.4 percent for 54 men and 13 women who underwent psychoanalytic treatment for "homosexual dissatisfaction" (M&J's term). Statisticians can argue over whether this is a representative sample. M&J, though, add a caveat of their own. "The Institute staff have completed only six years of five-year follow-ups. For years of observation remain. There may be additional conversion or reversion clients who return to homosexuality. However, an overall treatment failure rate of more than 45 percent for homosexual dissatisfaction is considered unlikely." (401) Hence, at best a success rate of around 55 percent, not 71.6 percent.
These people are seeking treatment because they are dissatisfied with their attraction to members of the same sex. Even so, M&J refused treatment to sixteen persons. Why? Nine persons had "insufficient motivation for alteration of [their] sexual preference." Two were psychotic. Three had female partners who were neurotic or psychotic. Two had lied on their applications. All sixteen were shown the door. (342)
"If the motivation for sex-preference alteration only developed in apparent response to social threat, the research team felt insecure about the prospects for a permanent therapeutic result and therefore was particularly careful in client selection." (335) From a total sample of 83, only the most promising 67 clients were accepted, thus reducing the sample by almost 20 percent. And M&J predicted more than two out of five of their most promising clients would not have their sex-preference altered. In short: fewer than half of the original client pool was successfully treated. (See Martin Duberman's review of Homosexuals in Perspective in the June 16, 1979 issue of The New Republic. Duberman: "To call such a sample 'skewed' hardly does justice to the matter; the selected subjects were so ripe for change, they would likely turn yellow at first glance. The real surprise is that more did not [change].")
So this is the study on "homosexual healing" to which Schneider directs our attention. The power to change? More like you cower to change.
Change has been occurring, of course, just not the kind Schneider and the FRC welcome. The American landscape has been growing more tolerant of gay issues. "Will and Grace" is one of television's most popular shows. Homosexual dissatisfaction arises less and less as a result of social threat. Many gay people are perfectly happy being gay, some choose to be gay and Christian, and their straight allies stand beside them. There is less and less need for reparative therapies in America today.
That is, of course, if you're not a conservative Christian. For some, the only cure will remain a journey back to the heterosexual homeland. I wish Schneider and her ilk all the success in the world on a passage that is long, arduous, more times than not unsuccessful, and far too often fatal. I hope she is happy in her new-found home.
I also hope that the good Christian people who have outfitted the ex-gay boat for this middle passage recognize how fraught the journey is. (They must if they so willfully misuse the scholarly sources available to them.) The "defenders of Biblical faith" should thank God every day of their lives that they will never have to sail on the rickety ship they've erected for homosexuals. And they do need to accept that their well-intentioned and deeply-held beliefs do create an environment that makes life difficult for all gay people, just as their theological predecessors made life difficult for all blacks.
In the meantime, let us all continue to work to change the environment in this homeland. One day -- maybe 500 years from now? -- African-American hypertension will be a thing of the past. Here's hoping that reparative therapy soon will be also.
