Studying Sexual Orientation Change: A Methodological Review of the Spitzer Study, “Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation?”

Abstract

ABSTRACT Robert L. Spitzer, MD, recently published a report, “Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation?: 200 Subjects Reporting a Change from Homosexual to Heterosexual Orientation.” He recruited men and women who reported to once have had a predominantly homosexual orientation–which they felt conflicted about–and who claimed, due to some kind of “therapy,” to have sustained some change to a heterosexual orientation for at least five years. “Therapy” in this study included either seeing a mental health professional, attending an ex-gay or other religious support group, bibliotherapy, repeated meetings with a heterosexual role model, or, without any external support, changing one's relationship to God. Spitzer interviewed his participants by telephone, asking 114 closed-ended and some open-ended questions, which were answered in about 45 minutes. Spitzer acknowledges that this approach has numerous limitations and discusses several of them in the paper. However, a careful methodologica...