Legislation is pending to ban so-called “conversion therapy” in the United Kingdom. Ruth Institute President Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., said: “The latest study by Fr. Paul Sullins, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate at the Ruth Institute, shows that Sexual Orientation Change Effort (SOCE) therapy does no harm, contrary to what is widely claimed.” SOCE is consistently misnamed “conversion therapy” by its opponents.
Fr. Sullins explained: “The journal Frontiers in Psychology published my latest study, which compares LGBT persons who have undergone SOCE with those who haven’t and finds no difference between the two groups for multiple measures of behavioral harm, including suicidal morbidity, psychological distress, self-harm, and substance abuse.”
Sullins continued: “The conclusion of my study contradicts a large number of studies that report substantial harm following SOCE, particularly increased suicidal behavior. But only four such studies used a representative (or random) sample, and all four failed to distinguish suicidal behavior before SOCE from that following it.”
“I found that suicidal behavior is much higher before SOCE (perhaps prompting the recourse to therapy) but not afterward. In fact, suicide attempts are significantly reduced following SOCE. This is the opposite of what is widely claimed.”
“For at least two of the four representative sample studies, the failure to account for pre-existing distress is not inadvertent, but intentional, by scholars who maintain that even prior distress invalidates SOCE. This backwards logic may bring about the very harm such scholars and advocates say they want to prevent.”
“It would be a perverse policy indeed, for example, for heart surgery to be discouraged or even banned because those undergoing it experienced higher rates of cardiac dysfunction than the general population before the surgery.”
Sullins concluded: “Concerns to restrict or ban SOCE due to elevated harm are unfounded.”
“Moreover,” Morse added, “such a law would limit patients’ freedom to get the therapy they consider best suited to their needs.”
Morse observed: “The ‘scientific consensus’ on SOCE is that talk therapy attempting to reorder patterns of sexual desire is intrinsically harmful and should be banned to protect the public. Fr. Sullins’ study is an important corrective to this narrative. In fact, his work strongly suggests that some of the material other scholars have published can be safely dismissed as ‘junk science.’”
“This is how the Sexual Revolutionaries have routinely operated: commission advocacy research to make a point, spread that work far and wide, marginalize any scholar who provides contrary evidence, and then declare that there’s a ‘scientific consensus.’ We are not going to let this latest episode pass unchallenged.”
Other notable findings include:
The SOCE participants experienced higher minority stress, negative childhood conditions, and lower socioeconomic status, all of which predict higher harm or lower well-being; yet, following SOCE, their level of harm was no higher than their peers who had not experienced these conditions. Thus, undergoing SOCE may very well alleviate or protect against harm from other causes.
Previous studies have reported lower suicidality following SOCE for those who also reported reduced same-sex attraction or behavior, i.e. they “converted” at least somewhat, but higher suicidality for those who did not. This is the first study to find no harm for persons who underwent SOCE yet remained strongly LGB in identity, behavior and attraction.
The study, “Absence of Behavioral Harm Following Non-efficacious Sexual Orientation Change Efforts: A Retrospective Study of United States Sexual Minority Adults, 2016–2018″ is available to read or download at no charge at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.823647/full.
Frontiers in Psychology, based in Switzerland, is described as “the largest journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the psychological sciences.” The data examined on sexual minority adults were collected by the Gallup Organization for the Williams Institute, a pro-gay research and advocacy institute at UCLA Law School, Los Angeles, California.
About the Ruth Institute
The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.
Jennifer Roback Morse has a Ph.D. in economics and has taught at Yale and George Mason University. She is the author of The Sexual State and Love and Economics – It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.
To get more information or schedule an interview with Dr. Morse, contact media@ruthinstitute.org.
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