The Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) East Region Conference is this weekend. I am taking a van full of students up to the Rhodes Grove Conference Center in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The conference theme is Marriage and Family: Christian Integration in the 21st Century. The schedule is available here. What is particularly fun about this conference is that my colleague, Dr. Jen Ripley, is giving the main plenary addresses, and I am giving the other plenary address. Her talks are titled “Research in couples Reflections from a Christian psychologist” and “Relationship counseling Hope for the future.”

My plenary address is titled “Christian integration in family therapy: Functioning, relationship, and identity.” I’ll be talking about the themes from the integrative Christian family therapy chapter from the Family Therapies book that came out this past winter.

I am also providing a presentation with two doctoral students and ISSI team members on the topic of multicultural competence for working with sexual minority clients.

CAPS East is usually a smaller venue. It provides students with a good opportunity to give a professional talk – a paper or poster presentation – without it being a really large audience. Also, those who attend tend to be really supportive of students who are beginning to form their own professional identity. It is usually a very positive experience for everyone involved, and I’m looking forward to the time with students and colleagues.

I returned this morning from the Andrews University Marriage, Homosexuality and the Church conference. The conference continues on today with what I understand will be more discussions of biblical theology. Live feed and brief commentary (tweets) on the conference is available through The Spectrum.

The conference appeared to be designed for conservatives within the Adventist community to discuss and reflect on the scientific, theological, and legal/public policy issues related to the topic of gay marriage. In light of the conference design and structure, it was not so much a dialogue among people with radically different perspectives. In fact, with the exception of one panel that had one dissenting voice, it seemed to me that the conference provided more of an update and points of discussion for primarily conservatives within the community.

In any case, on Thursday night I was asked to step in for Dr. Stanton Jones who was scheduled to give the opening plenary address. That address dealt with claims of homosexuality being innate and immutable. I reviewed some of the most recent research intended to support the biological hypothesis that is often pointed to in an effort to establish homosexuality as innate. I also discussed recent studies on natural fluidity among females in particular, as well as a study I was involved in that demonstrated average meaningful (although modest) gains in change efforts along a continuum away from homosexuality for some (and toward heterosexuality for some). Both natural fluidity and the data on change attempts challenge claims of immutability.

On Friday I gave the original paper I had already been asked to deliver. I spoke about the development and synthesis of sexual identity, essentially reviewing data on how people come to identify themselves as gay (or choose not to claim such an identity). I made a three-tier distinction between same-sex attraction, a homosexual orientation, and a gay identity and then discussed the pastoral applications for those who are navigating sexual identity conflicts.

Dr. Robert Gagnon spoke Friday night on the topic of biblical texts and themes associated with homosexual behavior. I’d read Gagnon’s work prior to the conference, and his book The Bible and Homosexual Practice is widely considered the most comprehensive treatment of the subject. I have also found his dialogue (Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views) on these text with Dan Via to be helpful and more accessible to non academics. In any case, Gagnon’s talk on Friday night developed themes that have arisen from revisionist attempts to reinterpret key texts or draw conclusions based upon certain observations (e.g., the claim that Jesus never spoke to the topic of homosexuality). He offered a good, clear presentation of his argument. If anything, he had to cut short what he could have spoken on for a couple of more hours.

Friday evening’s events closed with a panel discussion that allowed for questions and answers from the audience on matters of law/public policy, psychology and counseling and pastoral care, and theology.

I understand that today’s sessions will continue to cover biblical theology and related matters. Again, the conference can be followed on-line through The Spectrum, for those who are interested. Update: David Hamstra (see comment below) also has a collection of concise summaries of each presentation/panel.

Andrews University is hosting a conference on Marriage, Homosexuality and the Church. The conference is scheduled for October 15-17, 2009. Andrews University is a school of the Seventh-day Adventist church. As with many faith communities, the Seventh-day Adventist church has been struggling with the topic of homosexuality. This conference is bringing together scholars from a number of different disciplines to discuss some of the issues the conference organizers saw as central to the church discussions.

I will be presenting a paper titled “Pastoral Applications of a Three-Tier Distinction between Same-Sex Attraction, a Homosexual Orientation, and a Gay Identity.” I will also participate in a panel discussion and will be discussing how the church responds to enduring conditions.

Other presenters include Stanton L. Jones (Wheaton College), Richard M. Davidson (Andrews University), and Robert A. J. Gagnon (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary).

Here’s a topic that creates anxiety for most parents. I don’t know too many parents who feel confident in this area or who even have a game plan for what they intend to do when the time comes.

I was asked to speak to parents this weekend on the topic of sex education. The title of the talk is “Talking to Your Kids About Sex: What to Say, When, and Why.” If others are interested in this subject, I am basing the talk on the books series God’s Design for Sex, which includes the book by Stan and Brenna Jones, How and When to Tell Your Kids About Sex (Baker Books). I think this is by far the best Christian resource/series on the topic. The series also includes four other booklets for children/teens based on their age and addressing appropriate topics in a way that is accessible to where they are developmentally. Indeed, the first two of these booklets, Before I was Born and The Story of Me, are actually read to children by the parent, while the next one, What’s the Big Deal, is read in parts as a kind of script between a parent and child. The last one, Facing the Facts, is for teens is read and then the parent and teen can discuss it together.

There are many reasons this series is the best available. The booklets are age-appropriate, provide accurate information, and address relevant topics. The series as a whole is not geared toward having “the talk”; rather, the focus is on character formation from a young age. So there is an emphasis on education/knowledge, but also on recognizing needs, equipping kids with relevant skills, and providing them with parental and peer group support.

Erica Tan and I spoke today at the Regent University PsyD Colloquia Series. We discussed the clinical applications of the longitudinal study of attempted change in sexual orientation through religious ministries. I was struck by several things:

• There are people on both “sides” of these discussions who genuinely care about the people who are sorting out sexual and religious identity conflicts;
• When research is conducted on people’s experience in various religious ministries, it can feel threatening to some members of the gay community, who want to make sure that the people they care about are protected;
• It is good to hear directly from those people;
• It is encouraging when one person does not dismiss another person but instead listens and then shares their own experiences.

Several audience members came up afterward to express their gratitude for the way in which the material was conveyed. Many people thought it was going to be a combative meeting, with people glaring at one another from both sides. One person said he thought from what he had heard that I had three heads and was some kind of monster. One person shared that if he had met more people like some of the students in the audience, he might still be a Christian. Many people just had tears in their eyes.

What happened? A lot of different things happened. But we acknowledged the different stakeholders in these kinds of discussions, and we reviewed the data, recognizing the limitations and various interpretations. We also shared some information on the approach we take to working with sexual minorities who are navigating their sexual identity in light of their religious identity. This included sharing some of the real-life challenges past clients have shared with us. There was at least 30 minutes for questions and answers, and that gave many audience members the chance to ask questions, share their experiences, and clarify potential misunderstandings.

There is much to be gained from listening to one another and being respectful to one another. This doesn’t mean we will agree on everything, but it does keep us from talking past one another or from pushing an agenda that overlooks the people (from various communities) who have a stake in the discussion. I hope that this is the beginning of an ongoing discussion.

The 2009-2010 Regent University Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology Colloquia Series begins this Friday. I was asked if I would give a talk that goes over the findings from the Ex-Gays? study (or Exodus study, the 6-year longitudinal study of attempted change in sexual orientation through involvement in Exodus ministries). The talk is really on the clinical implications of the study. I am going to present with Dr. Erica S. N. Tan. Dr. Tan is a former student and now colleague who works with sexual identity issues, too, and she and I follow a similar approach. In any case, we will go over the major findings from the Ex-Gays? study and then discuss what we know and don’t know based on this research (and other studies), as well as what we recommend for clinical practice. This point about recommendations will include a discussion of the recent APA task force background document that informed recent policy on appropriate therapeutic responses to sexual orientation.

The American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) world conference is this week in Nashville. It is held at the Opryland Hotel and Conference Center. I just arrived last night and am getting ready to co-lead a pre-conference workshop today with Jim Sells. The session is titled “Christian Family Therapy.” We are presenting on an integrative approach to family therapy, drawing on our recent book Family Therapies.

On Friday I’ll be co-presenting a workshop on “Working with Mixed Sexual Orientation Couples.” I’ll be presenting with Jill Kays, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Regent, and we will be discussing some of the characteristics of mixed orientation relationships, as well as present a framework for counseling that address some of the unique considerations that come up when working with these couples.

Dr. Warren Throckmorton and I recently launched the new Sexual Identity Therapy Framework website for those interested in learning more about the framework and for those who are looking for resources.

Also, we launched the SIT Framework listserv and invite people to join in on discussion and announcements related to the framework.

The listserv portal is here:

Click to join sexualidentitytherapy

The listserv discussions will focus largely on professional and related ministry issues.

The next chapter (Chapter 4) dealt with the outcomes from the studies that met the criteria for review set forth by the Task Force. They believed that the change efforts had several goals, and this chapter is organized around a discussion of the findings in each of the following areas:

• Decreased interest in, sexual attraction to, and sexual behavior with same-sex sexual partners
• Increased interest in, sexual attraction to, and sexual behavior with other-sex sexual partners
• Increased healthy relationships and marriages with other-sex partners
• Improved quality of life and mental health (p. 35)

The Task Force addressed much of the existing data on SOCE and organized the review in a way that I think is accessible to the reader. I thought that the critique of the Exodus study (or Ex-Gays? study by myself and Stan Jones) in a later footnote was particularly unusual, reflecting disproportionate methodological criticisms that may reflect to the reader a bias. The approach to this study was apparently due to a number of considerations, e.g., that the report did not appear in a peer-reviewed journal. However, the task force cited other studies that were presented in book format throughout their report (e.g., Kinsey studies, Laumann et al. study, which had spin off reports while the core of the material was presented in book format) and did not exclude them from consideration as valuable for informing the report. Also, the way the footnote was written appeared to throw the book at the study without really explaining the criticisms (as I mentioned in my previous post – without acknowledging ways in which it was an improvement in design to previous studies). This was particularly surprising given the attempt throughout much of the rest of the report to be evenhanded in responding to the literature in this controversial area.

I think that worldview commitments and assumptions impact how all of us reach and frame conclusions on this literature. The report used words like “limits claims for the efficacy and safety” (p. 42), which I think is accurate; but it also uses words like “very small minority” regarding “enduring change” and “rare” to describe “decreased same-sex sexual behavior and increased attraction to and engagement in sexual behavior with the other sex…” (p. 43). Again, regarding the older studies, they were conducted in ways that are comparable to how other studies were conducted at that time, and so we would not expect them to meet present-day standards for evaluation. The lack of methodological rigor does not disprove success but would rather suggest the need for better studies for those who are interested in continuing to offer such interventions.

The report concludes that “non-aversive and recent approaches to SOCE have not been rigorously evaluated” (p. 43). Again, I agree with this, but I think some studies (e.g., Jones & Yarhouse, 2007) have challenged the claim sexual orientation is immutable as modest gains through involvement in religious ministries (clinical meaningful and statistically significant changes to attractions, behavior, and identity over time, as noted above) were documented over time.

Let me take a break from my review of the APA task force report on appropriate therapeutic responses to sexual orientation to point out the new on-line Discover article on efforts to change sexual orientation.

There is an interesting quote from the chair of the task force on the Exodus study:

“Everything was wrong with that study,” Glassgold says. “[Yarhouse and Stanton] chose the wrong statistics to evaluate, they violated statistical laws, and they didn’t have a control group—just a small sample of people recruited from religious groups. They followed the individuals over a couple of years, but didn’t specify that the subjects should only try one intervention at a time, so they tried many at the same time. So we aren’t sure which, if any, intervention was causal.”

This critique of our study (as it is reported in this article) is overstated and simply fails to acknowledge ways in which the study was an improvement in design to previous studies (e.g., longitudinal, prospective [Phase 1 participants], use of multiple measures of sexual orientation and sexual identity, symptom distress, etc.). The study also had a good retention rate (~75% over a three year span). The comment on preferred statistical analyses is incorrect. More sophisticated analyses would have been important had we been comparing different groups of participants to see if they responded to the ministry differently over time. That was not the point of the study; rather, we were interested in falsifying a theory that there would be a uniformly negative effect, which would have shown up with the statistical analyses we used.

While this kind of dismissal of the study is unwarranted, I think the potential misuse of our study comes from those who want to see in it categorical change (completely gay to completely straight). We reported meaningful shifts (for some) along a continuum, and this should be nuanced in light of the retrospective and prospective aspects of the study. It would make sense to me to have ministries begin there (the possibility of meaningful shifts along a continuum for some) and keep expectations realistic.