Have you heard from Dr. Jacobs yet? We were at the same meeting this week but she disappeared before I could reach her. I would really prefer to have a face-to-face dialogue rather than one using public remarks, so I would appreciate your help.

Matt Foreman, executive director of the Task Force, when commenting on Bailey’s latest study (as reported by the New York Times), said “We remain stunned that The New York Times science section would carry such a shoddy, sensationalistic and downright insulting story. It and the profoundly flawed ‘study’ it purports to cover are laced with biased premises, misstatements and inaccuracies. It equates sexual orientation with sexual arousal, as supposedly measured by a crude device—considered highly suspect by researchers—in the hands of an individual with a long history of controversial research”

The Task Force challenged the equation of arousal with orientation, noting that “sexual orientation is defined by a combination of cognitive and physical responses, not just whether one’s genitals respond in a certain way to pornography.” Since the researchers’ thesis is that “for men, arousal is orientation,” the Task Force asked, “Does this mean that one-third of the participants had no sexual orientation?” (in Bailey’s study, 1/3 of the participants had NO reaction to either types of porn).

Indeed, such a reductionistic definition of sexual orientation leaves out important elements of human sexuality NOT easily measured by physical means, such as romantic love/attraction or self concept.

Ricky

1) I apologize. He was a Moonie for twenty years, and maried under their auspices. “He has been married for nearly 23 years — an arranged marriage that he said was suggested by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon when he and his wife were members of the Unification Church, to which they belonged for 20 years.” Wash Post last week.

2)Thank you. I can easily call Ruth, but I find email easier. I’d like to sit down and have coffee with her and try to talk things through before the next board meeting.

3) It’s interesting that Bailey did not mention that childhood video at all during the conference.

PPS – Dr. Beyer, did Bailey mention his study of childhood videos of gay men? I am curious if he mentioned the current status of that effort.

Regarding the ex-gay partner question, I think that would be an excellent research project. I may just do that.

I was wondering if you had an email address for Ruth Jacobs. When I Google her I get plenty of hits in association with you, and you’re not shy about providing contact info for yourself. But she is.

Thank you.

I think the best gauge of sexual arousal would be a response from the person supposedly doing the arousing (assuming it is a human being, of course. Let’s put fetishes aside for now).

I would expect most straight women would know quite clearly when a man has been aroused by them, and when it’s just play acting or an attempt to force the issue. But I don’t know how you can ethically run such an experiment. It’s hard enough to get funding for the less-than-perfect plethysmography experiments these days when there is no relationship involved.

Maybe we could have a number of “ex-gays” come forward and then we can canvass for the women with whom they had a relationship, and ask those women what they thought of the experience. Of course, the results can easily be skewed by the “ex-gays” having sex with women while fantasizing that the women are really men. I know that happens.

If the best the “ex-gay” movement can come up with for conversion is Richard Cohen, the Moonie with a Moonie marriage, well, that’s pretty convincing in and of itself.

Ah, the $64 question. Alas, I notice we’ve again moved onto discussing when or how arousal changes after slipping past the sale item in the “bargain bin”… what is arousal?

It isn’t hard to watch for three particular doubts in the “I’ve changed” testimonials etc. I’m going to leave out two another obvious ones — deliberate fraud, and the still developing “adolesent” sexuality you mentioned (which, of course, occurs at different rates for individuals even if most of us have well and truly settled by early adulthood).

> if “sexual orientation” is measured via, say, a 3 scale Klein: which scale/s measure the underlying sexual arousal? A seemingly sharp move along one scale (and zippo on the others) suggests what???

> an issue with the “name it and claim it” style of testimonials popular in some evangelical circles. Publically expressing what they hope will be is viewed as the first part of “true change”. On any objective measure this is wishful thinking, rather than change.

> upteen squillions of middle-age het. couples go into “fire up our dead marriage” courses/books etc — secular and religious, with professionals and snake-oil salesmen. Often these couples do indeed succeed in re-establishing their relationships with better communication, more affection, more sex, etc etc.

Did those couples just change and become more heterosexual along some scale? Using routine exgay framing of it, then yes they became more heterosexual. Or, in reality, did something other than their sexuality undergo a “change”?