title: "Ex-Gays": Religiously mediated change in homosexuals.
abstract: The authors evaluated 11 white men who claimed to have changed sexual orientation from exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality through participation in a pentecostal church fellowship. Religious ideology and a religious community offered the subjects "folk therapy" experience that was paramount in producing their change. On the average their self-identification as homosexual occurred at age 11, their change to heterosexual identification occurred at age 23, and their period of heterosexual identification at the time of this study was 4 years. The authors report 8 men became emotionally detached from homosexual identity in both behavior and intrapsychic process; 3 men were functionally heterosexual with some evidence of neurotic conflict. On the Kinsey 7-point sexual orientation scale all subjects manifested major before-after changes. Corollary evidence suggests that the phenomenon of substantiated changed in sexual orientation without explicit treatment and/or long-term psychotherapy may be more more common than previously thought.
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003419:Crisis Intervention; D006716:Homosexuality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage; D008875:Middle Aged; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D012917:Social Adjustment