"The Devil Made Me Do It"

I watched Senator Craig's speech in Boise today. What little possibility that I entertained that he might, indeed, have been "misunderstood" is gone. The tone that I heard--a bit of self-righteous indignation that sounded terribly insincere--as he insisted that he isn't a homosexual reminded me way too much of, "I never had relations with that woman!"

Craig used an awful lot of passive voice constructions about the shame that he has brought onto his family, his office, and Idaho. That's not a sign that he has come to grips with who was at fault--either in his actions in the restroom, his attempt to use his office to avoid charges, or his decision to plead guilty.

Worse was his attempt to redirect blame for his decision to plead guilty to the lesser charge. Those of you above a certain age may recall the comedian Flip Wilson's famous excuse, "The devil made me do it!" Senator Craig is blaming his incredibly bad decision to plead guilty, in the hopes of making the more serious charge go away, on what he characterizes as eight months of the Idaho Statesman harassing him about the rumors that have been floating around.

Now, the parallel of the Idaho Statesman to the Prince of Darkness has some merit to it; so does the attempt to blame sinful decisions on others, rather than accepting personal responsibility for a decision so astonishingly bad that it makes me think of the Charge of the Light Brigade. The Idaho Statesman, to their credit, was the only major paper in Idaho that did not discuss the rumors last year about Craig's homosexuality.

The Statesman asked questions of Senator Craig over the last few months that included the very serious but not particularly credible claim that someone had sex with Senator Craig in a public restroom in Union Station in Washington, DC. So his response when he gets arrested under very similar circumstances is to try to bluff his way out with his business card, then hopes that pleading guilty to a lesser charge will make it "go away"?

Many very sensible, intelligent, disciplined people out there manage to confine all the madness, obsession, and self-control problems to one little corner of their lives. (In my case, it's my home office.) For Senator Craig--like a fair number of others--it appears to be their sexuality, and things that relate to it.

I wrote a letter to his office earlier today strongly encouraging Senator Craig to resign his position. At a minimum, his guilty plea shows an enormous inability to make good decisions--probably because it is tied to his sexuality, and fear of its exposure. I also pointed out that he is going to need the time to work through some of his issues. And there is hope for him.

Robert L. Spitzer is the professor of psychiatry who played a vital role in getting homosexuality removed from DSM-III, the American Psychiatric Association's standard for defining mental illness. A few years back, Professor Spitzer became curious to know if reparative therapy (which purports to help homosexuals turn straight) worked. His paper, "Can some gay men and lesbians change their sexual orientation? 200 participants reporting a change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation," Archives of Sexual Behavior 32.5 (Oct 2003): p403-18, asked that question.

Spitzer surveyed 143 males and 57 females who had been primarily homosexual in orientation, had gone through various forms of reparative therapy, and were at least five years post-therapy. These were mostly not people that had fought with homosexual urges, but were actively engaged:

Although all of the participants had been sexually attracted to members of the same sex, a small proportion had never engaged in consensual homosexual sex (males, 13%; females, 4%; [chi square](1) = 3.2, p < .10). Significantly more males than females had engaged in consensual homosexual sex with more than 50 different sexual partners during their lifetime (males, 34%; females, 2%; [chi square](1) = 20.6, p < .001). Significantly more males than females had not experienced consensual heterosexual sex before the therapy effort (males, 53%; females, 33%; [chi square](1) = 5.6, p < .025).

The survey group were homosexuals who were highly motivated, and were uncomfortable with their homosexuality--and they were far more successful than Professor Spitzer had expected in changing not just their behavior but their preference:

The mean of the Sexual Attraction Scale for both males and females at PRE was in the very high homosexual range: males, 91 (SD = 19.8); females, 88 (SD = 13.8), t(198) : 1.3, ns. The mean of the Sexual Orientation Self-Identity Scale for both males and females at PRE was also in the very high homosexual range: males, 77 (SD = 24.5); females, 76.5 (SD = 26.7), t(183) < sd =" 21.4);" sd =" 14.5);" n =" 57)" n =" 139)" sd =" 14.5);" sd =" 8.1);">To compare the amount of change from PRE to POST, the PRE values were subtracted from the POST values. On the Sexual Attraction Scale, the mean change in females was 80 (n = 57; SD = 20), significantly more than that in males, 67.8 (n = 143; SD = 20; t(198) = -3.6, p < .001). On the Sexual Orientation Self-Identity Scale, the mean change in males was 68.1 (n = 131 ; SD = 28.3), not significantly different from the change in females, 73.4, (n = 52; SD = 29.3; t(181) = -1.1.

This wasn't a sudden change, either, nor was it done after a few dalliances with homosexuality:

The mean age at onset of sexual arousal to the same sex was 12 years (SD = 2.9). About 18 years (SD = 7.8) later, at age 30, was the beginning of the therapy that they found helpful. The mean duration from the onset of the therapy to the participant beginning to feel a change in their sexual orientation was 1.9 (SD = 1.9) years. At the time of the interview, 21% (n = 42) reported that they were still involved in some form of reparative therapy, usually referring to continuing to attend an ex-gay support group or, on their own, having a life-long struggle with the underlying issues that they believed were related to their becoming homosexual. For these participants, the mean duration of therapy up until the interview was 15.0 (SD = 7.7) years. For the 79% (n = 158) of the participants who were no longer involved in any type of reparative therapy, the mean duration of the therapy was 4.7 (SD = 3.5) years.

Now, Spitzer is careful not to overplay this. He reports that some of them still would have occasional lusts for the opposite sex. But it does appear that homosexuality doesn't have to be a life sentence--at least for those who are sincerely interested in change.