For this study, the doctors also wanted participants who had gone through conversion therapy but this time they looked for them randomly, via the Internet, newspaper ads and groups offering reparative counseling. The interviews were 90 minutes long, twice the length of Spitzer s. Of the 202 individuals we interviewed, only six people or 3 percent achieved what you and I would think of as a successful shift. That tells me that this kind of heterosexual shift is difficult and extremely rare. And I should add, five of those six made their living as conversion counselors and do a lot of speaking on this topic.
Some people argue that heterosexuals change all the time.
For example, when they re sent to prison. If someone who started out as a heterosexual is sent to prison, they might change their behavior, but they haven t changed their orientation. For thousands of years, gay people have changed their behavior in order to adapt and hide and that s feasible. If therapists say they can help people become celibate, that s a very different thing. Your results seems to be directly at odds with Spitzer s findings.