exercises in compound storytelling

Friday, December 12, 2008

Ex-Gays?


Richard Land's second radio program, For Faith and Family, recently broadcast a two-part interview with Stanton Jones, co-author with Mark Yarhouse of Ex-Gays? : A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation.

I found the second part (December 5) of the interview fascinating: Jones, who is among other things Provost of Wheaton College (the first part of the interview is devoted mostly to establishing his evangelical and academic bona fides) takes a rather more nuanced tack on the question of homosexuality as a sin/lifestyle/choice/identity/etc. than I expected from a guest on Richard Land's show.

As counterpoint I'd offer This American Life episode 204: 81 Words, a story by the amazing Alix Spiegel's grandfather's role in the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to consider homosexuality no longer a mental illness.

I guess all I'd say about all of this is that it seems really foreign to me as a mathematician/scientist; the whole discussion of homosexuality seems much more like a social construct than a dispassionate discussion of e.g. lab results.

Oh and: I'll predict that Stanton and Yarhouse's book will more or less vanish without a trace.

Update: Google Books has a preview here.

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