An Analysis of the Media Response to the Spitzer Study

ABSTRACT

This study is an attempt to “connect the dots” between the political, cultural, and psychotherapeutic worlds that collide when the issue of “ex-gays” and “reparative therapies and ministries” become part of the public discourse. In May 2001, Robert L. Spitzer, MD, presented a study on sexual orientation which claimed that some highly motivated individuals, employing religious or psychotherapeutic means, could make substantial changes in more than one indicator of sexual orientation. Before the study's findings were presented at the annual gathering of the American Psychiatric Association in New Orleans, the study and its conclusions–although they had not yet been peer reviewed, let alone published–were leaked to the news media. Promoters of so-called “conversion therapies” and organized opponents of gay and lesbian civil rights claimed Spitzer's study validated what they'd been saying all along: that gays and lesbians “choose” homosexuality and that they can be “cured.” Voices from the gay community criticized the study's author, methodology and conclusions, and focused attention on the exploitation of the study by antigay political groups. After the story broke, news coverage focused on Spitzer's study as the latest development in the ongoing struggle around gay and lesbian civil rights, with pro-gay and antigay spokespeople debating the issues on television and in print. To examine the impact of media coverage of “reparative therapy” and “conversion ministries,” this paper explores the nature of the “ex-gay” movement itself; previous efforts of the ex-gay movement to frame the issues of the debate; the routines of the media institutions that are the primary conduits of this debate; and as a case study, media coverage of the Spitzer study and public response to that coverage. This paper concludes that media routines dictate that coverage of scientific issues which intersect with political or cultural ones tend to minimize the science and focus instead on the political or cultural “conflict.” Unfortunately, this tendency marginalizes legitimate scientific insights and promotes simplistic, misrepresentative interpretations of complex issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Advertising
• ex-gay
• Exodus International
• Family Research Council
• gay
• GLAAD
• homosexuality
• lesbian
• media coverage
• NARTH
• reparative therapy
• sexual conversion therapy
• Robert Spitzer