Focus on the Family also insists that their Truth Wins Out works. All these programs are is behavior modification. "Appropriate" behavior is rewarded. Inappropriate behavior can be ignored or punished. The problem is that if there is no intrinsic reinforcement (comes from inside the person whose behavior is being modified.) it does not last unless extrinsic reinforcers continue to be used, essentially a life long program that rewards the desired behavior sort of akin to the chips given in 12-step programs. But it works for the rightwingers because deep down they don't believe that homosexual orientation exists. They acknowledge that a few people might be attracted to the same sex but generally write it up to abuse or lonlieness. If you call it behavior, you can modify it.

This kind of program was most memorably used in teaching autistic children to ride a tricycle. The researcher kept a spoonful of jam just out of the child's reach until he pedaled the distance the researcher wanted. The child rode the trike with his mouth open for his jam. If the program was successful, riding the trike became something that the child liked to do, so he kept doing it without the jam. Bike riding became intrinsically motivating.

Operant condtioning as a formal program has been used at least since the 1960s and was formally codified by B.F. Skinner, a psychologist who taught dogs to salivate when a bell rang.

Now if a person is gay, heterosexual behavior will never become self reinforcing and abstinence has no intrinsic reward other than feeling like the victim is being (self?) righteous. So the new behavior is not going to stick if it is generalized to settings that don't provide rewards stronger than the desire for intimacy with a same sex fellow or worse, that reinforce homosexual behavior---such as when one of Focus on the Family's employees got caught by an Advocate writer in a gay bar. He was re-trained, but eventually came out and was fired by Focus.

Another thought in these studies is that some of the "successful" clients were probably not gay to begin with, just questioning. They had limited sexual experience. I have seen that with Dobson's successes. A lot of people experiment with gay sex. So, beyond the "scientific" method, I doubt if there was any scientific, random selection of participants in the study.

Fundies lost another one when the administration of Baylor University (Southern Baptist in Waco,
TX)tried to begin a School of Creation Science, offering even graduate degrees.
A professor of Biology, Dr. Eric Duhrkopf, raised a furor about it. He even made a major, front-page story in the Houston CHRONICLE. There was some serious "egg-on-face" suffered by the Southern Baptist fundies. University integrity was maintained.
See INHERIT THE WIND, starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March to get a picture of the 1920s Scopes "monkey" trial about a Tennessee teacher who wanted to teach Darwin in addition to the school required as science God creating the earth in 6, 24-hour days.

Thanks for expanding on the Jones study, which Examiner.com reported earlier. Glad to learn that funding for this bogus research has stopped. It was hardly a real-world study since it was confined to people who already had signed up Exodus International's so-called counseling. And even among those people, the most they could achieve was celibacy, more or less. But if they read their Bibles closely, they may be disappointed to learn that "lust in the heart" is just as sinful as actually committing the act. So if you're going to define homosexuality as sin rather than as an expression of God's diverse creation, be prepared for failure. Your daydreams or night dreams will rat you out.
The sad part is this study will be hushed up or distorted so as to lure more people into the blind alleys of the Ex-Gay movement. And some young people will be pushed into psychosis or suicide. Self-loathing people, accept yourselves and make joyful use of the different capacity for love that you have been blessed with.

The study was presented orally at a conference sub-group meeting, NOT published -- a telling fact, as well. Many fine scientific papers are first presented, then published. This paper, however, has been presented and will not be published in a peer-reviewed journal for many of the reasons that Mr Hudson has discussed, but basically because it's just bad science.