This reviewer, Mr. Jeramy Townsley, obviously has a remarkable grasp on a wide array of literature in this field.  We felt quite challenged in reading this review (and learned a few things too!).  To have whole chapters affirmed by the reviewer, given his obvious strong commitment to his views and the controversial nature of this complicated area, was encouraging indeed.  In fact, it is worth noting that there were four major areas of scientific inquiry that we reviewed in our book Homosexuality (prevalence, etiology, status as a psychopathology, and change).  This reviewer praised our treatment of two areas (prevalence and etiology), did not directly address one (change) except to note with seeming approval our conclusion, and then severely criticized our treatment of one chapter/topic (that being status as a psychopathology).  Three out of four topics passed muster: not a bad batting average overall!

In hopes of advancing understanding, and despite our gratitude for the affirming comments of the reviewer, let us engage some of the critical points made by this reviewer.  Lacking the time to engage all of Mr. Townsley’s many criticisms, we will here briefly explore several big issues, examine one specific charge of "bordering on fraudulent presentation," and then cover a few specific points. 

The "Third Revisionist Option"

At the broadest level, the most important and yet most casual criticism leveled by Mr. Townsley was his first one: that we "create a false dichotomy" and "caricaturize" pro-gay Christians who claim to take biblical authority seriously by saying that they must believe that either the Bible is wrong or vague about the morality of homosexual action.  Mr. Townsley raises a third "revisionist position" that he claims we failed to consider, that third position being that "contemporary interpretations of an anti-gay message in the Scripture are mistaken." 

But, as we argue in the concluding chapter of the book, our position is simply that the Scriptures present a clear moral response to homosexual behavior, that being unequivocal condemnation. Mr. Townsley’s allusions to scriptural treatments of such subjects as slavery and women notwithstanding, the simple reality is that the past several decades of argument about the testimony of Scripture on this subject have demonstrated that it is difficult indeed to simply say "It is only our contemporary cultural bias that causes us to read into the basically neutral Scriptural testimony the position that homosexual behavior is wrong." 

Crude as it may seem, after considerable reflection, we believe that it is fair to say that there are three basic options for Christians (specifically Christians who regard the Scriptures to be authoritative in their entirety in ethics) who seek authoritative moral guidance on the vexing topic of homosexuality, however elegantly the three options may seem when expressed so bluntly.  The three options are: 1) The Scriptures are unclear/vague on the morality of homosexual behavior, and hence there is considerable room for interpretative license in constructing a pro-gay moral position; 2) The Scriptures clearly teach the immorality of homosexual behavior, and this moral teaching is wrong/flawed; and 3) The Scriptures clearly teach the immorality of homosexual behavior, and this moral teaching is correct/authoritative.  We take the last position.  Townsley, by our categorization scheme, takes the first position that the Scriptures are indeed vague and unclear enough to have allowed the church for two millennia to read into an ambiguous text an anti-gay message, and to allow in this age for interpretations that reverse the historic stance of the Church. 

The Basic Logic of the "Is Homosexuality a Psychopathology?" Chapter

Now we move to the second major issue.  The subject of our book is the question of whether or not science presents us with findings that challenge or change the historic moral judgement of the Christian Church.  In our chapter on "Is Homosexuality a Psychopathology?," we ask what science says about whether or not homosexuality is a psychopathology, and what relevance any answer to this question has to our search for moral guidance.  Mr. Townsley argues that we commit a great number of egregious errors (bordering on fraud, no less) in this chapter, but in doing so, it is notable that he never engages the larger logic of the way that we approach the issue (i.e., the questions we were seeking to answer).  He characterizes us repeatedly in this review of being biased in our treatment of the subject and claims that we are arguing, despite our explicit claims to the contrary, for "the inherently flawed mental health state of homosexuals." 

Some of the specific methodological challenges of Mr. Townsley have merit, but what is the broader logic of the chapter that he ignores?  It is this: Judgments of the status of any pattern of behavior or experience as psychopathological are precisely that—judgments, human judgments.  Those judgments are made according to a fluid and evolving set of criteria loosely organized around four basic questions: Is the pattern of concern a) statistically infrequent? b) a violation of social norms? c) coincident with significant distress? d) maladaptive?  We argue that there are no quantified rules for judging each of these standards because each ultimately is judged according to some sort of scientific consensus influenceable by political and cultural as well as scientific forces.  We argue further that none of these standards are ever necessary or sufficient for declaration of a pattern to be psychopathological.  We also argue that important findings in the research literature have been ignored or minimized in addressing these standards, and that some of the research used historically to establish the nonpathological nature of homosexuality is deeply flawed.  Finally, we argue that a pattern of human life can be judged "abnormal" from a theological/ethical point of view without it qualifying as a psychopathology (e.g., pride or atheism) and that the classification of a pattern as a psychopathology has no necessary implications for ethical standards relating to that pattern. 

Mr. Townsley, ignoring this broader logic, simply challenges a host of specific instances of our handling of the research literature.  His point seems to be to argue that the research literature does indeed establish, as he calls it, the "good mental health of homosexuals."  Nevertheless, we find the logic of several of his critical points to be strained or problematic. 

The Charge of "Fraudulent Presentation" 

There is one point at which Mr. Townsley actually accuses us of "bordering on fraudulent presentation," a very serious charge indeed.  And at this point, Mr. Townsley seems so exercised about the point we are making as to mistake again the most fundamental contours of our argument.  He accuses us of fraud for looking outside of the Saghir and Robins study for a comparison group of base rates for psychopathology in the general population because, according to the reviewer, Saghir and Robins had a perfectly adequate control group that we chose to ignore. 

To judge if the charge of fraud is valid, the reader must understand the basic logic of control groups.  Suppose we want to examine the question of whether or not one breed of dog (e.g., Pit Bulls) is more likely to attack humans than another (e.g., Labradors).  In an ideal study, you would gather a large random sample of each breed and then compare attack rates under standardized conditions (both rates and conditions defined by rigorous empirical standards).  It would distort the validity of the study to bias the sample by some sort of selection factor that would overlap with ("confound") the question of the study, that being likelihood to attack people.  Suppose, for example, that the researchers were going to test the "attack tendencies" of the dogs in an experimental situation in their lab, but then screened out of the study all dogs that acted hostile to the experimenter when brought into the lab by their owners before the experiment itself began.  Suppose further that only 2% of Labradors but 60% of Pit Bulls growled and acted hostile when brought into the lab (and hence were ejected from the study).  To screen out the "hostile" Pit Bulls (leaving only the docile and non-aggressive Pit Bulls) would perhaps destroy the very scientific findings for which we were searching.  The fact that the same screening process was applied to both Labradors and Pit Bulls does not make this legitimate if there is overlap between initial hostility and attack tendencies.  The experimenter who concluded on the basis of this flawed procedure that Pit Bulls were no more hostile than Labradors would be presenting questionable findings. 

Mr. Townsley accuses us of "bordering on fraudulent presentation" for not relying on the Saghir and Robins control group, but it is our contention that the Saghir and Robins control and homosexual samples were flawed because of precisely the types of methodological errors contained in the hypothetical canine example.  The question of their study, just as with Hooker, was whether or not homosexuals are always psychopathological compared to heterosexuals.  As discussed explicitly beginning at the top of page 103 of our book, we would suggest that Saghir and Robins recruited a biased sample to start with by recruitment through homophile organizations, and then further biased their samples by screening out all persons who had been psychiatrically hospitalized.  We note (p. 103) that Saghir and Robins report that they had to exclude from their study 14% of the male and 7% of the female homosexuals due to previous psychiatric hospitalization while not having to exclude a single heterosexual on this basis.  We hasten to note that this sampling procedure that produced a biased sample was consistent with the question they were studying and hence not invalid as a method, but it did not produce a sample that was representative of either the homosexual or the heterosexual population. 

Now, have we committed fraud by not focusing on the Saghir and Robins heterosexual control group?  No, and here is our logic.  The homosexual sample, already pre-screened to some unknown degree for psychological healthiness by the recruitment procedures, is reported to have had a 14% male and 7% female psychiatric hospitalization rate (this is the portion screened out of the study).  Saghir and Robins ignore this statistic since these people are excluded from the study, but it is precisely this statistic that interests us.  We do not accuse Saghir and Robins of fraud based on this methodological choice because their methodology is logically appropriate if the focus of the study is testing the hypothesis was whether or not homosexuals are always psychopathological compared to heterosexuals.  In contrast, our interests were in the comparative psychological distress rates between homosexuals and heterosexuals, and for this question, the Saghir and Robins methodology and the main samples it generated were not of interest to us.  In other words, the rates of psychological distress in samples pre-screened to be healthy was of no interest to us.  The rate of prior hospitalization, in contrast, was of interest to us.  Here we had a sample of homosexual persons, already pre-screened to some degree for psychological health, that exhibited 14%/7% psychiatric hospitalization rates.  These rates seemed high, but how do we know if these rates are higher than the general population?  We needed a comparison group.  Could we have used the heterosexual control group of Saghir and Robins as Townsley suggests?  No.  Why? Because this control group had a 0% psychiatric hospitalization rate, and we know that the general population rate for psychiatric hospitalization is larger than zero.  Where can we turn for such a sample?  We turned to the best single study available to us, the Robins et. al. study. 

Now, Townsley’s critique is not without merit.  He appropriately criticizes the comparisons we made across these two very different studies.  If anything, he goes easy on us here, as the two studies were done almost two decades apart in time, and there are undoubtedly other ways (socioeconomic class, diagnostic standards, race, sample age constrictions, and so forth) in which the samples in the two studies are not suitable for comparison.  We probably also should have resisted the urge to report a quantified estimate ("450% higher," p. 103) of the extent to which the psychiatric hospitalization rate was higher in the homosexual sample of Saghir and Robins compared to the general population study of Robins et. al.  But this seems a minor indiscretion given that our larger point in this chapter was simply to say 1) that there is scattered but consistent evidence throughout the literature of elevated levels of psychological distress in the homosexual population, and 2) that tremendous methodological gaffs are being committed as researchers rush to prove to that homosexual populations have no greater mental health concerns than the general population.

It can thus be seen that Townsley misses the whole point of our careful analysis of both Hooker and Saghir and Robins studies: Both studies purport to and are almost always pronounced as conclusively proving the "good mental health of homosexuals" as Townsley puts it  As we state clearly in our chapter, however, neither study actually serves that purpose.  Instead both prove that it is possible to find samples (apparently nonrepresentative samples) that exhibit no higher incidences of psychological distress than heterosexual samples, and hence both studies prove conclusively that homosexual sexual orientation is not necessarily or inevitably associated with excessive levels of distress.  Neither study, however, proves the "good mental health of homosexuals" as a general sample. 

Odds and Ends

Now a list of specific responses to some of the specific points in the review:
 

1. Regarding his comments about our discussion of the psychoanalytic theories: a) his comments about the dangers of biased memory reconstruction in psychoanalytic theory are well-taken, but we also doubt that in-depth clinical examination is utterly worthless; and b) the very arguments about the disconnect between correlation and causation he makes are used by us at several points in the book, so to suggest that we do not get this point is ludicrous.

 
2. Mr. Townsley directs considerable ire toward our examination of the Childhood Sexual Behavior (CSB) research.  Our major point, and one which Mr. Townsley seems to miss, is that there is evidence suggestive that given the small representation of homosexuals in the general population, homosexual experience in childhood is present to a surprising degree in the histories of homosexual individuals. 

His critique of our use of the Shrier study seems trivial.  His critique of our use of the Manosevitz study is remarkable and his conclusion merits quoting in full: "This [Mr. Townsley’s summary of the findings of this study] lends itself to the interpretation given by the authors of the study—that childhood sexual orientation determines the choice of gender of CSB, not the other way around." 

The reader should immediately note the remarkable implications of this statement: Mr. Townsley is claiming that the sexual orientation of children as young as age five "determines" the gender of their sexual contact partners.  Such a claim is extraordinary, seeming to imply that children, even young children, have stable sexual orientations and are looking for sex partners of the right gender.  By this logic, sexual contact between any two individuals, such as between a 5 year old boy and a fifteen year old male OR female, is the fault of the five year old!  In contrast, we would suggest that the causal pattern almost always goes the other direction, that children are drawn into sexual activity, and then that that sexual behavior can serve to stabilize or direct subsequent sexual orientation development. 

This claim puts into perspective Townsley’s seeming outrage over our statement about "the move in some pro-gay circles toward acceptance of sexual relations with children before legal ages of consent" (our p. 111)  If young children already have stable sexual orientations and are actively seeking out sexual contacts to match their erotic templates, then should not some greater flexibility in ages of consent be the consequence?  Townsley misrepresents us by inferring that we are claiming that there is broad and open support for pedophilia in the gay community (a charge we left ourselves open to by the essentially superfluous reference to NAMBLA’s response to one study, p.  111).  Our real purpose is clearly stated when we say "Calls for greater societal acceptance of sexual interactions between adults and the young have not been uncommon in popular and even scholarly venues for discussion of homosexuality" (p. 111).  Indeed, to the uninitiated reader, the frequency with which calls for lower ages of consent and for some sort of normalization of child sexual behavior occur in such respected outlets, for example, as the Journal of Homosexuality is striking.  From Kinsey on, calls for more acceptance and exploration of childhood sexuality and of "intergenerational intimacy" have not been uncommon, and these calls have been, it seems to us, more common in pro-gay literatures than elsewhere.  Hence, we stand by our critical statement describing "the move in some pro-gay circles toward acceptance of sexual relations with children before legal ages of consent." 

3. Townsley objects to our reference to "gerbiling" (p. 173 of our book).  Several things are worth noting about his outrage.  First, we were clearly here not trying to do what Townsley accuses us of, that being the propagation of a myth to "illustrate the depravity of homosexuals."  In context, our focus was simply generic human depravity with no mention of sexual orientation.  We mentioned gerbiling in the same sentence with necrophilia, and we would guess that either phenomenon, if either in fact occurs, could occur in either gender and regardless of sexual orientation.  We did not attribute this alleged behavior to the homosexual community, and in fact have heard anecdotes of "live animal orifice insertion" among heterosexuals.  Second, we were making a generic point here that it would be impossible to construe the Bible as having an exhaustive list of all the sexual possibilities of which humans could conceive; humans are simply too creative for such a list to be possible. 

We may in fact have fallen prey to an "urban legend" as Mr. Townsley accuses us; it is possible that gerbiling simply never occurs.  Contrary to his position, however, we know proctologists, gastroenterologists and other medical professionals who will comment off the record on the remarkable ravages of promiscuous and/or "high tech" gay sex but will not criticize such practices on the record lest their professional careers suffer as a result. 

Our thanks to Mr. Townsley for a stimulating review
 

online article by Jones and Yarhouse
"Science and the  ecclesiastical homosexuality debates"