The headline read:

New Evidence: Sexual Orientation Can Change. Therapy Can Help.

Ah yes… the old “we found people who say they changed, therefore change therapy works” argument.

That’s not science, that’s confirmation bias with a PhD.

Dr. Paul Sullins, Senior Research Associate at the Ruth Institute, who recently published “Sex Differences in Reported Effectiveness and Psychosocial Effects of Therapy-Assisted Sexual Orientation Change,” obviously hoped no one would look too closely. FYI, Dr. Paul Sullins is a sociologist whose work on sexual orientation sits outside the mainstream scientific consensus and has been widely criticised for its methodology and conclusions.

Let’s be honest about what this “research” actually is.

  • Self-selected sample. Participants were already people who identified as having “changed”. That’s like surveying lottery winners and concluding, “buying tickets works”.
  • No control group. No comparison with people who didn’t undergo therapy. So you can’t actually say therapy caused anything.
  • Redefining “success”. “Reduced behaviour” doesn’t equal a change in sexual orientation. Many people suppress behaviour due to pressure, faith, or fear, not because attraction changed.
  • The Ruth Institute is not a neutral research body—it’s an advocacy organisation with a clear ideological position against LGBTQ+ identities.
  • Peer reviewed? Ah, the magic phrase: ‘peer-reviewed.’. But we’ve seen this before. The most famous ‘peer-reviewed’ study ever used to justify conversion “therapy” was the one by Robert Spitzer. Its own author later apologised for the harm it created and said his conclusions were wrong. So ‘peer-reviewed’ isn’t a free pass; it just means something was published. Not that it’s true.

Sullins’ is not breakthrough research. It’s ideological recycling.

Every major medical and mental health body in the world has already done the hard work and reached the same conclusion: efforts to change sexual orientation don’t work, and they can cause great harm, including suicide.

This study doesn’t ‘call bans into question. The new laws aren’t built on philosophy; they’re built on evidence of harm. And importantly, they don’t ban support. They ban practices aimed at changing or suppressing identity. That’s a crucial distinction often blurred in this kind of messaging.

Because we’ve seen what happens when this ideology has run its course. The human devastation and suffering are shocking.

You can repackage it.

You can rebrand it.

You can wrap it in academic language.

But at the end of the day, it’s still the same thing.

And we’re not going back.

One of the world’s largest collections of information about so-called conversion “therapy” is HERE.