The following was a presentation given by Dr. Robinson on October 6, 2002: For a printer-friendly version, click here.

“The Trial of Same-Sex Attraction: What Works and What Doesn't.”

I appreciate the opportunity to speak today at this conference. My aim, my goal in this presentation, is to dramatically change the way each one of you thinks about homosexuality. Whether you believe that it's something that is inborn and cannot be changed, whether you believe it can be changed, whether you believe that these men are selfish, who are willful in choosing this--I want to change the way you think about it, and I think it's important to change the way people think about this problem.

It's important because every year we are losing many, many young men to this difficulty. We're losing them, and we're losing family members who are being told all kinds of false doctrines regarding homosexuality and are having their faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ shaken and undermined because of that. So I hope today to follow Paul, who said in talking to the Saints of his day that he had determined “to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” To me to discuss this topic is to bear my testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ and its power and ability to change the lives of men.

A little over ten years ago, I was a graduate student here at BYU in marriage and family therapy and was troubled. I had read an article recently published in a magazine by a prominent LDS psychiatrist that seemed to indicate that here were a group of men who could not change their behaviors or their outlooks or their orientations. And I was troubled. I'm the kind of person who's always drawn to quandaries, and I thought, “If the gospel is not true for these men, then it cannot be true for me.”

But as I was pondering those things and thinking about it--we had received absolutely no instruction or no discussion in any of our classes on how to treat this problem--and one day I was sitting in the intern's office, and the person who assigns cases walked in, and he held up a folder and he said, “Anybody here want to talk to some guy who thinks he might be gay?” Everybody kind of looked at the floor, and I being troubled by this, having read this article recently, I raised my hand and said, “I'll talk to him.”

A few days later, I sat down with a young man, as I have many, many times since then, and had him tell me his story. He told me that he was trying to make a decision about whether he was going to enter into therapy and try to overcome this difficulty, or whether he was going to leave the state, move to California, and never contact his family or anyone he knew again.

He asked me, he said, “Can you promise me that if I enter into therapy and try to overcome this problem, that I will never have any of these feelings ever again for the rest of my life?” I looked him square in the eye, and I said, “I don't know.” He wasn't impressed. I said, “But I'll find out.”

And so after that session, I went to the library and started looking as fast as I could and talk to people and find out anything I could about treating this problem. I found a doctoral dissertation, and it seemed to indicate that yes, many of these men are successful at changing. And I photocopied some pages out of that and brought them back in our second session and showed them to him. And he kind of looked at them--it doesn't inspire a lot of faith when your therapist is showing what he found in the library the day before--and I thought, “I'm not going to see this young man again; I've really blown this. He's not coming back.”

But he made the appointment--I thought, “He won't show up”--came back to his third appointment and sat down across from me, and he said, “I have made up my mind that no matter how long it takes and no matter what I have to do, I am going to live the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I am going to overcome this problem.”

I was stunned. I'm not the kind of person who, especially at that point in my life, had a lot of faith in whether what I was feeling was the Spirit. But there were a number of occasions in my life when I felt something so profound and distinct that I was sure that it was, and this was one of them. I felt the distinct impression as I talked to this young man, and the impression was this: this young man's parents have been praying for him. That is why he has made this decision. And you are to be part of the answer to their prayers, so you be careful.

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