Therapy can assist a homosexual who wants to be heterosexual, according to a study published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy.

Psychologists Stanton L. Jones of Wheaton College and Mark A. Yarhouse of Regent University are the authors of the longitudinal study. It tracked individuals who were seeking to change their sexual orientation — and documents their successful transformations through involvement in a variety of Christian ministries.

“The authors note that the study overcomes a primary criticism of same-sex attraction therapy data — that the results are not adequately documented over a period of time – -by assessing its 98 candidates over a period of six to seven years after therapy concluded,” writes Kathleen Gilbert of LifeSiteNews:

Jones and Yarhouse’s results show the majority of candidates were successful in their goal of changing sexual orientation. Dr. Jones told LifeSiteNews.com that the study was likely skewed toward optimism towards therapy, as it wasn’t able to count candidates who dropped out early. However, he said, the study still stands out from the crowd for its value as a long-term assessment of the viability of same-sex attraction therapy.

“The ‘silver standard’ [of SSA therapy studies] is a longitudinal study that follows people repeatedly over multiple years and also a prospective study that assesses people from the beginning of change. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first such study,” wrote Jones. “The ‘gold standard’ would be a completely experimental and longitudinal study that would also randomly assign participants to different treatment groups with highly defined treatments; we believe such study would actually be impossible to perform.”

Although the American Psychological Association discourages mental health professionals from offering sexual reorientation therapy, the group’s official position on such therapy states that there is “insufficient evidence” to either approve or discredit the practice.