First, they make observations about the world; they inquire, measure and record, all in an appallingly objective manner. Then they have the audacity to construct theories in order to explain the facts. As if this weren’t bad enough, they then report their findings to the rest of us, heedless of any political consequences.

Take Dr. Robert Spitzer. Dr. Spitzer is a Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University who has been conducting psychiatric research for more than 30 years. One of his major fields of interest is human sexuality; in particular, sexual orientation. Over the years, he has conducted numerous studies to explore how orientation is determined, the degree of its fluidity and various relationships between heredity and the environment in determining sexual feelings.

Naturally, one group Spitzer became curious to investigate were "ex-gays," people who had previously identified themselves as homosexual, but now claimed to have become heterosexual. Who better, he thought, to provide evidence for the fixity or fluidity of sexual orientation than those who claim to have changed?

Accordingly, Spitzer conducted more than 200 telephone interviews with just such people. Each 45-minute interview contained 60 questions about the subjects’ feelings and behavior before and after their efforts to change orientation. They discussed their motives for change; their strategies, which included counseling, support groups, prayer and mentoring; and their current relationships with the opposite sex.

Spitzer found that approximately 66 percent of the men and 44 percent of the women he interviewed had achieved, over the course of many years, a level of "good heterosexual functioning." His conclusion, in his own words: "Some highly motivated people can change from gay to straight."

Spitzer acknowledged the limits of his study upfront. For one, there is no way to determine conclusively whether all his subjects were telling the truth. For another, there is no objective definition of "good heterosexual functioning." Also, since all 200 subjects claimed to have successfully changed, Spitzer noted that his study could not be used to determine the overall percentage of people whose attempts to change will succeed. Those limits admitted, his findings remain: It is possible for some homosexual men and women to change their orientation.

With the naiveté of an objective scientist, Spitzer publicized his results. And in the process, he committed political suicide.

The moment major news media caught a whiff of Spitzer’s research, gay rights activists, gay advocacy groups and politically minded academics attacked. Professor Douglas Haldeman of the University of Washington said the study exhibited a "strong anti-gay bias," since many of the participants were religious conservatives referred by Christian ministries. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force criticized the subjects as "totally unrepresentative of the gay and lesbian community." Time magazine, in a transparent display of its political stance, called the research "troubling." Even the American Psychiatric Association backpedaled when the press got wind of Spitzer’s plan to present his research at an APA meeting in New Orleans. The association’s public affairs office stressed to reporters that Spitzer’s inclusion in the meeting did not imply the APA’s endorsement of his findings.

Precisely none of these attacks were leveled, however, on scientific grounds. Spitzer’s research was the victim of a purely political assault.

To write off Spitzer’s study as "anti-gay" because its participants were religious conservatives who believe homosexuality to be wrong is to the miss the point of the study entirely. Of course many, if not most, of the subjects were motivated to change for religious reasons -- in today’s ultra-tolerant society, there may not exist many other motivators. But motivation is not at issue -- it makes no difference why a person wanted to change. The main point Spitzer makes is that there are people who once identified themselves as gay, those people wanted to change, and according to his criteria, they did.

To accuse the participants of being "unrepresentative of the gay and lesbian community" is absurd for the same reason. Of course the subjects were not a random sample from the homosexual community -- they were all people who wanted to change. If they had been happily adjusted to a gay and lesbian lifestyle, chances are they wouldn’t have attempted to change, and therefore would not have been fit for Spitzer’s study.

Jason Riggs, a National Gay and Lesbian Task Force spokesman, commented, "It’s not a surprise that an ex-gay ministry isn’t going to turn over people who have dropped out of ex-gay therapy to a person doing a study." Riggs would have a legitimate scientific objection if Spitzer were attempting to pin down a precise percentage. But since he admitted that such a percentage falls outside the bounds of his study, the objection holds no water. How the subjects were selected bears no relevance to the question of whether change is possible.

Much of the criticism from various organizations seems aimed at the participants and not the study itself. Joan Gerry of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) pointed out that Spitzer’s subjects were "a self-selected sample of people who are so troubled by their sexual orientation that they will go to any lengths to attempt to ‘change’ it. ... These are people who live in a world where gays, lesbians and bisexuals are treated like second-class citizens." For anyone seriously examining Spitzer’s research, Garry’s observations are beside the point. She is obviously uncomfortable with the idea of anyone attempting to change orientation, so Spitzer’s research is doomed from the start in her eyes. The very subjects of his study, after all, are people Garry believes should not exist. GLAAD has determined in advance what it believes the outcome of sexual-identity research should be, rendering evidence to the contrary, and any attempts to collect that evidence, as "anti-gay."

To understand the purpose behind such weak-minded attacks, we must look at what is at stake politically for the attackers. In most states, gay and lesbian groups are fighting to gain "equal rights," a term that means anything from hiring quotas to legal marriages to state-funded sex changes. In order to win certain types of equal rights, the gay lobby must prove that sexual orientation is as unchanging as, say, race or gender. Any evidence to the contrary, any hint that it might be fluid or at all a matter of choice, undercuts those political goals.

The relationships between biology, environment and volition in determining sexual feelings are, at best, complex. In their understandable drive to learn more, scientists often step into the middle of political firefights, and can draw fire from both sides.

A great irony in the current drama is that until recently, Spitzer was a hero of the political left, for his struggle in 1973 to remove homosexuality from the APA’s list of mental disorders. His hero status rested, apparently, on the assumption that he considered homosexuality an acceptable practice, and therefore not deserving the term "disorder." But Spitzer is not a politician or an ethicist; he is not in the business of ruling on the acceptability of behavior. His decision came strictly as a result of his research, which indicated that homosexuality is not entirely, or even mainly, a physiological trait. In this light, Spitzer’s decision to pull homosexuality from the disorder list does not seem inconsistent with his recent findings.

Another remarkable irony, from a historical perspective, is that many of the great scientists revered by these attacking liberal politicos faced similar politically motivated attacks in their time -- for theories about the rotation of the planets, the age of the Earth, evolution, quantum physics. Throughout history, scientists have gathered data and drawn hypotheses independent of political considerations, and often they have suffered dearly.

In the 17th century, for example, Galileo Galilei observed the incongruous motion of planets and stars and theorized that the Earth orbits the sun, a theory which threatened the Catholic Church’s theology of an Earth-centered universe. The Church’s critique was based neither on science nor on Scripture, but solely on tradition and politics; nevertheless, it was strong enough to force Galileo to choose between his integrity and his life.

In the historic footsteps of these fearful theologians, today’s gay lobby scrapes together weak, intellectual-sounding arguments to defend even the hint of contradiction to their own religion of "equal rights."

Critics of the current study misunderstand the very purpose of scientific inquiry. Dr. Spitzer is not attempting to prove that homosexuality is right or wrong, or whether it should be granted "equal rights" status, just as Galileo was not trying to explain humanity’s theological position in the universe. The purpose of science -- observation, hypothesis, experimentation -- is to help us understand how the world works. It can never ultimately answer the question why. Nor can it tell us how the world should work. It can only tell us what is.

In a perfect world, science would be politics-free. Perhaps the most we can expect in the real world is that political groups would evaluate research on scientific grounds, not blast away the moment controversy is perceived. To disregard objective findings as "too conservative" is worse than bad science. It’s dirty politics, and it has no place in a clean laboratory.