Dr Virginia Johnson A ground-breaking researcher into human sexuality, whose published work supported the view that gays could be turned straight, has died. Dr Virginia Johnson, a co-founder of the Masters and Johnson Institute, was 88. Following on from research into the occurrence of homosexuality in the human population by Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues at Indiana University, Johnson teamed up with Dr William Masters to investigate the psychology and physiology of sexuality. One of their published reports, Homosexuality in Perspective (1979), based on laboratory studies of gay men and lesbians, claimed to be able to change sexual orientation. Their view was frequently quoted by psychologists and anti-gay equality campaigners and those who used electro-convulsive therapy on gays or who offered now-discredited and mostly religion-based ex-gay therapy.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Monday, 29th July 2013 - 1:33pm