Probably still the most prominent accomplishment of the LGBT movement in the United States is the redefinition of marriage in Obergefell v Hodges. In this decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared that the plaintiffs’ homosexual “sexual orientation” could not change. Homosexuality was, to borrow Kennedy’s words, “their immutable nature.” As a result, practicing homosexuals were only capable of marrying members of their own sex.

Tucker Carlson asked Jordan Peterson last week whether his views on sex and gender were rare in academia. “You can’t be one of many people who has these views where you live and work,” Carlson said.

Carlson was inviting Peterson to complain about leftist homogeneity in the ivory tower, but as usual Peterson refused to take the bait. “I think they’re more common than you think,” he said. “My views on gender, for example, and sex – they’re shared widely among people in the psychometric personality community…. This isn’t contentious; the only people it’s contentious around are gender ideologues. They’ve already lost the scientific battle, and so they’ve taken it to the legislative front to enforce their views.”

Of course, in Canada, where Peterson lives, the most famous example of this is probably bill C16, a law that compels people to verbally support the idea that men can turn into women and vice versa. But Peterson’s comment has general applicability to issues of gender and sexual orientation.

Take, for instance, what is probably still the most prominent accomplishment of the LGBT movement in the United States: the redefinition of marriage in Obergefell v Hodges. In this decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared that the plaintiffs’ homosexual “sexual orientation” could not change. Homosexuality was, to borrow Kennedy’s words, “their immutable nature.” As a result, practicing homosexuals were only capable of marrying members of their own sex.

The Evidence Says Same-Sex Attraction Frequently Changes

While many doubt the truth of Kennedy’s statement, almost everyone I meet, liberal or conservative, tends to assume, like Carlson, that the majority of expert opinion somehow backs Kennedy’s claim. Indeed, Kennedy did cite a partisan brief put together by politically active members of the American Psychological Association.

But although this brief confidently combated “stereotype-based rationales that the Equal Protection Clause was designed to prohibit” and was at pains to point out that “most” of the studies and literature reviews it cited had been published in “reputable, peer-reviewed academic journals,” it did not dare to assert that sexual orientation was immutable.

The reason was very simple. There is not only no scientific evidence that sexual orientation is immutable, there is conclusive scientific evidence that most people who experience exclusive same-sex attraction end up developing an interest in the opposite sex over time.

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