History of the exclusion of homosexuality from the list of psychiatric disorders

The point of view currently accepted in industrialized countries according to which homosexuality is not subject to clinical assessment is conditional and devoid of scientific credibility, because it reflects only unjustified political conformism, and not a scientifically reached conclusion.

Youth protest

The scandalous vote of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which excluded homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, took place in December 1973. This was preceded by the socio-political events of 1960 – 1970. Society is tired of America’s protracted intervention in Vietnam and the economic crisis. Youth protest movements were born and became incredibly popular: the movement for the rights of the black population, the movement for the rights of women, the antiwar movement, the movement against social inequality and poverty; hippie culture flourished with its deliberate peacefulness and freedom; the use of psychedelics, especially LSD and marijuana, has spread. Then all traditional values ​​and beliefs were called into question. It was a time of rebellion against any authorities. [1].

All of the above happened in the shadow of a overpopulation threats and the search for birth control.

“US population growth has become an important national issue”


Preston Cloud, representing the National Academy of Sciences, demanded to intensify “By any feasible means” population control, and recommended that the government legalize abortion and homosexual unions [2].

Kingsley Davis, one of the central figures in the development of birth control policy, along with the popularization of contraceptives, abortion and sterilization, proposed the promotion of "unnatural forms of intercourse":

“The issues of sterilization and unnatural forms of sexual intercourse are usually met with silence or disapproval, although no one doubts the effectiveness of these measures in preventing conception. The main changes necessary to influence the motivation of childbearing should be changes in the structure of the family, the status of women and sexual mores. ” [3]

Davis's wife, sociologist Judith Blake, proposed abolishing tax and housing benefits that encourage childbearing and removing legal and social sanctions against homosexuality [4].

Legal advisor Albert Blausteinwho participated in the creation of the constitutions of many countries, indicatedthat to limit population growth, it is necessary to revise many laws, including on marriage, family support, age of consent, and homosexuality.

There were also those who plainly blamed heterosexuality in the problem of world overpopulation.

In the heated atmosphere of this turning point, when the revolutionary (and not only) masses were boiling, the infusions of Moore, Rockefeller and Ford intensified the political campaign for the recognition of homosexuality as a normal and desirable way of life [5]. A taboo topic hitherto moved from areas of the unthinkable into the radical, and there was a lively debate in the media between supporters and opponents of the normalization of homosexuality.

In 1969, in his address to Congress, President Nixon call population growth "One of the most serious problems for the fate of mankind" and called for urgent action [6]... In the same year, Frederic Jaffe, Vice President of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), issued a memorandum in which “encouraging the growth of homosexuality"Was listed as one of the methods of birth control [7].

Proposed measures to reduce fertility from Jaffa Memorandum

Coincidentally, three months later, the Stonewall riots broke out, in which militant gay groups carried out street riots, vandalism, arson and clashes with the police for five days. Metal rods, stones and Molotov cocktails were used. AT a book homosexual author David Carter, recognized as the “ultimate resource” for the history of those events, describes how activists blocked Christopher Street and stopped vehicles and attacked passengers if they were not homosexual or refused to express solidarity with them. An unsuspecting taxi driver who accidentally turned onto the street, died of a heart attack from a raging crowd began to swing his car. Another driver was beaten after stepping out of a car to resist vandals jumping over him  [8].

Stonewall riots

In the immediate aftermath of the riots, activists created the Homosexual Liberation Front, similar to the National Liberation Front in Vietnam. Having declared psychiatry the enemy number 1, for three years they carried out shock stocks, foiled APA conferences and speeches by professors who considered homosexuality to be a disease, and even called them at night with threats. As a direct participant in those events writes in his article, one of those who dared to defend a scientific position and oppose attempts to introduce homosexuality into the norm, expert in the field of psychology of sexual relations, Professor Charles Sokarides:

“Militant groups of homosexual activists have launched a real campaign to persecute professionals who have advanced arguments against excluding homosexuality from the list of deviations; they entered the conference, where there was a discussion of the problem of homosexuality, staged a row, insulted the speakers, and disrupted the performances. A powerful homosexual lobby in the public and specialized media promoted the publication of materials against the advocates of the physiological concept of sex drive. Articles with conclusions based on an academic scientific approach were ridiculed and clichéd as "a meaningless mishmash of prejudice and misinformation." These actions were supported by letters and phone calls with insults and threats of physical violence and even terrorist attacks. ” [9]

Shock action

In May of 1970, activists, breaking into a meeting of the APA National Convention in San Francisco, began defiantly shouting and insulting speakers, resulting in embarrassed and bewildered doctors leaving the audience. The chairman was forced to interrupt the conference. Surprisingly, there was no reaction from the guards or law enforcers. Encouraged by their impunity, activists also thwarted another APA meeting, this time in Chicago. Then, during a conference at the University of Southern California, activists again foiled a report on homosexuality. Activists threatened to completely sabotage the upcoming annual conference in Washington if the homosexuality study section did not consist of representatives of the homosexual movement. Instead of conveying threats of violence and unrest to the knowledge of law enforcement agencies, the organizers of the APA conference met the extortionists and created a commission not of homosexuality, but of homosexuals [10].

Gay activists at the APA conference in 1972: Barbara Gittings, Frank Kameni, John Fryer

Speaking gay activists demanded that psychiatry:  
1) abandoned her previous negative attitude towards homosexuality;
2) has publicly renounced the "theory of disease" in any sense;
3) launched an active campaign to eradicate widespread “prejudice” on this issue, both through attitudinal work and legislative reforms;
4) consulted on an ongoing basis with representatives of the homosexual community.

"Our topics: “Gay, proud and healthy” и “Gay is good.”. With or without you, we will work energetically to accept these commandments and fight against those who are against us. ” [11]

Gay agitation at APA conference

There is a well-founded opinion that these riots and actions were nothing more than a play played by actors and a handful of activists whose actions without protection from above would be immediately stopped. This was only necessary to create hype in the press around the “rights of the oppressed minority” and the subsequent justification of the depatologization of homosexuality for the general public, while everything above was already predetermined. In the usual scenario, the illegal penetration of hooligans into a closed meeting should have looked like this:

Gay activists tried to rip off AMA conference, this time without patronage.

In 1970, the author of the theory demographic transition Frank Noutstein, speaking at the National Military College in front of senior officers, noted that “Homosexuality is advocated on the basis that it helps to reduce population growth”[4].

The granddaughter of APA President John Spiegel, who subsequently committed a cuming out, said Olga,how, preparing the ground for an internal coup in the APA, he gathered like-minded people who called themselves "GAPA" in their homes, where they discussed strategies to nominate young homophile liberals to key positions instead of gray-haired orthodox [12]. Thus, the ideologists of homosexuality had a powerful lobby in the leadership of the APA.

This is how the famous American scientist and psychiatrist Professor Jeffrey Satinover describes the events of those years in his article “Neither Scientifically, nor Democratically” [13]:

“In 1963, the New York Medical Academy instructed its Public Health Committee to prepare a report on homosexuality due to fear that homosexual behavior intensively distributed in American society. The committee came to the following conclusions:

" ..Homosexuality is indeed a disease. A homosexual is an emotionally disturbed individual who is incapable of forming normal heterosexual relationships ... Some homosexuals have gone beyond purely defensive positions and argue that this deviation is a desirable, noble and preferred way of life ... "

After only 10 years, in 1973, without presenting any significant scientific research data, without relevant observations and analysis, the position of propagandists of homosexuality became the dogma of psychiatry (evaluate how radically the course changed in just 10 years!). ”

In 1970, Socarides attempted to create a group to study homosexuality from a purely clinical and scientific point of view, contacting the New York branch of the APA. The head of the department, Professor Diamond, supported Socarides, and a similar group was formed of twenty psychiatrists from different clinics in New York. After two years of work and sixteen meetings, the group prepared a report that unequivocally spoke of homosexuality as a mental disorder and proposed a program of therapeutic and social assistance for homosexuals. However, Professor Diamond died in 1971, and the new head of the APA New York branch was a supporter of homosexual ideology. The report was rejected, and its authors were given an unequivocal hint that any report that did not recognize homosexuality as a normal variant would be rejected. The group was disbanded.

Robert Spitzer, who removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, worked on the editorial board of the DSM, a diagnostic guide to mental disorders, and had no experience with homosexuals. His only exposure to the matter was to speak with a gay activist named Ron Gold, who insists that he was not sick, who then took Spitzer to a party at a gay bar, where he discovered senior APA members. Struck by what he saw, Spitzer came to the conclusion that homosexuality itself does not meet the criteria for a mental disorder, since it does not always cause suffering and is not necessarily associated with universally generalized dysfunction other than heterosexual.  “If the inability to function optimally in the genital area is a disorder, then celibacy should also be considered a disorder.” He said, ignoring the fact that celibacy is a conscious choice that can be stopped at any time, but homosexuality is not. Spitzer sent a recommendation to APA’s board of directors to exclude homosexuality per se from the list of psychiatric disorders, and in December 1973 of the year, 13 of 15 board members (most of whom were recently appointed GeyP proteges) voted in favor. Dr. Satinover in the above article gives evidence of a former homosexual who was present at a party in the apartment of one of the members of the APA council, where he celebrated a victory with his lover. 

It is impossible to prove the normality of homosexuality from a medical and biological point of view; you can only vote for it. This “scientific” method was last used in the Middle Ages to solve the question “whether the earth is round or flat.” Dr. Socarides described the APA's decision as "the psychiatric hoax of the century." The only thing that would shock the world more would be if delegates to the American Medical Association convention, in consultation with lobbyists for medical and hospital insurance companies, voted to declare that all forms of cancer are harmless and therefore do not require treatment.

After the vote, opponents of the decision were able to organize a referendum among all APA members on this issue, which posed a serious threat to the homosexual movement. Then the gay organization NGTF, having received from one of the APA directors the addresses of all its members (more than 30 000), sent them letters in which, on behalf of the APA leadership, urged psychiatrists to support the adopted changes in the nomenclature. That is, the letter looked like it was sent by the APA Board of Directors. About 10 of thousands of psychiatrists replied to the letter, of which 58% supported voting in the commission. Thus, of the total number of psychiatrists in the United States, only 19% supported the decision to depatologize homosexuality, and the vast majority, taught by the bitter experience of colleagues, preferred to leave their opinions to themselves out of fear of troubles. The amendment was adopted. However, APA noted the following:

“Gay activists will no doubt argue that psychiatry has finally recognized homosexuality as “normal” as heterosexuality. They will be wrong. By removing homosexuality from the list of psychiatric diseases, we are only admitting that it does not meet the criteria for defining a disease ... which does not mean that it is as normal and full-fledged as heterosexuality.”[14]

Video in English: https://youtu.be/jjMNriEfGws

Therefore, the diagnosis of302.0 ~ Homosexuality"Has been replaced by a diagnosis of"302.00 ~ Egodistonic Homosexuality”And moved to the category of psychosexual disorders. By a new definition, only homosexuals who are uncomfortable with their attraction will be considered sick.  “We will no longer insist on a label of disease for individuals claiming to be healthy and not showing generalized impairment in social performance,” APA said. At the same time, no justified reasons, convincing scientific arguments and clinical evidence were provided that would justify such a change in the position of medicine regarding homosexuality. This is recognized even by those who supported the decision. So, Ronald Bayer, a professor at Columbia University, who is a specialist in medical ethics, noticedthat the decision to depatologize homosexuality was not dictated by “Reasonable conclusions based on scientific truths, and the ideological moods of that time”:

“The whole process violates the most basic principles of solving scientific issues. Instead of an impartial review of the data, psychiatrists were thrown into political debate. ” [15]

“Mother of the Gay Rights Movement,” Barbara Gitting, twenty years after speaking at the APA Conference, openly recognized:

“It was never a medical decision, and that's why everything happened so quickly. After all, only three years have passed since the first shock action at the APA conference and before the vote of the board of directors to exclude homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. It was a political decision ... We were healed overnight with the stroke of the pen. " [16]

Evelyn Hooker's commissioned study, which is usually presented as “scientific” proof of the “normality” of homosexuality, did not meet scientific standards, since its sample was small, non-random and unrepresentative, and the methodology itself left much to be desired. Moreover, Hooker did not try to prove that homosexuals as a group are just as normal and well-adjusted people as heterosexuals. The purpose of her research was to provide an answer to the question: “Is homosexuality necessarily a sign of pathology?” According to her: “All we need to do is find one case in which the answer is no.” That is, the aim of the study was to find at least one homosexual who has no mental pathology.

Hooker's study involved only 30 homosexuals who were carefully selected by the Mattachine Society. This gay organization conducted preliminary tests for candidates and selected the best ones. After testing participants on three projective tests (Rorschach Blots, TAT and MAPS) and comparing their results with a control “heterosexual” group, Hooker came to the following conclusion:

“It is not surprising that some homosexuals have serious violations and, indeed, to such an extent that it can be assumed that homosexuality is a defense against open psychosis... But what is difficult for most doctors to accept is that some homosexuals can be very ordinary individuals, indistinguishable, except for sexual tendencies, from ordinary heterosexual people. Some may not only be devoid of pathology (if you do not insist that homosexuality itself is a sign of pathology), but also represent perfectly excellent people, functioning at the highest level.  [17]

That is, the presence of adaptation and social functioning was taken as the criterion of “normality” in her study. The presence of such parameters, however, does not at all exclude the presence of pathology. Therefore, even without taking into account the inadequate statistical power of the sample size, the results of such a study can not serve as proof that homosexuality is not a mental disorder. Hooker herself admitted the "limited results" of her work and said that comparing groups of 100 people would probably tell the difference. She also noted a strong dissatisfaction with homosexuals in personal relationships, which sharply distinguished them from the control group. Moreover, in the Rorschach tests, experts found significant differences between the two groups on several grounds (Wheeler Signs) and found sexual orientation in 40% of men, compared with 25% on a random guess. Thus, Hooker's claim that she did not find significant differences between the two groups in any of her tests is simply incorrect.

Recent study addicted LGBT people showed that about 94% of them had at least one personality disorder [18] which is twice as high as similar heterosexual group [19].

At the end of 1977, 4 years after the events described, an anonymous survey was conducted in the scientific journal Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality among American psychiatrists who are members of the APA, according to which 69% of psychiatrists surveyed agreed that “homosexuality, as a rule, is a pathological adaptation, as opposed to normal variation, ”and 13% were unsure. Most also said that homosexuals tend to be less happy than heterosexuals (73%) and less capable of mature, loving relationships (60%). In total, 70% of psychiatrists said that the problems of homosexuals are more related to their own internal conflicts than to stigma from society. [20].

It is noteworthy that in 2003 year findings An international survey among psychiatrists about their attitude towards homosexuality showed that the vast majority considers homosexuality to be deviant behavior, although it was excluded from the list of mental disorders [21].

In 1987, the APA quietly removed all references to homosexuality from its nomenclature, this time without even bothering to vote. The World Health Organization (WHO) simply followed in the footsteps of the APA and in 1990 also removed homosexuality from its classification of diseases, keeping only it. egodistonic manifestations in the F66 section. For reasons of political correctness, this category of great absurdity also includes heterosexual orientation, which “The individual wants to change in connection with the joined psychological disorders and behavioral disorders”.

At the same time, it should be remembered that only the policy of diagnosing homosexuality has changed, but not the scientific and clinical base describing it as a pathology - i.e. painful deviation from a normal state or developmental process. If doctors vote tomorrow that the flu is not a disease, this does not mean that patients will be cured: the symptoms and complications of the disease will not go anywhere, even if it is not on the list. Moreover, neither the American Psychiatric Association nor the World Health Organization are scientific institutions. WHO is just a bureaucratic UN agency that coordinates the activities of national structures, and APA is a trade union. WHO is not trying to argue otherwise - that's what is written in preface to the classification of mental disorders in the ICD-10:

"Present descriptions and instructions don't carry in itself theoretical meaning and do not pretend to a comprehensive definition of the current state of knowledge of mental disorders. They are simply symptom groups and comments about which a large number of advisors and consultants in many countries of the world deal as an acceptable basis for defining category boundaries in the classification of mental disorders. ” [22]

From the standpoint of science of science, this statement looks absurd. Scientific classification should be based on strictly logical grounds, and any agreement between specialists can only be the result of the interpretation of objective clinical and empirical data, and not dictated by any ideological considerations, even the most humanitarian ones. A look at a particular problem becomes generally recognized solely by virtue of its evidence, and not by a directive from above. When it comes to a treatment method, it is usually implemented as an experiment in one or more institutions. The results of the experiment are published in the scientific press, and on the basis of this message, physicians decide whether to use this technique further. Here, anti-scientific political interests took over scientific impartiality and objectivity, and the clinical and empirical experience of more than a hundred years, unequivocally indicating the pathological etiology of homosexuality, was discarded. The unprecedented after the Middle Ages way of solving complex scientific problems with a show of hands discredits psychiatry as a serious science and, once again, presents an example of the prostitution of science for the sake of certain political forces. Even the Oxford Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry notes that if in some areas, such as the origin of schizophrenia or depression, psychiatry tried to be as scientific as possible, then in matters related to homosexuality, psychiatry behaved like "The maid of their cultural and political masters" [23].

Global Sexuality Standards Set 44 APA Division, known as the “Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity”, which consists almost entirely of LGBT activists. It is on behalf of the entire APA that they disseminate unwarranted statements that “Homosexuality is a normal aspect of human sexuality”.

Dr. Dean Byrd, former president of the National Association for the Study and Therapy of Homosexuality, accused APA of scientific fraud:

“APA has become a political organization with a gay activist program in its official publications, even though it positions itself as a scientific organization that presents scientific evidence in an impartial manner. APA suppresses research and research reviews that refute its political position and intimidates members in its ranks opposing this abuse of the scientific process. Many were forced to remain silent so as not to lose their professional status, others were ostracized, and their reputation was damaged - not because their studies lacked accuracy or value, but because their results were contrary to the official “policy” ".[24]

Sources of

  1. Gubanov IB. The Cultural Renaissance and the wider social movement in San Francisco in 1966 — 67: proclamation of the birth of a “new people” (2008)
  2. Robin Elliott, US Population Growth and Family Planning (1970)
  3. Kingsley Davis, Population Policy: Will Current Programs Succeed? (1967)
  4. Matthew Connelly, Population Control is History: New Perspectives on the International Campaign to Limit Population Growth (2003)
  5. A. Carlson. Society, Family, Person (2003). Page 104
  6. Richard Nixon: Special Message to the Congress on Problems of Population Growth (1969)
  7. FS Jaffe, Activities Relevant to the Study of Population Policy for the United States (1969)
  8. David Carter Stonewall: the riots that sparked the gay revolution (2004), Page 186.
  9. Socarides CW. Sexual Politics and Scientific Logic: The Issue of Homosexuality. The Journal of Psychohistory. 10th, no. 3 ed. Xnumx
  10. Donn Teal. The gay militants (1971)
  11. Frank Kameny. Gay, Proud, and Healthy (1972)
  12. 81 Words: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/204/transcript
  13. Satinover J. Neither scientific nor democratic. The Linacre Quarterly. Vol. 66: No. 2, Article 7. 1999; 84.
  14. Homosexuality and sexuality orientation disturbance: Proposed change in DSM-II, 6th printing. APA Document Reference No. 730008. - American Psychiatric Publishing, 1973. - ISBN 978-0-89042-036-2.
  15. Bayer R. Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis. Xnumx
  16. Eric Marcus Making history: the struggle for gay and lesbian equal rights, 1945-1990 (1991)
  17. E. Hooker. The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual (1957)
  18. Jon Grant. Personality Disorders in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Chemically Dependent Patients (2011)
  19. Co-occurrence of 12-month alcohol and drug use disorders and personality disorders in the United States: results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions
  20. Time Sexes: Sick Again, 1978
  21. Tolerance: unity among differences. The role of psychiatrists
  22. ICD-10: Mental and Behavioral Disorders, page 21.
  23. Homosexuality, gender identity disorder, and psychiatry // A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry. - Oxford UP, 2005. C.127.
  24. Dean Byrd. APA and Homosexuality: a Case of Scientific Fraud

Extra charges:

Pavel Parfentiev: How homosexuality stopped being a disease

Homosexuality: mental disorder or not?

Mental and physical health of LGBT people

4 thoughts on “A History of Excluding Homosexuality from the List of Psychiatric Disorders”

  1. masterpiece article. Science cannot be trusted at all. I advise you to watch the video “deconstruction of scenism” on the “doc” channel. there are a lot of fakes and biases in science

  2. Why didn’t the government introduce a state of emergency and a curfew, censorship in the media, and didn’t attract the National Guard and the army to maintain law and order? This is managerial impotence.

    1. Dear, you’ve been living in the world for so many years, how come you haven’t noticed yet - money rules! The inclusion of political and economic interests is the basis for launching any destructive influence in society! In many revolutionary unrest of the XNUMXth and XNUMXst centuries, both anarchist groups (nationalists, skinheads, etc.) and parties, as well as bribery of law enforcement agencies and their military officials, were deliberately financed.
      The money trail and the redistribution of spheres of influence of capital can be traced everywhere. Even today, in the development of the situation in Ukraine since 2014 - look at the financial interests and flows of capital that have taken place all this time - on the part of different states! Look - the interests of co-owners of billion-dollar businesses are everywhere!

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