The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, also known as the DSM, is
the official list of mental disorders that all mental health
professionals refer to when diagnosing patients.
The first version, released in 1952, listed homosexuality as a
sociopathic personality disturbance. In 1968, the second version
(DSM II) reclassified homosexuality as a sexual deviancy. Soon
afterward, gay protestors began picketing at the APA𠏋 annual
conventions, demanding that homosexuality be removed from the
list completely. In 1973, after intensive debate and numerous
disturbances by gay activists, the APA decided to remove
homosexuality from its next manual (DSM III).
What followed was a swarm of outrage from psychiatrists within
the APA who disagreed with the decision and demanded that the
issue be reconsidered. In 1974, a referendum was called and
approximately 40 percent of the APA𠏋 membership voted to put
homosexuality back into the DSM. Since a majority was not
achieved to reverse the decision, homosexuality remains omitted
from the APA𠏋 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
To the LGBT community, this omission from the DSM was a logical
move. They felt that, absent from any nonbiased social-science
research to prove that homosexuality is inherently pathological,
the only thing that had been keeping homosexuality in the DSM
was societal prejudice. However, many in the scientific
community have criticized the APA𠏋 decision to remove
homosexuality from the DSM, claiming its motives were more
political than scientific.
Dr. Ronald Bayer, author of the book Homosexuality and American
Psychiatry, writes:
The entire process, from the first confrontation organized by
gay demonstrators to the referendum demanded by the orthodox
psychiatrists, seemed to violate the most basic expectations
about how questions of science should be resolved.
Instead of being engaged in sober discussion of data,
psychiatrists were swept up in a political controversy. The
result was not a conclusion based on an approximation of the
scientific truth as dictated by reason, but was instead an
action demanded by the ideological temper of the times.
Along these same lines, a recent radio documentary on the
subject of homosexuality revealed that the president-elect of
the APA in 1973, Dr. John P. Speigel, was a 𡤧loseted homosexual
with a very particular agenda.�
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