Ran across this article

[toledo_jesus]

I apologize in advance if people are tired of this topic, I have been on break for the past month and missed the party in the other thread that was closed. This is simply a little history of homosexuality's disorder status being removed by the American Psychiatric Association.



Exposed: The Myth That Psychiatry Has Proven That Homosexual Behavior Is Normal
Traditional Values Coalition ^ | Traditional Values Coalition


Posted on 07/16/2004 8:54:50 AM PDT by Laissez-faire capitalist


In 1973, The American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II).

This decision was a significant victory for homosexual activists and they have continued to claim that the APA based their decision on new scientific discoveries that proved that homosexual behavior is normal and should be affirmed in our culture.

This is false and part of numerous homosexual urban legends that have infiltrated every aspect of our culture. The removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder has given homosexual activists credibility in the culture, and they have demanded that their sexual behavior be affirmed in society.

What Really Happened?

Numerous psychiatrists over the past decades have described what forces were really at work both inside and outside of the American Psychiatric Association---and what led to the removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

Dr. Ronald Bayer, a pro-homosexual psychiatrist has described what actually occured in his book, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. (1981)

In Chapter 4, "Diagnostic Politics: Homosexuality and the American Psychiatric Association," Dr. Bayer says that the first attack by homosexual activists against the APA began in 1970 when this organization held its convention in San Francisco. Homosexual activists decided to disrupt the conference by interrupting speakers and shouting down and ridiculing psychiatrists who viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder. In 1971, homosexual activist Frank Kameny worked with the Gay Liberation Front collective to demonstrate against the APA's convention. At the 1971 conference, Kamney grabbed the microphone and yelled, "Psychiatry is the enemy incarnate. Psychiatry has waged a relentless war of extermination against us. You may take this as a decleration of war against you."

Homosexuals forged APA credentials and gained access to exhibit areas in the conference. They threatened anyone who claimed that homosexuals needed to be cured.

Kamney had found an ally inside of the APA named Kent Robinson who helped the homosexual activist present his demand that homosexualiy be removed from the DSM. At the 1972 convntion, homosexual activists were permitted to set up a display booth, entitled "Gay, Proud, and Healthy."

Kameny was then permitted to be part of a panel of psychiatrists who were to discuss homosexuality. The effort to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM was the result of power politics, threats, and intimidation, not scientific discoveries.

Prior to the APA's 1973 convention, several psychiatrists attempted to organize opposition to the efforts of homosexuals to remove homosexual behavior from the DSM. Organizing this effort were Drs. Irving Bieber and Charles Socarides who formed the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Deletion of Homosexuality from the Dsm-II.

The DSM-II listed homosexuality as an abnormal behavior under section "302. Sexual Deviations." It was the first deviation listed.

After much political pressure, a committee of the APA met behind closed doors in 1973 and voted to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM-II. Opponents were given 15 minutes to protest this change, according to Dr. Jeffery Satinover, in Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. Satinover writes that after this vote was taken, the decision was to be voted on by the entire APA membership. The National Gay Task Force purchased the APA's mailing list and sent out a letter to the APA members urging them to vote to remove homosexuality as a disorder. No APA member was informed that the mailing had been funded by this homosexual activist group.

According to Satinover, "How much the 1973 APA decision was motivated by politics is only becoming clear even now. While attending a conference in England in 1994, I met a man who told me an account that he had told no one else. He had been in the gay life for for years but had left the lifestyle. He recounted how that after the 1973 APA decisiion, he and his lover, along with a certain very highly placed officer of the APA Board of Trustees and his lover, all sat around the officer's apartment celebrating their victory. For among the gay activists placed high in the APA who maneuvered to ensure a victory was this man--suborning from the top what was presented to both the membership and the public as a disinterested search for truth."

Dr. Socarides Speaks Out

Dr. Charles Socarides has set the record straight on how homosexuals inside and outside of the APA forced this organization to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder. This was done without any valid scientific evidence to prove that homosexuiality is not a disordered behavior.

Dr. Socarides, writing in Sexual Politics and Scientific Logic : The Issue of Homosexuality writes: "To declare a condition a 'non-condition,' a group of practitioners had removed it from our list of serious psychosexual disorders. The action was all the more remarkable when one considers that it involved an out-of-hand and peremptory disregard and dismissal not only of hundreds of psychiatric and psychoanalytic research papers and reports, but also a number of other serious studies by groups of psychiatrists, psychologists, and educators over the past seventy years..."

Socarides continued: "For the next 18 years, the APA decision served as a Trojan horse, opening the gates to widespread psychological and social change in sexual customs and mores. The decision was to be used on numerous occasions for numerous purposes with the goal of normalizing homosexuality and elevating it to an esteemed status."

"To some American psychiatrists, this action remains a chilling reminder that if scientific principles are not fought for, they can be lost--a disillusioning warning that unless we make no exceptions to science, we are subject to the snares of political factionalism and the propogation of untruths to an unsuspecting and uninformed public, to the rest of the medical profession, and to the behavioral sciences." Dr. Socarides' report is available from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality: www.narth.com.

The Importance of The DSM.

The DSM(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is the most widely used disgnostic reference book utilized by mental health professionals in the United States.

It's a manual by which all diagnostic codes are derived for diagnosis and treatment - every single physician (an estimated 850,000*) in the United States refers to this book in order to code for a diagnoses. In plain English, what does this mean? It means that for over 30 years physicians have been prevented from properly diagnosing homosexuality as an aberrant behavior and thus, cannot, recomend a treatment for these individuals.

Prior to that time, homosexuality had been treated as a mental disorder under section "302. Sexual Deviations" in the DSM-II. Section 302 said, in part: "This category is for individuals whose sexual interests are directed primarily towards objects other than people of the opposite sex, toward sexual acts...performed under bizarre circumstances...Even though many find their practices distasteful, they remain unable to substitue normal sexual behavior for them." Homosexuality was listed as the first sexual deviation under 302. Once that diagnostic code for homosexuality was removed, physicians, including psychiatrists, have been prevented from diagnosing homosexuality as a mental disorder for more than three decades.

*American Medical Association statistic, 2002.

[Socrates]

Thanks for the article, Toledo.

I'd read of this before, but didn't have the information right at my fingertips, which would've been useful in some earlier arguments against those arguing that homosexuality is not disordered (or "diseased").

There is an unfortunate tendency for politics to trump true science.

[Good Friday]

I can't believe anyone is accepting something from the Traditional Values Coalition as "science." Give me a break.

[spathariossa]

I think ultimately whether homosexuality is considered a mental disorder rests on what society considers a defect and what society considers diversity.

If society considered being a skin color other than white a defect, it could be listed as a genetic disease. This has happened in the case of eugenics and in other areas. Now I'm not equating homosexuality and race but I'm just saying that definitions can and do change and depend upon a certain point of view.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='spathariossa' date='Jan 10 2005, 12:58 AM'] I think ultimately whether homosexuality is considered a mental disorder rests on what society considers a defect and what society considers diversity.

If society considered being a skin color other than white a defect, it could be listed as a genetic disease.  This has happened in the case of eugenics and in other areas.  Now I'm not equating homosexuality and race but I'm just saying that definitions can and do change and depend upon a certain point of view. [/quote]
The homosexual condition is objectively disordered and so it isn't simply a matter of what society may or may not wish to call it. The homosexual inclination as the Church's Magisterium teaches, ". . . is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." [CDF Instruction [u]Homosexualitatis Problema[/u], no. 3]

God bless,
Todd

[spathariossa]

[quote name='Apotheoun' date='Jan 10 2005, 03:16 AM'] The homosexual condition is objectively disordered and so it isn't simply a matter of what society may or may not wish to call it.  The homosexual inclination as the Church's Magisterium teaches, ". . . is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." [CDF Declaration [u]Homosexualitatis Problema[/u], no. 3]

God bless,
Todd [/quote]
Right but being objectively disordered and being a psychiatric disorder/mental disorder/treated by psychotherapy are two very different things. Just because homosexual behavior is disordered doesn't mean that SSA constitutes a mental disorder in terms of psychiatry.

What I'm saying is that you can either argue it from the Catholic standpoint or the psychiatric standpoint, but if you're basing things on theology then you really shouldn't be dragging the DSM into things. If the DSM called religious belief a mental disorder that wouldn't back things up as proof it would merely illustrate the current position of a panel of psychiatrists.

Edited January 10, 2005 by spathariossa

[hyperdulia again]

apotheoun, you keep saying that as if it has *particular* relevance, it doesn't. all sinfl inclinations are *objectively disordered* holy church could use the same sentence to describe the urge to kill one's child, the urge to touch one's self sexually, the urge to defraud the poor, etc.

Edited January 10, 2005 by hyperdulia again

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='spathariossa' date='Jan 10 2005, 01:20 AM'] Right but being objectively disordered and being a psychiatric disorder/mental disorder/treated by psychotherapy are two very different things. Just because homosexual behavior is disordered doesn't mean that SSA constitutes a mental disorder in terms of psychiatry. [/quote]
It is a pathological condition, that is what it means when the Church calls it an objective disorder. It is a consequence of the fall from grace, and as such it is unnatural.

God bless,
Todd

[spathariossa]

[quote name='Apotheoun' date='Jan 10 2005, 03:22 AM'] It is a pathological condition, that is what it means when the Church calls it an objective disorder. It is a consequence of the fall from grace, and as such it is unnatural.

God bless,
Todd [/quote]
Look at my post edit and see if that changes things.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='hyperdulia again' date='Jan 10 2005, 01:20 AM'] you keep saying that as if it has *particular* relevance, it doesn't. all sinfl inclinations are *objectively disordered* holy church could use the same sentence to describe the urge to kill one's child, the urge to touch one's self sexually, the urge to defraud the poor, etc. [/quote]
That is true, and any objective disorder, depending upon the case, can be a pathological condition.

God bless,
Todd

[hyperdulia again]

thy all *can* be pathological is not the same as necessarily being so.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='spathariossa' date='Jan 10 2005, 01:20 AM'] Right but being objectively disordered and being a psychiatric disorder/mental disorder/treated by psychotherapy are two very different things. Just because homosexual behavior is disordered doesn't mean that SSA constitutes a mental disorder in terms of psychiatry.

What I'm saying is that you can either argue it from the Catholic standpoint or the psychiatric standpoint, but if you're basing things on theology then you really shouldn't be dragging the DSM into things. If the DSM called religious belief a mental disorder that wouldn't back things up as proof it would merely illustrate the current position of a panel of psychiatrists. [/quote]
In Catholic moral theology the homosexual condition, if it perdures, is a pathological illness of the soul (psyche). Many oncupiscential disorders are also psychological illnesses, and one must not minimize the disordered nature of this condition, because as the CDF has indicated, the homosexual inclination is not a benign or neutral syndrome. [see CDF Instruction [u]Homosexualitatis Problema[/u], no. 3]

God bless,
Todd

[spathariossa]

[quote name='Apotheoun' date='Jan 10 2005, 03:31 AM'] In Catholic moral theology the homosexual condition, if it perdures, is a pathological illness of the soul (psyche). Many oncupiscential disorders are also psychological illnesses, and one must not minimize the disordered nature of this condition, because as the CDF has indicated, the homosexual inclination is not a benign or neutral syndrome. [see CDF Instruction [u]Homosexualitatis Problema[/u], no. 3]

God bless,
Todd [/quote]
Right, but that doesn't mean a label of psychiatric disorder is necessarily correct. It may be a disordered state of being but the Church doesn't claim to know where the disorder resides or how precisely it manifests itself. As a result basing a DSM suggestion on Catholic theology is rather nonsensical.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='hyperdulia again' date='Jan 10 2005, 01:31 AM'] thy all *can* be pathological is not the same as necessarily being so. [/quote]
Yes, the pathological nature of the condition is determined by whether or not it perdures over time. A passing homosexual thought is not the same as a fixation upon unnatural sexual desires. But in both cases the desire is objectively disordered and must not be seen as benign.

God bless,
Todd

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='spathariossa' date='Jan 10 2005, 01:33 AM'] Right, but that doesn't mean a label of psychiatric disorder is necessarily correct. It may be a disordered state of being but the Church doesn't claim to know where the disorder resides or how precisely it manifests itself. As a result basing a DSM suggestion on Catholic theology is rather nonsensical. [/quote]
If it perdures over time as some kind of stable condition, it is a psychiatric illness.

God bless,
Todd