When was gay declared not a disorder

In 2008, Regina Kunzel learned of an extraordinary collection of case files that had been salvaged from Saint Elizabeths Hospital, a federal institution for the mentally ill in Washington, D.C. These were records of people who had been in treatment with one of the hospital’s psychiatrists, Benjamin Karpman, for being gay or gender-variant, primarily in the 1940s and ‘50s.

What made the files so valuable to Kunzel as a historian was Karpman’s unusual treatment method: He asked his patients to note. Write their being stories, including details of their sexual encounters. Keep journals. Practice free-associative writing. Together, these thousands of pages of patient accounts offered key insights into how patients who were “treated” for being gay or transgender experienced psychiatric scrutiny.

The files inspired Kunzel’s new book, “In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Authority and Queer Life” (University of Chicago Press), which delves into the employ of psychiatry to treat queer and gender-variant people in the mid-20th century.

“At a time when homosexuality was understood to constitute a threat linked ominously to communism and perhaps surpassing it in menace,” Kun

The story of how the American Psychiatric Association decided in 1973 that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness.

Prologue

Host Ira Glass explains that the present this week consists of one long story, the story of something very small that was part of something very massive in the history of our country. (2 minutes)

Act One

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declared that homosexuality was not a disease simply by changing the 81-word definition of sexual deviance in its own reference handbook. It was a switch that attracted a lot of attention at the time, but the story of what led up to that change is one that we listen today, from reporter Alix Spiegel. Part one of Alix's story details the activities of a closeted group of gay psychiatrists within the APA who met in secret and called themselves the GAYPA...and another, even more confidential group of gay psychiatrists among the political echelons of the APA. Alix's own grandfather was among these psychiatrists, and the president-elect of the APA at the time of the change. (24 minutes)

Alix is the co-host of NPR’s Invisibilia.

Act Two

Alix Spiegel's story continues, with a man dressed in a Nixo

Homosexuality is
not a Disease

The World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) rejects all and any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation.

India’s Minister for Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad allegedly stated that homosexuality “is a disease which has appear from other countries” in a press conference on HIV/Aids on Monday in Delhi (4th July – BBC NEWS South Asia 5th July) despite same-sex attracted sex being decriminalized in the country in 2009.

The World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) asserts that homosexuality is not a disease. Homosexuality was removed from the international classification of diseases in 1973 (DSM) and 1990 (WHO/ICD). Homosexuality has been establish to be a steady sexual phenotype in humans in population-based surveys and is observed cross-culturally (see Burri et al 2011).

The Declaration of Sexual Rights in Article 4 proclaims the right to sexual equity. This refers to freedom from all forms of discrimination regardless of sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, race, social class, religion, or physical and emotional disability (WAS, 1999).

The alleged assertion made by a high-ranking governmental off

#FlashbackFriday -- Today in 1973, the APA Removed Homosexuality From List of Mental Illnesses

Forty-four years ago today, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) -- the largest psychiatric organization in the world -- made history by issuing a resolution stating that homosexuality was not a mental illness or sickness. This declaration helped shift public notion, marking a major milestone for LGBTQ equality.

The resolution stated, “We will no longer insist on a label of sickness for individuals who insist that they are skillfully and demonstrate no generalized impairment in social effectiveness.” The statement continued to say the APA supports “civil rights legislation at local, state, and Federal levels that would insure homosexual citizens the same protections now guaranteed to others.”

Now, more than 40 years later, LGBTQ advocates are still fighting to achieve that actual world. Despite significant steps forward, 31 states still lack clarify, fully-inclusive non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people, meaning that LGBTQ people are at risk of entity fired, denied housing, and denied services for who they are or whom they love.

That’s why HRC is

Source: Pixabay

In the 1950s and 1960s, many therapists offered aversion therapy of the kind featured in A Clockwork Orange to "cure" male homosexuality. This typically involved showing patients pictures of naked men while giving them electric shocks or drugs to form them vomit, and, once they could no longer bear it, showing them pictures of naked women or sending them out on a "date" with a young nurse. Needless to say, these harsh and degrading methods proved entirely ineffective.

First published in 1968, DSM-II (the second edition of the American classification of mental disorders, and a forerunner of DSM-5) still listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. In this, the DSM followed in a distant tradition in medicine and psychiatry, which in the nineteenth century appropriated homosexuality from the Church and, in what must hold seemed like an élan of enlightenment, promoted it from sin to mental disorder.

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) asked all members at its convention to vote on whether they believed homosexuality to be a mental disorder. 5,854 psychiatrists voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM, and 3,810 to retain it.