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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.
 

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