Exposed: The Myth That Psychiatry Has Proven That Homosexual Behavior Is Normal

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 explains how homosexual activists captured the APA
for political gain.
Dr. Ronald Bayer, a pro-homosexual psychiatrist has described what
actually occurred in his book, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The
Politics of Diagnosis. (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, Kameny 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 declaration 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.

Kameny had found an ally inside of the APA named Kent Robinson who helped
the homosexual activist present his demand that homosexuality be removed
from the DSM. At the 1972 convention, 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 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 of this effort were given 15 minutes to protest this
change, according to Dr. Jeffrey 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 years but had left the lifestyle. He
recounted how after the 1973 APA decision, 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. Satinover shows how APA's policies were influcenced by closeted
homosexual APA leaders.
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 homosexuality 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 propagation 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 diagnostic 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 diagnosis. 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, recommend a course of 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 toward 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 substitute 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.