Twisting
Psychiatrists’ Arms
It was never a medical
decision—and that’s why I think the action came so fast…It was a political
move…That’s how far we’ve come in ten years. Now we even have the American
Psychiatric Association running scared.[1]
-Barbara Gittings,
homosexual activist, July 19, 1974
Getting Started
Is homosexuality an emotional disorder – a pathology – or is it
a naturally occurring human characteristic?
What ought to be a clear-cut question has become murky in the public
mind, because the psychiatric community knuckled under to gay political
pressure and removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in
1973.
Sexual libertine’s recognized widely in the 1960s that they
could never persuade the public to accept homosexual culture as long as
homosexuality was considered an illness. Therefore, the movement mounted a
concerted attack on the psychiatric profession, with the goal of forcing the
psychiatrists to change their position on homosexuality, which the profession
considered to be a severe pathology. The libertine’s would achieve their
political victory in less than a decade, but the question remains: what have they really won?
As of 2013, homosexuality is still defined as a diagnosable and
treatable mental disorder, but only if the victim is marked by persistent
distress about his or her “sexual orientation.” The disorder is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders-V (DSM-V) as a
“paraphilia,” euphemistically entitled “Sexual Orientation Not Otherwise
Specified.” Dictionary.com defines “paraphilia” as “a type
of mental disorder characterized by a preference for or obsession with unusual
sexual practices, such as pedophilia, sadomasochism, or exhibitionism.”
Psychiatrists began to
use the clunky phrase, “Sexual Orientation Not Otherwise Specified,” to refer
to homosexuality in 1987, after a series of compromises with radical activists
over the course of a decade about what constitutes acceptable politically correct
terminology about homosexuality. The
dispute has centered primarily on how to balance the demands of radical
political activists to “normalize” homosexuality with the right of the
individual patient to self-determination, which requires that psychiatry leave
the doors open to treatment and implies that homosexuality is in fact a mental
disorder.
The
debate about how to label the
disorder has been driven exclusively by politics, not by scientific research.
In Homosexuality and American Psychiatry, sexual
libertine author Ronald Bayer notes that in the APA’s original DSM-I published in 1951,
…homosexuality and other sexual deviations were included among
the sociopathic personality disturbances. These disorders were characterized by
the absence of subjectively experienced distress or anxiety despite the
presence of profound pathology.
In 1968 the APA published DSM-II.
In the new manual homosexuality was removed from the category of sociopathic
personality disturbances and placed under the general category of sexual
deviations, alongside gender identity disorder, sadism, masochism, voyeurism,
exhibitionism, fetishism, incest, transvestitism, necrophilia, rape,
pedophilia, zoophilia, and others.
In 1973 came the watershed moment, when the APA declared that
homosexuality per se was no longer a
pathology. This decision is often
referred to as the “removal” of homosexuality from the DSM. But removal is not quite accurate; in
reality, the APA merely voted to downgrade homosexuality from a pathology to a “Sexual
Orientation Disturbance.” The new entry read as follows:
302.0 Sexual
Orientation Disturbance [Homosexuality]
This is for individuals whose sexual interests are directed
primarily toward people of the same sex and who are either disturbed by, in conflict
with, or wish to change their sexual orientation. This diagnostic category is
distinguished from homosexuality, which by itself does not constitute a
psychiatric disorder. Homosexuality per se is one form of sexual behavior, and
with other forms of sexual behavior which are not in themselves psychiatric
disorders, are not listed in this nomenclature.[2]
Thus, simply being homosexual was no longer considered to be a
pathology as long as victims are comfortable with it. Oddly, it became
“disordered” for one to wish to become healthy, to wish that the way one
expresses his or her instincts be in accord with the physical organs that do
the expressing. Imagine a fish who
thinks itself a bird. Should we think
ill of the fish because it hopes one day to be happy in the water? In the words
of Ronald Bayer:
On a conceptual level opponents of the Board’s decision found it
utterly astounding that “subjective distress” could provide a standard by which
to determine the presence or absence of psychopathology. Indeed it was the
absence of such discomfort that revealed the depths of pathology.[3]
The sociopath example led to profound disagreements within the
APA about subjective distress as the basis for what constitutes pathology. If a
sociopath experiences no distress then can he be considered pathological? A
pure political compromise, this peculiar definition adopted in 1973 would last
but a few years, before being renegotiated by a more sober APA leadership team
in 1976. Prior to discussing the 1976 renegotiation and those that came after,
let’s take a deeper look into the context in which the 1973 vote to downgrade
homosexuality as a pathology took place, as the 1973 vote was a turning point
for the homosexual movement.
Evelyn
Hooker
A lifelong
hard-left political activist, psychologist and UCLA professor Evelyn Hooker is
more than anyone else credited with having provided the pseudo-scientific
rationale[4],[5] for the view asserting
that homosexuality is not a psychological disorder. In the book A Natural History of Homosexuality, sexual
libertine author Francis Mark Mondimore records that,
…after receiving
her PhD in psychology, Hooker joined the faculty at the University
of California at Los Angeles
Hooker’s students
“were acutely aware of what was being written about them in the psychology books,
and as the relationship between Dr. Hooker and these men grew closer, some of them suggested that she study them as
research subjects,”[7]
not objectively, but with the sole purpose of challenging the APA’s
categorization of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder. “After some hesitation, Hooker agreed; in
fact, she applied for and received a grant from the National Institutes of
Mental Health to do so.”[8] Hooker’s study, “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,” published in Projective Testing in 1957, was one of
two main studies, along with Kinsey’s Sexual
Behavior of the Human Male, upon which the American Psychiatric Association
decided in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders II (DSM II).
Although Hooker’s
study of 30 self-described “gay” men purported to show that homosexuality could
not be detected by standard psychological tests, and therefore it was possible
that homosexuals could be as equally well adjusted as their heterosexual counterparts,
her results were multifariously flawed. While Hooker’s study was discredited in
April of 1993 by the official journal of the American Psychological
Association, American Psychologist, [9] on a conceptual level the
study never even needed to be discredited. Hooker believed that if
she could find even a single homosexual who was well adapted it would prove
that homosexuality per se is not intrinsically a disorder, but perhaps when
coupled with a hostile environment or other abnormalities could become more closely
associated with disorders, but on a conceptual level her study asked the wrong
question.
Hooker
essentially asked a nonsensical question. The very concept of a psychiatric
disorder implies that there is a correct psychiatric order, and this order is fully
attained when the brain and nervous systems operate in a way that allows each
part to accomplish its natural teleological end, or purpose. Thus, when one is
disordered it implies a dysfunction in which some part of the brain is not
acting in a way that allows it to accomplish its natural teleological purpose.
So when Hooker makes the claim that finding one person with same-sex attraction
disorder who is reasonably adapted in some ways, she ignores the big picture
which is that they are not reasonably adapted in the way that is substantive to
the subject in question. It's like saying there is nothing wrong with blindness
because I can still get around and work by using a walking stick. One doesn't
follow from the other. The notion that blindness is a deficiency is true in and
of itself, no matter how well one might adjust to their less than ideal
circumstances. By sleight of hand Hooker’s study seems to have taken the
psychiatric communities attention off of the common sense question, which is
about the subject of teleology, which is necessarily implied in and universal
to the notion of all mental disorders, and therefore can't be thrown out by
anyone who believes in the existence of disorders of any sort, (you can't just
pick and choose which disorders you apply the universal rule to and which you
don't). By some fallacy of false comparison Hooker sold a percentage of very
influential psychiatrists who were in charge of categorizing all mental
disorders on a theory, which if accepted, would have undermined the very basis
for the case that mental disorders exist at all.
Not
only was Hooker’s study flawed in its very premise, as mentioned it was also so
poorly conducted that it was eventually discredited in April of 1993 by
the official journal of the American Psychological Association, American Psychologist[10] for more reasons than most even care to read about.
Hooker made several
errors in her mathematical calculations, which raise serious questions about
her care and competence as a researcher. Hooker’s carelessness in her
mathematical calculations call into further question her ability to correctly
administer the tests she claimed proved her thesis.
Hooker was a rookie
in administering the Rorschach test, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), and
the Make-A-Picture-Story Test (MAPS) which may have led her to make more
substantive mistakes in the tests administration. Hooker’s previous research
experience was limited to rats. Dr. Thomas Landess, former Academic Dean at the
University of Dallas and former Policy Analyst at the U.S. Department of
Education, has authored numerous books and articles.
She obviously had logged comparatively little experience in
administering the tests, a delicate and highly complicated task in which the
clinician gently and obliquely elicits spontaneous responses. A more
experienced clinician many argue, may have explored many avenues Hooker failed
to note and would have found out many things Hooker missed –including
indications of the pathology of the homosexuals. (site source)
This fact calls
into further question the believability of her results.
1.
Hooker’s published account of how she recruited heterosexuals is
not consistent with a later account, which raises further questions about her
trustworthiness as a researcher. Originally Hooker claims that the
heterosexuals participants were
2.
Hooker did not use a random sample to test the stability of
homosexuals but rather she used gay rights radicals from Harry Hay’s Mattachine
Society to recruit those homosexuals most likely to prove her thesis.
Individuals who proved unstable were deleted from the final sample.
3.
Even Hooker’s cream of the crop handpicked homosexual
participants failed to prove her thesis that homosexuals were as “equally
adjusted” as the heterosexual participants in both the Thematic Apperception
Test (TAT) and the Make-A-Picture-Story Test (MAPS). These tests require
participants to make up fictional narratives about depicted scenes. The
homosexual participants could not refrain from including homosexual fantasies
in their imaginary accounts – a clear case of compulsion and obsession. After
learning that the homosexual results would fail to prove her thesis Hooker
altered her study and instructed judges to stop using the TAT and MAPS tests
when attempting to determine the sexuality of the 60 participants – a clear
case of changing the rules to win the game.
4.
Six test participants, three from each group, had engaged in
both homosexual and heterosexual behavior –thus further confusing said results
5.
Despite the aforementioned chicanery, Hooker’s study does not even
attempt to prove that homosexuals are normal in every way, nor does her study
even support the idea that homosexuals as a group are just as stable as
heterosexuals. The studies own conclusion states the following:
at least in one respect the
life-history data from the two groups will differ: namely, in the love
relationships. Comparisons between the number and duration of love
relationships, cruising patterns, and degree of satisfaction with sexual
pattern and the love-partner will certainly show clear-cut differences.
In addition, even
after obtaining her said results Hooker admits two ways that homosexuality
could still be the result of pathology, and if it is, could be limited to the
sexual sector alone:
Even if one assumes that
homosexuality represents a severe form of maladjustment to society in the
sexual sector of behavior, this does not necessarily mean that the homosexual
must be severely maladjusted in other sectors of his behavior.
..if one assumes that
homosexuality is a form of severe maladjustment internally, it may be that the
disturbance is limited to the sexual sector alone.
The fact is that
radical Mattachine Society homosexual activists went to Evelyn Hooker,
befriended her because they knew she was a political ally and lobbied her to
conduct a fraudulent study that they could use to lie to the public about the
psychological health of the homosexual.
Shockingly, despite
having already been thoroughly
discredited, Hooker’s was the only study discussed in the American Psychiatric
Association’s 2003 amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas, the United State
Supreme court case which suspended the power of states to enforce anti-sodomy
laws. Even today, almost sixety years after its publication, and twenty-one
years after being exposed as contrived, Hooker’s study is the only paper
referred to in detail on the main website of the American Psychological
Association in its discussion of “Gay” and “Lesbian” issues. Why?
Because the site is attempting to make the case that there is no
evidence for an association between Same-Sex Attraction Disorder (SSAD), Adult
Same-Sex Intercourse (ASSI), and psychopathology,[11] and it has no other
evidence to adduce.
Hooker’s
controversial claims garnered her almost instant recognition within
homosexualist circles, and in the wake of the Stonewall riots in 1969, as
politics began to trump science, militant activists increasingly relied on
Hooker’s study to support their demands that the APA remove homosexuality from
the DSM.
National
Institute of Mental Health Task Force on Homosexuality
In 1965, eight years after Hooker published her study, influential USC/UCLA
psychiatrist Judd Marmor, hand-picked Hooker to chair the American Psychiatric
Association ‘s newly established National Institute of
Mental Health (NIMH) Task Force on Homosexuality. Marmor’s choice of Hooker is not surprising,
as Marmor was a well-known “new left” political
activist who had been previously involved with both anti-war and pro-abortion
issues. Unfortunately, it was also later
discovered that he was a closeted pedophile. The only other “mental health”
representatives listed as serving on the Board of the NIMH Task Force during
this time, unfortunately, were two other then closeted pedophiles, Alfred
Kinsey’s close colleague Paul Gebhard, who replaced Kinsey as Director of the
Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, and Johns Hopkins University
psychologist John Money. Before their careers were over, both men would openly
advocate for the social legitimization of sex between adults, children, and
even infants. They would engage in despicable, vile, and criminal activities
in order to gain the pseudo-scientific evidence they needed to promulgate their
ideas about sodomy and pedophilia (For more detail, see footnotes below).[12][13]
The successful
creation of the NIMH Task Force on Homosexuality, marked the beginning of a
power shift within the American Psychiatric Association. Between 1965 and 1969
as NIMH deliberations were carried out, several clinicians whom had worked for
years with persons struggling with SSAD individuals and wanted to be involved
in deliberations were intentionally left out of discussions for ideological
reasons. In addition, one objective committeeman, a judge from Washington D.C.,
the Honorable David M. Bazelon, resigned during the Task Force deliberations
after becoming aware of the distinctly unscientific direction that Judd
Marmor’s handpicked board members were set on taking the NIMH.
In October of 1969,
the blatantly biased NIMH issued a report on “Homosexuality.” Unsurprisingly,
the report claimed, parroting pedophile Alfred Kinsey almost word for word,
that sexuality is a continuum from exclusive homosexuality to exclusive
heterosexuality, and that some degree of bisexuality is the human norm. (It
avoided mentioning, however, that in Kinsey’s view human sexual taste is almost
infinitely malleable and that it logically follows from this view that no
sexual behavior can be considered abnormal.) Without any evidence, the report
stated that any suffering by men who engage in sodomy is caused by societal
prejudice. Thus, according to the Task Force, there is nothing problematic with
homosexuality per se. This report,
along with the Kinsey Report and Hooker’s study, gave homosexualists the
pseudo-scientific rationale that they needed to begin to challenge the APA’s
official position on homosexuality.
The American Psychiatric Association: 1970
Within a few years,
Judd Marmor
became Vice President of the American Psychiatric Association. With Hooker and
Marmor in prominent roles, agitators outside the profession could count on
their collaboration in organizing protests aimed at the removal of
homosexuality from the DSM and
radicalizing the APA.
Author Ronald
Bayer, who was serving as a fellow at the Hastings Institute in New York at the
time, takes note of this in his book, Homosexuality
and American Psychiatry. Bayer writes that in 1970 the leadership of a
faction of pro-sodomy psychiatrists within the APA planned a “systematic effort
to disrupt annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association.”[14] Although politically
motivated protests directed at psychiatrists had taken place prior, one can see
the beginnings of a coordinated effort to politicize the APA at its 1970 annual
meeting in San Francisco
On May 14, 1970 psychiatrists became the hunted. An invasion by
the coalition of gay and women’s liberationists interrupted the national
convention of the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco to protest
the reading of a paper by an Australian psychiatrist on the subject of “aversion
therapy,” a system of treatment which
attempts to change gay orientation by keying unpleasant sensations (such as
electric shocks) to homosexual stimuli. By the time the meeting was over, the
feminists and their gay cohorts were in charge…and the doctors were heckling
from the audience.[16]
Pro-sodomy activists took over the podium and microphones. Then, Konstantin
Berlandt, of the Berkeley chapter of the Gay Liberation Front, “paraded through
the hall in a bright red dress. Paper airplanes sailed down from the balcony.
With two papers still unread, the chairman announced adjournment.” As the
meeting adjourned several arguments broke out between the psychiatrists who
were angry about the surprise disruption. One activist shouted to a psychiatrist,
“Don’t shake your f***ing finger at me,” to which the psychiatrist replied,
“I’ll shake whatever I please.”[17]In another argument,
psychiatrist Dr. Irving Bieber stated that he believed persons experiencing
Same-Sex Attraction Disorder (SSAD) were the subjects of “misplaced sexual
adjustment,” to which a pro-sodomy
activist shrieked and called him a “Mother F***er!”[18]
Emboldened by a lack of punishment after having trampled over
the medical community’s freedoms of assembly and speech, activists disrupted
another meeting of the American Psychiatric Association on June 23, 1970. This
time in Chicago, they repeatedly shouted down the main speaker.[19] Then, in October, during
a meeting at the University
of Southern California
As the autumn air chilled the nation in 1970 the sexual
anarchists became increasingly bitter. Dr. Jeffry Satinover notes in his book, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth,
that activists began threatening physical attacks and making terrorist threats,
over the telephone and through anonymous letters, to psychiatrists who were
courageous enough to continue to speak of their scientific findings.[22]
1971
Early in 1971, Dr.
Kent Robinson was acting as a kind of ad
hoc intermediary between pro-sodomy activists and the APA. Robinson warned the APA’s national convention
program chairman, Dr. John Ewing, that if a panel—not simply about
homosexuality, but one consisting of sexual anarchist activists—was not
approved, activists would ruin the entire convention. Acceding to intense
pressure, Ewing agreed to sponsor a special panel for activists at the May 1971
annual convention in Washington D.C. under only one condition, that a
psychiatrist chair the panel, as required by APA rules. Since Dr. Kent Robinson
knew of no one else willing to serve, he somewhat reluctantly agreed to do so
himself.[23]
Thus, rather than
respond appropriately to threats by outside activists by improving security,
convention planner John Ewing caved to the demands of the radicals. Not only
did Ewing yield to bullies, he went a step
further. He ordered his security team to wear plain clothes, which, according
to pro-sodomy historian, Ronald Bayer, in his 1981 book Homosexuality and American Psychiatry, “entailed a willingness to
ride out rather than to prevent demonstrations.”[24] To those activists who
had “challenged the professional authority of psychiatry it was clear that only
the threat of disorder and even violence had been able to create the conditions…”
out of which change would occur. “That lesson would not be forgotten.”[25]
After this quick
capitulation by the APA, activists decided to make more demands. In lieu of the
May convention in Washington D.C., in an effort to plan not only more but worse
disruptions, a secret group of pro-sodomy
psychiatrists and outside agitators sought the services of left-wing radical
and pro-bestiality and pro-hard core pornography[26] activist Franklyn Kameny,
who had led the Washington D.C. chapter of the Mattachine Society during the 1960s.
In the words of pro-sodomy historian Ronald Bayer:
“Aware of the organizational weakness of his
own Mattachine Society…Frank Kameny turned to a Gay Liberation Front collective
in Washington
[….]Despite agreeing not to protest in return for a special
panel, all hell broke loose at the APA’s 1971 national convention at the Omni
Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C. Kameny’s cadre of anti-Vietnam War protestors, who just finished
a massive demonstration of their own, along with members of the Gay Liberation
Front, were carrying forged credentials provided by allies on the inside of the
APA (some at the very top), broke into a widely attended special lifetime
service award meeting entitled the, “Convocation of Fellows.” They grabbed the
microphone and Kameny declared psychiatry the “enemy incarnate.”[29]An August 1971 edition of Newsweek
explains:
But even more than the government, it is the psychiatrists who
have experienced the full rage of the homosexual activists. Over the past two
years, [1970-71] gay-lib organizations have repeatedly disrupted medical
meetings, and three months ago—in the movement’s most aggressive demonstration
so far—a group of 30 militants broke into a meeting of the American Psychiatric
Association in Washington
“We are here to denounce your authority to call us sick or
mentally disordered,” shouted the group’s leader, Dr. Franklin Kameny, while
the 2,000 shocked psychiatrists looked on in disbelief. ‘For us, as
homosexuals, your profession is the enemy incarnate. We demand that
psychiatrists treat us as human beings, not as patients to be cured! Psychiatry has
waged a relentless war of extermination against us…We’re rejecting you all as
our owners. You may take this as our declaration of war![30]
Disregarding the
disruption, the promised panel discussion—presented by the same group of
protestors—proceeded without objection by the APA a few hours later. In
addition to Kameny the panel included Larry Littlejohn, of the Society for
Individual Rights in San Francisco, Del Martin, a founder of the female
pro-sodomy activist group Daughters of Bilitis, Lilli Vicenz, a lesbian
activist, and Jack Baker” the student body president-elect at the University of
Minnesota.”[31]Ironically, at the very moment, in 1971, while the
aforementioned activists were making the case that sodomy is healthy, safe, and
natural, a deadly virus was silently beginning to race through communities of
men all over the nation. Only a decade later, thousands of men would be dead or
dying of AIDS.
According to Ronald Bayer, “toward the end of the convention
Kameny and Littlejohn informed Kent Robinson that they wanted to present their
demands for the deletion of homosexuality from the APA’s official nosology, DSM II, to members of the Associations
Committee on Nomenclature.”[32] Again, under intense
pressure, a meeting was arranged and although nothing came of it, the process,
“of transforming general outrage into a specific political demand had been set
in motion.”[33]
Shortly after the May convention, on June 7, 1971, Franklin Kameny
wrote a letter to Psychiatric News
threatening the APA with not only more, but worse disruptions. In this letter
he states:
“Our presence there was
only the beginning of an increasingly intensive campaign by homosexuals to
change the approach of psychiatry toward homosexuality or, failing that, to
discredit psychiatry.”[34]
Protests continued over the course of the next several years. Kay
Tobin Lahausen, co-author of The Gay
Crusaders, describes a variety of activism:
We did all sorts of protests…When the U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations came out of some meeting and got in his big black limousine, I
remember going crazy, rocking and beating on the limousine…He had never been
besieged by a bunch of homosexuals before. But he had said something that got
us going.[35]
Lahausen’s lover, Barbara Gittings, was also a well-known gay
activist. Although Gittings was not a librarian, she was the first head of the
American Library Association’s “Gay Task Force.” Her objective was to bring
books advocating sodomy
to the attention of librarians, in hopes of having them included in their
libraries. At one American Library Association meeting Gittings set up a
same-gender kissing booth to attract attention to her cause. Gittings tells
about her activism against the APA:
Besides the ALA
1972
Barbara Gittings
worked with Franklyn Kameny to put together a panel at the 1972 APA annual
convention in Dallas
The panel again included
Franklyn Kameny, Barbara Gittings, and new-left UCLA psychiatrist and then vice
president of the APA, Judd Marmor, as moderator. The panel also included a six
foot four, three hundred pound psychiatrist from a secret pro-sodomy faction
within the APA called the “Gay-PA,” who wore a disguise which consisted of a
rubber mask, a huge wig, and a baggy tuxedo. This disguised psychiatrist also
spoke through a microphone which distorted his voice, and was identified at the
meeting only as “Dr. H. Anonymous.” This psychiatrist would later be revealed
as Dr. John Fryer, who at the time was an untenured professor at Temple
University in Philadelphia.
During the panel, amidst a crowd of over 200 psychiatrists, “Dr.
Anonymous” announced the existence of the “Gay-PA,” which met socially,
admitted to frequenting bathhouses, and hosted a secret dinner each year during
APA annual conventions. He also announced that over 100 “Gay-PA” members were
present at the convention. For pro-sodomy activists this bold panel discussion
was a huge success. Its very presence at the convention prompted the pro-sodomy
publication the Advocate to report
that “Psychiatry and the gay community may finally have reached a turning
point.”[40]
In addition to the
panel, author Edward Alwood notes in his book Straight News that Kameny also recognized that, “by participating
in the convention he had a rare opportunity to integrate the event. He even
attended the annual psychiatrists’ ball.
When the band struck up the music, Kameny grabbed Phil Johnson, a local
Dallas[41]”[pro-sodomy activist] and
“the two men waltzed out onto the dance floor. The stunned psychiatrists and
their spouses watched speechlessly, most of them pretending they were not
seeing it.”[42],[43]
Following the panel at
the 1972 convention, an internal APA debate was manufactured by a few activists
after pro-sodomy activist Richard Green, then Director of the Gender Identity
Research and Treatment Program at the UCLA Medical School, published an essay
entitled “Homosexuality as a Mental Illness” in the International Journal of Psychiatry.[44] Ronald Bayer notes in his
book, Homosexuality and American
Psychiatry, that
Green’s essay was
followed by at least six formally invited responses, at least four of which
were calculated to sharpen awareness of the profound disagreements that had begun
to characterize opinion on homosexuality. Rather than expressions of doubt and
uncertainty, they were unmistakably partisan declarations.
Judd Marmor[45] and Martin Hoffman[46] expressed clear and
unambiguous support for the position that the classification of homosexuality
as a mental illness represented nothing more than the cloaking of moral
judgments in the language of science. Charles Socarides[47] and Lawrence Hatterer[48] defended the traditional
psychiatric perspective. Especially for Socarides, there was no reason to
reopen the issue of the pathologic status of homosexuality. Indeed, he
perceived Green’s pseudo-agnostic stance as a rejection of the findings of
science—a rejection cloaked in the guise of “scientific posture.”[49]
By mid-1972 pro-sodomy
activists had created the illusion that many psychiatrists were breaking ranks
with traditional views about the inclusion of homosexuality within the DSM. As a result, many psychiatrists who
may have felt civil rights sentiments related to the movement, yet did not
study human sexuality at length and were largely ignorant of many of the most
important theories related to the matter, began to break ranks and jump on the
newly perceived bandwagon in support of the removal of homosexuality as a
category within the DSM.
On October 8, 1972, after the APA’s annual convention,
“activists staged what would come to be seen as one of their most important
“zap” demonstrations when they targeted a meeting of the Association for the
Advancement of Behavior Therapy in New
York
1973
During this time “a dramatic shift in events was shaping up
behind the scenes at the APA.” While militants were zapping psychiatrists at conventions, they were also
working behind the scenes to elect psychiatrists sympathetic to their agenda to
the APA Board. The timing was perfect, because the APA was extremely divided at
the time over the Vietnam War. Homosexualists combined their efforts with the
anti-Vietnam sentiments and formed a new Committee, calling itself the
“Committee of Concerned Psychiatrists” and began a campaign to elect
anti-Vietnam activists and homosexualists to the Board of the APA. According to
Medscape Medical News:
From the end of World War II until the 1970’s the APA had been
run by a clique; the nominating committee would present a slate with single
candidates for each office who would automatically be elected. It was known as
an old boys club and there was great resentment. That group resisted change or
reform in regards to the Vietnam War, or to sexuality, or to a number of other
issues of the day.
“The
Committee of Concerned Psychiatrists” recruited Dr. Alfred Freedman to run for
president against the establishment. He accepted their nomination and after a
contentious campaign, he won the election, “with a margin of 3 votes out of
20,000.”
Medscape Medical News notes that as soon as Dr. Freedman took office he supported the
move to remove homosexuality from the DSM:
By then, the APA Board had many newly elected members who were
committed to reform and supportive of Dr. Spitzer’s resolution. “So in 1973 the election was very important because the board
of the previous year would never have supported the declassification of
homosexuality,” Dr. Freedman noted.
Freedman recounts further:
In the APA elections of 1972 and 1973 concern over social issues
brought in a number of individuals as members of the Board of Trustees who were
committed to change, including removal of homosexuality per se from the official APA nomenclature.[53]
Ronald Bayer agrees:
…psychiatrists committed to social activism had recently mounted
a successful challenge to the Association’s old guard, and those who were
threatened by the orientation of the new leadership could be counted upon to
react almost viscerally in opposition.[54]
During this time:
…a dramatic shift in events was shaping up behind the scenes at
the APA. During the zap of the psychiatrists at the May [1972] annual
convention, one member of the audience had recognized Gold from having attended
college with him and introduced him to Robert Spitzer, a member of the APA’s
Nomenclature Committee, which set the official classifications for illnesses.
As a former reporter for the entertainment trade newspaper Variety, Gold instantly recognized the value of his new contact and
began to lobby for a meeting of the Nomenclature Committee and representatives
of GAA.[55]
The APA’s committee
on Nomenclature and Statistics was responsible for publishing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders. Loosely coordinated with the international classification of
medical diseases, the enormously influential DSM had defined homosexuality medically, on par with many other
sexual deviations because persons who had developed Same-Sex Attraction
Disorder (SSAD) did not have an adult person of the opposite sex as their
primary object of sexual interest. Robert Spitzer, who would eventually become
the pre-eminent expert in the classification of mental disorders on a
statistical basis and the overall director of psychiatry’s official
classification system, was then a consultant to the Nomenclature Committee. Spitzer sympathized with the activists on civil rights grounds.
[Spitzer]…eventually
agreed to set up the meeting, provided it was kept hush-hush. After agreeing to
the stipulation Gold went behind Spitzer’s back and notified the press. On
February 9, 1973 Boyce Rosenberger, a science writer at the New York Times wrote a story on the
issue. The headline read: PSYCHIATRISTS
REVIEW STAND ON HOMOSEXUALS.[56]
Although the article infuriated the APA, it assured the
activists that they would be given a hearing. Gold notes that:
The article not only got attention far and wide once it was in
the times but it put them on record…Although the Nomenclature Committee stopped
short of approving the change, Spitzer, who was the head of the committee
invited Gold to make his case before the association’s entire membership at its
1973 annual convention in Hawaii the following May.
“By the time of the May 1973 APA convention in Honolulu
Eventually, rather than acknowledge that homosexuality did in
fact constitute a psychiatric disorder under the APA’s 1973 definition of a
disorder, as “that which inhibits the natural functioning of one’s physical
design,” Spitzer opted to change the definition of a what the term “disorder”
actually means altogether. Spitzer’s new definition of “mental disorder” thus
became:
“that which regularly causes subjective distress or is regularly
associated with some generalized impairment of social effectiveness or
functioning.”
During the time Spitzer
was shifting his position and hubristically formulating his own new definition
of the phrase “mental disorder,” a true
case of putting the cart before the horse; he was also planning the panel
discussion that he had promised activists would
take place at the May 1973 APA annual convention in Honolulu. As Spitzer
altered his views he became increasingly willing to stack the panel discussion
in favor of the activists. The end result was the inclusion of only two
psychiatrists against the removal of homosexuality, Charles Socarides and
Irving Bieber, and four psychiatrists in favor of the removal: Robert Stoller,
Richard Green, Ronald Gold, and Judd Marmor, then vice president of the APA.
On the day of the convention Gold stood at the lectern before a
crowd of 5000 psychiatrists and urged them to, ‘Stop, calling Homosexuality a
sickness.’” “Later that afternoon the associated press carried a story about
the session, prompting coverage in newspapers across the nation. DOCTORS URGED
NOT TO CALL HOMOSEXUALITY A SICKNESS was the headline on the short AP story in
the New York Times on May 10.” Newsweek’s interpretation of the event
was more cavalier: “The indications seem to be that the [Nomenclature]
Committee will decide to drop homosexuality from its list of mental
aberrations.[58]
After the convention Ronald Gold brought Robert Spitzer (who had
never met a working psychiatrist who openly admitted to engaging in sodomy)
with him to a secret function of the “Gay PA.” Although members of the “Gay PA”
were initially angry that Gold had exposed them to an outsider, they eventually
settled on the circumstance as an opportunity to offer emotional arguments to
Spitzer in their own favor. Indeed, in pro-sodomy author Ronald Bayer’s book Homosexuality and American Psychiatry he
notes that Spitzer’s meeting with the “Gay PA” members:
…provided an emotional jolt that moved him to prepare, within a
month, a proposal for the deletion of homosexuality from the nomenclature.
Spitzer
quickly brought the issue to the attention of Dr. Henry Brill, who was the
chair of the Task Force on Nomenclature and Statistics for the APA at the time.
Brill then assigned Spitzer to prepare a “scientifically sound” and
“persuasive” memo and resolution to be presented to the APA’s Council on
Research and Development, to the Reference Committee, and to the Board of
Trustees.[59]Dr.
Spitzer quickly drafted a three page resolution and solicited Dr. Charles
Silverstein and Wardell Pomeroy to help him present the majority of the
pro-sodomy case before the APA’s Council on Research and Development and Reference
Committee. Crucially:
Since none of the
Committee members was an expert on homosexuality, there was considerable
interest in the data that had been presented, much of which was new to those
who would have to evaluate the issues raised by the call for a revised
nomenclature.
Rarely has such a
crucially important decision, affecting many, been made for the APA by so
few. A tiny few who knew so little about
the subject, and were in so poor a position to judge the scientific quality of
the representation being offered them.
Pedophile Charles
Silverstein led off his presentation before the Committee with Hooker’s
illegitimate study and also introduced some of Kinsey’s now repudiated work. He
emphasized Kinsey’s claims about the frequency of sodomy, but passed over in
silence the fact that Kinsey was also a pedophile who considered sexuality to
be a changeable preference. “The committee was impressed,” writes
Ronald Bayer, “by the sober and professional manner” in which Charles
Silverstein, Ph.D., (who would later write The
Joy of Gay Sex and The New Joy of Gay
Sex) presented the pro-sodomy case.
Fellow pedophile
Wardell Pomeroy, co-author of the first Kinsey volume and (like all his male
colleagues) one of Kinsey’s lovers, also argued before the committee. Pomeroy
argued that the Kinsey data found that homosexuality was not associated with
psychopathology and that all other studies of homosexuality were intrinsically
flawed because they were based on “clinical” samples rather than samples from
the regular population—as though this were not what a quantitative comparative
pathography would require. Even so, both
statements were flat falsehoods, especially outrageous in that the Kinsey data
itself—for which Pomeroy was largely responsible—was fraudulently skewed by
blatant population sampling biases, and the badgering and even bribing of its
imprisoned and otherwise institutionalized subjects, which were not reported as
such. Pomeroy later admitted the shortcomings of the Kinsey Report in his book Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex
Research published shortly before this very meeting—which even so, he
neglected to mention. [60]
After Silverstein
and Pomeroy presented to the Reference Committee, Robert Spitzer presented the
“official position” of the Evelyn Hooker-led “NIMH Task Force on Homosexuality”
to the APA’s Board of Trustees. According to Psychiatric News, it was “essentially upon the rationale of Dr.
Spitzer’s presentation that the Board made its decision.” In short, Spitzer
argued that:
1.
“Exclusive Homosexuality” was a normal part of the human
condition. This claim was based on the
now-debunked Kinsey data.
2.
Homosexuality did not meet the requirements of a psychiatric
disorder because it “does not either regularly cause subjective distress or is
regularly associated with some generalized impairment in social effectiveness
or functioning [sic].” This claim which changed the definition of the term
“disorder” for all psychiatry and all disorders.
3.
Spitzer argued, based on Marcell T. Saghir and Eli Robin’s “Male
and Female Homosexuality,” that homosexuality was normal. (Their research was
roundly criticized by colleagues as the time, but no critique was addressed
by the presenter or the committee.)[61]
Although Spitzer did not say so then, in later correspondence he
has acknowledged that another important component of the case was the work of
Evelyn Hooker.[62]
The APA committee, however, failed to refer to critical studies such as Saghir
and Robin’s suicide studies, which indicated that homosexuality does cause
“subjective distress” and that their study had found differences in the
behavioral patterns and psychology of homosexuals as compared with all other
men. As fraudulent as Hooker’s finding were, these differences would have
complicated even her perceived findings.
Nonetheless, on December 15, 1973, following the advice of the
APA’s new advisors, the pedophiles Dr. Charles Silverstein and Wardell
Pomeroy, two-thirds of the APA’s Board of Trustees (barely
a quorum) capitulated to the demands of the radicals and adopted Spitzer’s
resolution by voting to downgrade homosexuality from the status of an illness
to the milder category of a “Sexual Orientation Disturbance,” with only two
abstentions.
Thus, the seventh printing of the DSM in 1974 placed a special note that announced that the APA had
voted to eliminate “Homosexuality” per se
as a mental disorder and to substitute it with a new category entitled, “Sexual
Orientation Disturbance.”[63]
The downgrading of homosexuality in the DSM was the fruit of a
political, not a scientific, process. In
a press release following the decision, APA President Alfred Freedman:
…underscored the limited scientific meaning of the vote to
delete homosexuality from DSM-II, while emphasizing its enormous social
significance.[64]
Dr. Freedman is
right. This change was pure politics. As
shown, the APA Board was stacked in the 1973 election due to sentiments about
the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and sympathy for homosexuals due to
their stigmatized status in society. The man who was elected president of the APA during this
time, President-elect John Spiegel, was a homosexual himself, though he was
still closeted at the time of his election. With
a Board stacked by homosexual sympathizers, activists were given the tacit
authority to terrorize opposing
psychiatrists. An article appearing
in Psychiatric News about this time recalls that pro-sodomy
activists were beginning to speak of unyielding psychiatrists as “war
criminals,”[65]
with obvious implications. Possibly in fear for their safety, and certainly
wearied by constant harassment, two members of the Board simply abstained from
voting.
The fact that the Board was influenced and intimidated is no
secret. Pro-sodomy journalist
Andrew Sullivan has written that in December of 1973 the APA, “…under intense
political pressure…removed homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric
disorders…”[66]The Advocate, talks of,
…what happened in 1973…referring to the widespread protests by
the gay and lesbian community that led to the APA’s dropping homosexuality from
the DSM.[67]
Activist Mark Thompson writes,
Just before the first of the year, the American Psychiatric
Association’s Board of Trustees declared we were no longer sick.[68]
1974
After the December 15, 1973 APA vote to remove homosexuality as
a mental disorder from the DSM, many members became outraged at how politicized
their profession had become. They felt that psychiatry (which was supposed to
be a science) had been changed solely as a result of political pressure. For
the first time in the “history of health care…a diagnosis or lack of diagnosis
was decided by popular vote rather than scientific evidence”[69] and the dissenters feared
that science would be defenseless against an endless wave of protests:
It now seems that if
groups of people march and raise enough hell they can change anything in
time…Will schizophrenia be next?[70]
In response to the political decision that had been made under
the guise of science, a group of opposing psychiatrists led by Dr. Charles
Socarides filed a petition for a referendum to reverse the action of the Board
the very next day. They called for a full vote by the APA’s 17,905 members.[71]Although the call for a
full vote had the potential to further politicize the APA, which these members
were opposed to, they felt that the scientific credibility of their discipline
hung in the balance and that this was the only way to reverse the unscientific
damage done to their profession.
Most homosexualists feared a full vote. The National Gay Task
Force (NGTF) was prepared, however. Someone on the inside, most
likely Judd Marmor who was running a campaign for APA president at the time,
provided them with the entire list of APA member addresses. Without identifying
itself as an organization, the NGTF sent a letter to every member on file
urging each to vote to remove homosexuality from the DSM. The letter appeared
to be from the APA Board of Trustees and had nothing to do with the scientific
credibility of the move to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder. Instead,
the letter stated the following:
It would be a serious and potentially embarrassing step for our
profession to vote down a decision which was taken after serious and extended
consideration by the bodies within our organization designated to consider such
matters.[72]
On April 9, 1974, the results of the vote were announced. Only
10,555 of the 17,905 APA members voted in the election. The results were as
follows:
Total APA members eligible to vote: 17,905
Number of APA members that actually voted: 10,555
Number of members that abstained: 367
Number of “no” votes -votes to keep homosexuality in the DSM as
a mental disorder: 3,810
Number of “yes” votes-votes to remove homosexuality from the DSM
as a mental disorder: 5,854
Bruce Voeller, the head of the NGTF, admits, “Our costly letter
has perhaps made the difference.”[73] Thus, a critically
important letter ostensibly from its signers was actually from radical
homosexual activists. In light of the facts how serious can the vote declaring
homosexuality no longer a mental disorder be taken? The vote was not the result
of any scientific breakthrough. It was the result of a political campaign.
Catholic scholar Enrique Rueda agrees:
This vote was not the result of scientific analysis after years
of painstaking research. Neither was it a purely objective choice following the
accumulation of incontrovertible data. The very fact that the vote was
taken reveals the nature of the process involved, since the existence of an
orthodoxy in itself, contradicts the essence of science.[74]
When activists publicly claim that the vote was a scientific decision
they hide years of intimidation, deceit, internal lobbying and election and
committee takeovers. In pro-sodomy
circles, however, activists are remarkably candid about the reality of the
vote. Pro-sodomy author Ronald Bayer remarks that the APA:
…had fallen victim to the disorder of a tumultuous era, when
disruptive conflicts threatened to politicize every aspect of American life. A
furious egalitarianism…had compelled psychiatrists to negotiate the
pathological status of homosexuality with homosexuals themselves. The result
was not a conclusion based upon an approximation of the scientific truth as
dictated by reason, but was instead an action demanded by the ideological
temper of the times.[75]
Homosexual lovers Kay Lahausen and Barbara Gittings know what
really happened. In the book Making
History they are quite open about the reality.
Kay: “This was always more of a political decision than a
medical decision.”
Barbara: “It never was a medical decision—and that’s why I think
the action came so fast. After all, it was only three years from the time that
feminists and gays first zapped the APA at a behavior therapy session to the
time that the Board of Trustees voted in 1973 to approve removing homosexuality
from the list of mental disorders. It was a political move.”[76]
The APA was thoroughly intimidated. In 1974, after the APA’s vote,
Gittings was interviewed by pro-sodomy movement historian Jonathan Ned Katz.
Gittings brags, “That’s how far we’ve come in ten years. Now we even have the
American Psychiatric Association running scared.”[77]
1975
In 1975 The American Psychological Association—which is three
times larger than the American Psychiatric Association— also got the message of
intimidation when it caved to the demands of the radicals and pressure from the
more authoritative psychiatrists. In the book, The Long Road to Freedom, the author explains,
January…The American Psychological Association and American
Association for the Advancement of Science echoed the American Psychiatric
Association in deeming homosexuality not an illness.[78]
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
publishes the scientific journal Science.
Intimidation by homosexualists was over for them too:
“Under pressure from gay scientific groups, Science magazine banned anti-gay bias in its staff hiring and
advertisement.”[79]
In 1977, the National Association of Social Workers voted to
follow suit, no longer would they recognize homosexuality as a mental disorder.
1977
By 1977 some of the political pressure had subsided surrounding
the issue of homosexuality and opinions began to shift once again, this time in
a more sober direction. A survey conducted during this time by the journal Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality found
that 69 percent of psychiatrists disagreed with the votes to remove homosexuality
from the DSM’s list of Mental Disorders.
These new findings suggested that the APA leadership no longer
represented the majority opinion. Analysis of the first 2,500 responses to a
poll of 10,000 psychiatrists found that 69 percent believed that homosexuality
usually represented a pathological adaptation. Only 18 percent disagreed with
this proposition. Sixty percent of the respondents asserted that homosexual men
were less capable of “mature, loving, relationships” than their heterosexual
counterparts. Finally 70 percent supported the view that the problems
experienced by homosexuals were more often the result of “personal conflicts”
than of stigmatization.[80]
Thus, in 1977, a mere four years after the APA membership had
voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM-II as a mental disorder an
overwhelming majority of psychiatrists conveyed to surveyors that they still
considered homosexuality a mental disorder. Could the 1973 vote have been
rigged? Could fraud have been involved? Given the homosexualists’ willingness
to do almost anything to get their way, vote fraud cannot be totally ruled
out. Harold Leif, the editor of Medical
Aspects of Human Sexuality, which conducted the study, postulated that the
earlier vote may have been affected by socio-political considerations rather
than psychiatric theories.
The study was confusing for the public and embarrassing for the
APA leadership. Shortly after its release Time
magazine carried the headline: “Sick Again?”
This survey provided the context in which the debates surrounding homosexuality
would take place for DSM-III, set to
be published in 1977.
The survey highlighted the fact that the arguments made by Dr.
Charles Satinover and Dr. Irving Bieber in the 1973 debate turned out to have
been far and away more persuasive for most psychiatrists. Robert Spitzer
himself finally acknowledged the weaknesses of his own arguments. Dissatisfied
with his own arguments justifying replacing homosexuality with the politically
correct category of “sexual orientation disturbance” in 1973, he began to
formulate new reasons for his decision. Thus, instead of correcting himself and
restoring the definition of homosexuality as a mental illness within the DSM,
he simply exchanged one set of weak arguments for another.
As noted, the weaknesses in Spitzer’s 1973 definition stemmed
from the fact that “subjective distress” and the specific and very limited
definition of “generalized social impairment of social functioning” were not
adequate for including many other very obvious mental disorders. To do so would
force psychiatrists to preclude sociopaths, for example, from the DSM III, because by their very
definition sociopaths don’t experience “subjective distress.” Not to mention
all the other sexual deviations, from necrophilia to zoophilia, which most
psychiatrists agreed ought to be included in the DSM III. Therefore, Spitzer
altered his own definition, the definition upon which the 1973 decision had
been based, to include the phrase “inherent disadvantage.” This was just a
fancy way of saying that homosexuality should not be considered a psychiatric
disorder per se, because, “it did not
preclude the possibility of an affectionate relationship between adult human
partners.” Other sexual deviations, such as fetishism, voyeurism, etc. claimed
Spitzer, were “disadvantageous.” Thus Spitzer exchanged one bogus argument for
another, in an effort to keep homosexuality out of DSM III.
Although he knew that most psychiatrists wanted homosexuality
returned to pathology status in the 1977 edition of the DSM, Spitzer used his considerable power within the APA to seek a
compromise to fend off full reintegration. He offered to replace his badly
defined classification of “sexual orientation disturbance” with
“homodysphilia.” He was attempting to placate the will of the majority with
semantics, by merely shifting the terminology involved –a mere sleight of hand.
Spitzer was surprised, however, to find that it was the homosexualists who
reacted negatively to his new classification. Unlike “sexual orientation
disturbance,” which was vague about the disorder it was meant to classify, homodysphilia
was too obviously associated with homosexuality. Thus, “Spitzer was threatened
with another ‘period of militancy’ if he persisted in his course.”[81]Spitzer responded in
defense of his position, now called “dyshomophilia”:
The concept of dyshomophilia takes a middle position regarding
the pathological status of homosexuality… I
believe our current state of ignorance regarding this is a scientifically
defensible position. I believe if we remove dyshomophylia… we could justifiably
be accused of responding to political pressure.[82]
Despite Spitzer’s response, pedophiles Richard Green, Paul
Gephard, and John Money were able to
successfully organize effective resistance to the term “dyshomophilia.” Spitzer
thus acceded to a new and even more clunky term, “homosexual conflict
disorder.”
Although the homosexualists were in a conflict over the precise
term to introduce neither side wanted the fight to go public. Both sides
recognized that public awareness about the infighting might lead the APA to
reverse its 1973 decision entirely and reclassify homosexuality per seas a mental disorder in the DSM III. Homosexualist Michael
Mavroidis, who was serving as a liaison between psychiatrists and “gay”
activists at the time, wrote a letter to Franklyn Kameny and the Mattachine
Society to urge them not to become militant again for tactical reasons:
I personally feel that it would be destructive both to the gay
rights movement and to psychiatry for this issue to be publicly debated and
voted on at this time. I think that the general public views official
psychiatry as having decided that homosexuality per se is not a mental illness, and the risks of losing what the
press would describe as a debate regarding homosexuality should forestall
anyone from carrying this debate beyond the Task Force to the Assembly…or the
APA general membership.[83]
After more compromising about terminology the activists and
Spitzer agreed the term ““ego-dystonic homosexuality” and defined it thusly:
A desire to acquire or increase heterosexual
arousal so that heterosexual relations can be initiated or maintained and a
sustained pattern of overt homosexual arousal that the individual explicitly
complains is unwanted as a source of distress.[84]
Although Spitzer was able to acquire support for this new
terminology and definition from homosexualists,
many remained adamantly opposed to it. They argued correctly that if
there is no corresponding mental disorder for those distressed about their
heterosexual inclinations then homosexuality was still implicitly disordered as
a corollary –as it is today (2012).
One psychiatrist explicitly refused to include the corollary, stating that, “he
rejected the proposal for heterodysphilia, noting that the only heterosexuals
he had met who were distressed by their sexual orientations were schizophrenics
attempting to deny all sexuality.”[85] Spitzer and those who
voted for this curious new definition of a disorder just ignored the obvious
logical corollary. The homosexualists believed it was a way Spitzer could
preserve the priority of heterosexuality as preferable. Spitzer was committed
to giving men with unwanted same-sex attraction who sought treatment help. He
further believed that despite this new definitions obvious corollary that it
could nevertheless pass off as a compromise and help to avoid a full
replacement of homosexuality in the DSM-III.
Thus in 1977, four years after homosexuality had been removed as a pathology,
the majority of psychiatrists within the APA still believed homosexuality is a
mental disorder. In 1980, when DSM-III
was published, same-sex attraction was still classifiable under “ego-dystonic
homosexuality” and anyone who sought help was encouraged to undergo treatment.
With homosexuality per se removed from the American Psychiatric
Associations catalogue of disorders and deviations activists has the
pseudo-scientific justification to forge ahead into the legal realm and argue
for the decriminalization of sodomy. Before their movement could take foot
however, a deadly pathogen emerged.
[2]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University
[3]Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry,
139.
[5] Bruce Shenitz,
“The Grande Dame of Gay Liberation,” Los
Angeles Times Magazine, June 10, 1990, pp.20-34
[6]Francis Mark
Mondimore, “A Natural History of Homosexuality,” Johns Hopkins University
Press Baltimore and London
[7]Francis Mark
Mondimore, “A Natural History of Homosexuality,” Johns Hopkins University
Press Baltimore and London
[8]Francis Mark
Mondimore, “A Natural History of Homosexuality,” Johns Hopkins University
Press Baltimore and London
[11]
www.psychologymatters.org/hooker.html
[12]In
a 1992 interview with Task Force member Paul Gebhard, who would also become the
co-founder of the Sexual Information and Education Council of the United States
(SIECUS), he was questioned about data obtained by the Kinsey Institute related
to the sexuality of children as young as six years old. The Kinsey Institute
had worked with pedophiles in order to gather information and had instructed
the criminals to keep careful records of their “activities” for scientific
purposes. The transcript of this interview reveals the ethical standards of
Paul Gebhard.
Interviewer: “So, do
pedophiles normally go around with stopwatches?”
Gebhard: “Ah, they do if
we tell them we are interested in it!”
Interviewer: “And clearly,
[the orgasms of] at least 188 children were timed with a stopwatch, according
to…”
Gebhard: “So, second hand
or stopwatch. O.k., well, that’s, ah, you refreshed my memory. I had no idea
that there were that many.”
Interviewer: “These
experiments by pedophiles were presumably illegal?”
Gebhard: “Oh yes.”
[13] John Money, who
served on the board of NIMH along with Hooker and Gebhard, was a psychologist
from Johns Hopkins and an early (but later discredited and fired) proponent of
transsexual surgery. John Money would ultimately come to be known for fully
destroying a male infant’s penis after a botched circumcision. After which,
Money put the boy, David Reimer, on female hormones, told his parents to raise
him as a female, and purported to have “reassigned” his gender. Money did this
in a grotesque and hideous attempt to prove his “theory” that gender is
socially constructed at an early age, and usually fixed in later life. John
Money was wrong. While being “treated” in his early years David Reimer told his
parents that Money had been abusing him and refused to see Money after the age
of fourteen. David then immediately re-transitioned into a male gender role and
later underwent reconstructive surgery. David did his best to live a normal
adult male life. David Reimer married a woman with two of her own children, but
eventually the psychological scars, left by John Money and his abuse would
prove to be more than Reimer could bear. On May 4, 2004, David Reimer committed
suicide at the age of 38. Despite Money’s horrific acts, he received the Magnus
Hirschfield Medal in 2002 from the German Society for Social Scientific
Sexuality Research, for whom he worked. Money used his “authoritative” title as
a “psychologist” to get away with his hideous crimes, and the public, it seems, placed blind trust in
him for his title.
[14]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. (New York:
Basic Books, 1981), p.102.
[15] R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.104.
[21] Advocate;
11/11/70, Vol. 4 Issue 19, p1, 3p
[23] R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.104.
[24]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.104.
[25]R. Bayer, Homosexuality
and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.104.
[26] Letter from Franklyn
Kameny to Peter LeBarbara, May 31, 2008,
http://americansfortruth.com/news/gay-icon-kameny-says-beastiality-ok-as-long-as-the-animal-doesn’t-mind.html
[27]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.104.
[31]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.106.
[32]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.104.
[33]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.107.
[35] Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian
Equal Rights, 1945-1990: an Oral History by Eric Marcus p.216-217 (–Author
Marcus has worked as an associate producer for “CBS This Morning” and “Good
Morning America.”)
[36] Making History:
The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945-1990: an Oral History by
Eric Marcus p.221
[37] ibid, p.8
[38]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.107.
[39]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.108.
[40] The Advocate
------------------------------From book Straight News: GET QUOTE
[41]Edward Alwood, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media
[42]Edward Alwood, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media
[43] This is Alwoods
footnote from Straight News page 127 number 22
[44]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.113.
[45] --------
[46] GET QUOTES FROM
BAYERS BOOK PAGE 113 OR ONLINE
[47] -------
[48] -------
[49]R. Bayer,
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1987), p.113.
[50]Edward Alwood, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media
[51]Edward Alwood, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media
[52]Edward Alwood, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media
[53]Alfred M.
Freedman M.D. Psychiatric News, September 2001, Recalling APA’s Historic Step, http://www.psych.org/pnews/00-09-01/recalling.html
[54]R. Bayer, Homosexuality and
American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnoses. Princeton: Princeton University
[58]Newsweek, 21 May 1973
[60] Wardell. B.
Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research. , New York
[61] Robins, E. and
Saghir, M.T. Male and female homosexuality: natural history. Comprehensive psychiatry [0010-440x]
6,12:503 (1971)
[62] E.g., Personal
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