Homosexuality removed as a disorder by APA based on a vote not science
The President of the National Council of the order of psychologists, Luigi Palma, said, “It is very serious that the detractors of the anti-homophobic laws repeat, among others, the idea that homosexuality is a disease to be cured and, consequently, that homosexual orientation can be changed.”
D’Agostino called Palma's statement “absolutely unconscionable” and noted that those who had opposed the bill for serious legal reasons had been exposed to “a variety of violent attacks, including some that were very crude from gay movements."
Palma, in his attempt to shut down opposition, “is actually proving to be a valuable ally of those who believe that the true goal of a law against homophobia is to muzzle the freedom of scientific research and, more generally, of the free manifestation of thought,” D’Agostino added.
The claim made by Palma and others that homosexuality is normal and must never be subjected to psychological treatment is based on false premises, D’Agostino said.
“It should be remembered that, when in the now distant 1973, the American Psychiatric Association deleted homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, the question was simply removed, not resolved,” he said. “Especially as this deletion did not happen as a result of a adequate scientific debate, but only exhorting…subscribers to the Association to express themselves, through a vote, on whether to continue to consider homosexuality as an illness of psychiatric significance.”
This process, he said, had nothing to do with objective science.
