The APA was pressured to change its view on homosexuality
Although American homosexuals today are demanding equal rights, no shift has been more drastically beneficial for the status of homosexuality than its declassification as a mental illness.
The American Psychiatric Association’s Board of Trustees passed this decision on December 15, 1973. 500 voted yes and 4000 voted no. The APA released a statement that rejected legal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
So it begs the question - since when do we vote on scientific information? The answer is you don't. This was lobbying by homosexuals, the separation of sex and procreation, the pill, and the concept of non-productive sex and then the rejection of all religious moral laws.
No science here - just politics!
In the publication of its monumental decision to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the board cited “review of evidence[,]...changing social norms and growing gay-rights activism."
In other words they were forced.
But shouldn’t the APA’s decision have been based on scientific evidence alone? No they were forced by insiders and a powerful homosexual lobby group. While most would answer affirmatively, it is hard to argue that this was the case in 1973.
Real uncertainty arises around the question of what induced this
change. In Homosexuality and American Psychiatry, Ronald Bayer argues
that this decision was the product of years of political pressure
applied by gay activists. Judd Marmor, Vice President of the APA at
the time of the decision and a prevailing advocate for the declassification
of homosexuality, was openly arguing by 1972 that conservative
psychiatrists were opposed to the declassification of homosexuality on
the sole basis of moral and social judgments.
Ellen Herman argues
another point of view in her book, Psychiatry, Psychology, and Homosexuality.
Herman acknowledges the scientific advantage held by those
fighting for the change, and points to the referendum held by the APA
in response to the decision as evidence for the importance of changing social norms.
What led to the declassification of homosexuality as a
mental illness in 1973? The answer to this question involves a combination
of political, social, economic, and scientific factors. Proximately,
the political pressure of gay activists, the increasingly vocal gay community,
and the presence of scientific validation for their claims led
to a reconsideration of the pathological state of homosexuality.
Ultimately,
however, social views towards homosexuals had to be changed
in order for the decision to pass. This meant a total rejection of Christian virtues and values. A rejection of history and moral values and an acceptance of the individual to rule their own life without reference to anyone. The arguments in favor
of the change held no real sway until the prevailing homosexual stereotype
was challenged. Nice pictures were presented along with nice stories showing healthy homosexuals couples. The sexual revolution changed minds in some but not all. The law of God has not changed at all. But it has been rejected by the far left, repudiated, and rejected as old fashioned.
