Homosexuality and the Psychiatrists: How the medical profession submitted to activism

Extremely American

Aug 2, 202411 min read

Homosexuality and the Psychiatrists:

How the medical profession submitted to activism

Context

August 2, 2024: The democratic Government of Sri Lanka, conceding to the demands of the unelected bureaucrats on the committee of the UN Human Rights Council that the sovereign nation sanctions sodomy, reported that the “Sri Lanka College of Psychiatrists, the country’s main medical body on mental health and psychiatry, made a public statement that it does not consider homosexuality a mental illness in 2021.”[1] Indeed the College of Psychiatrists in their letter of August 2021 went beyond their inability to diagnose, to demand the decriminalising of gross indecency as outlined in section 365 of the Penal Code – reportedly in response to an appeal from 100 LGBT activists.[2]

Sanctioning unnatural carnal behaviour by governments, or affirmation of inclinations towards such behaviours by physicians, might rightly seem surreal to the unwoke mind. Whether addiction to computer games or binge eating should be defined and diagnosed as disorders or disease might be questions that psychiatrists need to discuss, but the treatment of these conditions – clinically or otherwise, with the aim of conversion towards more wholesome lifestyles might be prudent irrespective of contemporary medical codes or lack thereof. Certainly, dignifying gaming addiction or declaring equality between the ketogenetic diet and bingeing on junk takes courage - or imbecility.

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And yet the question remains as to why professionals - respected doctors, would descend to the point of making official statements regarding law reform, albeit as a knee jerk reaction to pressure enforced by activists, to demand that unhealthy unnatural and immoral practices are legalised and liberalised. Let us now set out to find out.

Terms

Psychiatry originally meant and perhaps had as objective the healing of the soul - or at least the medical treatment of mental illness. Psychiatry is today the science and practice of diagnosing, treating, and preventing mental disorders.[3]

Homosexuality is the sexual or romantic attraction to others of one's sex, or sexual activity with another of the same sex, usually of the same species. It is useful however to differentiate between homosexual inclinations and homosexual practice, as it is to consider the distinction between romantic and sexual attractions. Likewise, we may treat homosexuality the phenomenon with harshness, but understand that the gentle approach is more suited in treating homosexual persons.

DSM

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) - often referred to as the ‘Bible of Psychiatry’ is the handbook, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and used by health care professionals in the United States and much of the world as the authoritative guide to the diagnosis of mental disorders. The DSM contains descriptions, symptoms and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders, and provides a common language for clinicians to communicate about their patients.[4] It follows that where is a diagnosis, treatment shall be due, to attempt cure - and likewise for the converse.

Referred to by clinicians from multiple schools, as well as by researchers, policy makers, criminal courts, and third-party reimbursement entities, the DSM of the APA enjoys a nearly hegemonic status as the reference for the assessment and categorisation of mental disorders of all types.[5]

The DSM's direct predecessor was the Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions of the Insane, first published in 1918. Its 10th edition in 1942 was called the Statistical Manual for the Use of Hospitals of Mental Diseases. The Statistical Manual did not mention homosexuality, but it included a condition called "constitutional psychopathic inferiority (without psychosis)" that was described as "a large group of pathological personalities" including "sexual perversions". However, in the 1935 Standard Classified Nomenclature of Disease, by the US National Conference on Medical Nomenclature, homosexuality was classified as a "pathological sexuality" under the category of "psychopathic personality".[6]

ICD

French statistician and demographer Jacques Bertillon introduced the Bertillon Classification of Causes of Death in the late 1800s. In the 1940s, the World Health Organisation took over Bertillon’s system and expanded it to include statistics on causes of injury and disease, producing the first version of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death/ and Related Health Problems (ICD).

The current ICD-11 CDDG and the DSM-5-TR are similarly organised and define many disorders identically or similarly, while for other disorders there is substantial variation in understanding. There also are some disorders that appear in one manual but not in the other, and vice versa. Evidently, there is no universal agreement even among psychiatrists regarding the identification and classification of mental illness.

The ICD being an instrument of the WHO[7], there is no cause to be surprised that the truth about homosexuality has been subverted[8]. The infiltration of LGBTQ+ activists and allies into, and the subsequent corruption of the American Psychiatric Association is perhaps less well known. It is well worth questioning whether the respected doctors of the third world are secure in submitting to the APA as their apex body and fount of doctrine.

Disintegration

DSM-I

In the first edition of the DSM-I, published in 1952, homosexuality was classified as a “sexual deviation” under the “sociopathic personality disturbance” category within “personality disorders”. The category of sociopathic personality disturbance included subcategories such as antisocial reaction, sexual deviation, and addiction. The sexual deviation diagnosis included also transvestitism, pedophilia, fetishism and sexual sadism. Placement within the context of mental health, provided a basis for the study of homosexuality by clinicians.

DSM-II

The DSM-II published in 1968 included homosexuality in an expanded “sexual deviation” diagnostic section within "personality disorders and certain other nonpsychotic mental disorders". While the DSM-I and its precursor the Statistical Manual included ambiguity in terms of whether homosexuality was a mental disorder, the DSM-II clearly presented homosexuality and the other "sexual deviations" as mental disorders.

Activism

The Stonewall riot in 1969 is frequently considered to have birthed the “gay liberation” or LGBT power of intimidation movement, although the T came into play later. In 1970, homosexual rights activists disrupted the annual APA meeting in San Francisco. By their 1971 meeting, homosexual rights activists were invited to speak at a panel discussion entitled “Gay Is Good”. Frank Kameny of the Gay Liberation Front yelled there that he declares war with psychiatrists. They returned in 1972 for another panel discussion with then-anonymous Dr. John Fryer in whose name the APA now confers an annual award. APA Vice President Judd Marmor sought the removal of homosexuality from the DSM arguing that “psychiatry is prejudiced” against homosexuals - and that social “moral values” contributed to the inclusion of homosexuality as a psychiatric condition.

At the APA annual meeting in 1973, a symposium concluded that “to be considered a psychiatric disorder, it must either regularly cause subjective distress or regularly be associated with some generalized impairment in social effectiveness or functioning”.[9] Hence the entire discipline of psychiatry was revolutionised, or rather spitzerised, in that a disorder is not disordered unless the disordered is distressed about it. That would make the happy lunatic quite sane, and the psychopathic serial killer your regular Jane.

“Liberal” leaders of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association gradually allowed their homosexual members to control the dialogue on homosexuality. LGB divisions and sub-associations were created within these two APAs, and the APAs became extensions of the LGB movement. As a result, fifty years of clinical science on the causation and treatment of homosexuality were systematically removed from treatment manuals and textbooks. Homosexual activists and their allies continued their attacks on psychiatrists and psychologists who publicly disagreed with the non-disorder classification. Within a short span of years, the APAs’ support for objective clinical science on homosexuality became a thing of the past.[10]

DSM-II RP (or DSM RIP)

The controversial seventh printing of the DSM-II, in 1973, changed “homosexuality” to “sexual orientation disturbance”. Sexual orientation disturbance was defined not just as same-sex attraction but as a conflict caused by this attraction or a desire to change it - a shift in focus from homosexuality itself being pathologized, to the internal conflict or desire to change one’s sexuality[11].

DSM-III

The DSM-III published in 1980 renamed SOD to “ego-dystonic homosexuality” and re-categorised it not as a personality disorder but under a new overarching category named “psychosexual disorders”. The creation of a new overarching category was accompanied also with a conceptual shift: instead of focusing on distress about being homosexual as stressed in the 1973 reprint, the new classification indicated a desire to be heterosexual and distress at one's inability to achieve that desire. It is worth noting that this new category had four subcategories, one of which was “gender identity disorders”. Another subcategory was “paraphilias” which included everything previously called "sexual deviations" except for sexual orientation disturbance, with the addition of "zoophilia", a technical name for bestiality. And so deviation became love. EDH was slotted into the subcategory of “other psychosexual disorders” by the desperate psychiatrists, flapping in the winds of activism.

Spitzer’s criteria[12] therefore have been applied to remove all unnatural forms of sexual behavior from the list of disorders, including pedophilia – and tendencies towards pedophilia, bestiality, and necrophilia (sex with corpses), are listed as “paraphilias” and are only regarded as illnesses if they cause the sufferer distress or impair their functioning, or, in the case of pedophilia, if the laws against sex abuse are violated.[13]

DSM-III R

In the DSM-III-R in 1987, the EDH classification, and the very word homosexuality within it, was removed and “persistent and marked distress about one’s sexual orientation” was included under “sexual disorder, not otherwise specified”. The overarching section was renamed "sexual disorders". The change of category from psychosexual disorder to sexual disorder de-emphasised homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder. The subsection "gender identity disorders" was also moved to a different category—"disorders usually first evident in infancy, childhood, or adolescence".

This is the story thus far of what was personality disorder homosexuality in DSM-1, which became mental personality disorder homosexuality in DSM-2, which became “sexual orientation disturbance” in its 7th printing, which became psychosexual disorder “ego-dystonic homosexuality” in DSM-3, which became sexual disorder of “marked distress about sexual orientation” in DSM 3-R – all within one homosexual practitioner’s lifetime, driven by activism, and justified as the necessity to amend diagnosis based on cultural context. And we may imagine that in a culture that normalises paedophilia and the inclination to buggery, these conditions will lose their places within the paraphilias. Moreover, between DSM-III and III-R homosexuality is made ambiguously and potentially diversified as any sexual orientation.

DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR

No change was made to the "sexual disorder not otherwise specified" category in either the DSM-IV, published in 1994, or the text revision of the manual in 2000 (the DSM-IV-TR). "Persistent and marked distress about sexual orientation" was still included as one of that category's examples. The overarching section of the manual was renamed "sexual and gender identity disorders" and the "gender identity disorders" subsection was moved back into this section.

In 2011, the APA’s policy making body declared its promotion of homosexual “marriage, citing the stress LBGT-identifying persons experience due to lack of this privilege[14], just a few years before Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

DSM-5 and DSM 5-TR (2023)

Yes, 5, not V, for some reason, but inconsistency probably does no longer surprise in the context of the operations of the APA. The DSM-5, published in 2013, does not include any diagnostic category that can be applied to people based on their sexual orientation. No code, no therapy, even for anyone who would need it and seek it.

DSM-5 notes that “cultural norms” have an impact on what is considered pathological, and as norms shifted during the LGB rights movement, so did the conceptualisation of homosexuality. The level of functional impairment attributed to deviant sexuality decreased as society became more accepting of sexual minority groups, which is mirrored by the de-pathologising of homosexuality in the DSM. This would be revolutionary balderdash to the sage behind the Charaka Samhitha, and many others who might ponder upon the consequences of cultural acceptance of theft and the de-pathologising of kleptomania, or the declassification of prolonged grief disorder if no functional impairment is attributable.

The T in the Soup

Pathology related to “gender identity” first appeared in the DSM-III, under the term “gender identity disorder”. In DSM-5, focus was shifted from pathologising some forms of gender identity, to instead focusing on the distress related to it, by renaming the condition “gender dysphoria”. This shift mirrors the change regarding homosexuality between DSM-II and DSM-III, in which emphasis is placed not on the inclination or identity of the individual but instead on distress associated. Sex identity disorder, that came to be known as “gender incongruence” in the ICD, has meanwhile also been moved out of mental disorders, into sexual health conditions.[15]

If this trajectory continues and society continues to become more accepting of transgender identifying and behaving individuals and of other forms of gender identities and sexual orientation such as zoophilia, such that the associated distress on individuals identifying, and behaving thus continues to decrease, one can anticipate that gender dysphoria and all the paraphiliae will also be abolished from the DSM[16]. It will then follow that Colleges of Psychiatrists will call for sanctioning women as men, men as dogs, decriminalisation of buggery, and the dignity of paedophiles.[17] Even today, with reference to their letter of 2021, it will be interesting to request the Sri Lanka College of Psychiatrists to declare whether they believe that necrophilia, zoophilia and pedophilia are mental illnesses or not, and therefore whether they demand the decriminalisation of bestiality, the normalisation of sex with corpses - and if they want archaic laws on pedophilia abolished.

Synopsis

The book of diagnoses has become more than a victim to the fear of the consequences of diagnosis - and the bible of the psychiatrists has become a malleable casualty of activism. “The most significant catalyst for diagnostic change was gay activism”[18] . “This proved that the opinions of people with a categorised disorder have the power to redefine medical practice – and social reality”.[19]

“Sixty years of work by gay rights activists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and leaders in the mental health community have shaped our current views about individuals from sexual minority communities and the care that they receive.”[20]

There is danger when individuals and bodies with a mandate to heal, or at least do no harm first and last, seek to normalise and institutionalise disorder via political lobbying for law reform that will cause tumultuous changes to the fundamental fabric of society and culture. More fearful is the desperation of patients whose need for care and therapy become undermined by the non-recognition of their condition – come about under the guise of relieving them from the stigma of a psychiatric diagnosis.[21]

Doom

Individuals experiencing marked and persistent homosexual proclivity, whether desired or not, and irrespective of whether they seek a difference in orientation, need to have access to the services of psychiatrists - or psychologists or priests, should they or those who love them desire to avail of such services. This is regardless of whether a diagnosis or code is available within an overtly compromised medical manual. Hatred of individuals is to be condemned, but love requires telling them the truth – not affirming the lie.

Furthermore, that an inclination is declassified as a disorder in a psychiatric publication, does not indicate that the inclination and associated behaviour is normal, ethical, moral or harmless to the common good. Disorders may very well be real, even if the cure may or may not be within the domain of the psychiatrists - of the calibre before or after Stonewall.

Context

Marriage is meaningful only between a man and woman, and sexual behaviour is only meaningful as a physical expression within this fertile complementarity. The State is built upon the family that naturally derives from natural marriage. Sanctioning, dignifying, normalising, equalising and endorsing any behaviour that undermines the stability of the fundamental building block of society should not be entertained by a sane government. The state is responsible for preserving its own stability and needs protect family and marriage if it seeks a wholesome prosperity. To protect the meaningful and natural, the deviant and unnatural cannot be legalised and liberalised. Fake cannot be Equal to Authentic, whatever earthly authority declares it. If such a lie is accepted, then the authentintic is devalued, eventually destroyed altogether. Look West, young man. See the mess.

Above: SL SC determination on the constitutionality of sodomy

The Chief Justice described the Dolawatte Sri Lanka Sodomy bill, as permitting on the basis of equality, dignity and liberty, the public engagement of sexual activity, regardless of sexual orientation. If Sri Lankans get what the psychiatrists demand, perhaps at least we will qualify to host the next Olympics.