1973 No Longer A sickness "But Born This Way” In a Special Way
Homosexuality was no longer treated as a sickness -- at least officially.
On this day in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Other major mental health organizations eventually followed suit until it was finally declassified by the World Health Organization in 1990.
The move didn’t happen in a vacuum, or because of any new research into homosexuality. Rather, in 1970 gay activists protested at the APA convention in San Francisco and again in 1971. By 1973, as people were beginning to come out of the closet publicly, the organization’s nomenclature task force reviewed its stance and recommended that homosexuality be declared normal. The APA’s trustees were not quite there yet but they voted 13 to 0, with 2 abstentions to remove it from the list of mental illnesses.
If you ever doubt the power of protest and activism to change the status quo, remember what the APA did nearly 40 years ago today.
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