Chapter Seven Stonewall and the APA

· Stonewall

“In short, the political and cultural environment had undergone a liberalizing shift which had created the opportunity for the emergence of a mass homosexual movement.” (Engel, The Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement, p.38)

“Ironically, when the uprising finally occurred, many people failed to recognize its significance. Looking back, however, there is no denying that what began, as a skirmish at a Greenwhich Village bar became the harbinger for a new movement of human rights. Detailed accounts of Stonewall have taken on the quality of myth, as more people remember being there than could have possibly have fit in the tiny grimy bar. It is generally accepted that a diverse group of bar patrons, led by the drag queens who were Stonewall regulars, spontaneously began to fight back during a police raid. The resistance turned into a riot, which lasted for several days.” (Kranz & Cusick, Gay Rights: Revised Edition, p. 35)

“The years leading up to Stonewall saw a breach in the assimilationist attitudes of the docile homophiles of the previous generation in favour of more revolutionary ones of people who craved more purely sexual freedom.” (Archer, The End Gay, p.91)

“But in the 1960s and 1970s, the gay movement broke decisively with the assimilationist rhetoric of the 1950s by publicly affirming, celebrating, and even cultivating homosexual difference.” (Chauncey, Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate Over Gay Equality, p.29)

An event that took place on June 12, 1969, in New York City at a gay bar called, the Stonewall Inn, had great social and cultural historical significance in the development of the concept of the “modern homosexual” who soon adopted what is known as a “gay” identity. This was an act of resistance, a riot by drag queens mourning the death of Judy Garland. It was a group of effeminate men, wearing women’s clothes resisting police authority, during a raid on the gay bar. What started out as a typical raid by the police, a shake down for bribery from a gay bar turned out much differently. This event is often linked with the beginning of the “gay liberation movement.” It should be noted that it was a fringe group of homosexuals, and not representative individuals of the homosexual community at large who displayed this physical resistance.

“Stonewall was an act of resistance to police authority by multiracial drag queens mourning the death of Judy Garland, long divinized by gays. Therefore Stonewall had a cultural meaning beyond the political: it was a pagan insurrection by the reborn transvestite priests of Cybele.” (Paglia, Vamps and Tramps, p. 67)

“In the 1970s gay liberation was the name of a major theoretical challenge to assimilation as well as minoritization. Early activists and writers argued that gay liberation could transform all sexual and gender relations; they argued against marriage and monogamy and against existing family structures (Altman 1981; Jay and Young 1972).” (Phelan, Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians, and Dilemmas of Citizenship, p. 108-109)

“Gay liberation had somehow evolved into the right to have a good time-the right to enjoy bars, discos, drugs, and frequent impersonal sex.” (Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America, p.445)

· American Psychiatric Association

Another historically significant event in the development of the concept of the “modern homosexual” occurred in the early 1970s. This was the decision in 1973 by the APA, American Psychiatric Association, to remove homosexuality from the lists of sexual disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Homosexual advocates acknowledge the hijacking of science for political gain.

“Of course, to mount this counterattack, gays and lesbians must challenge authority of scientists, and that is exactly what gay rights activists did when they campaigned to have homosexuality removed from the APA’s list of mental disorders. In fact, those activists argued that homosexuality is not a disease but a lifestyle choice. Although that argument was successful in the early 1970s, the political climate has changed in such a way that gay rights advocates no longer want homosexuality to be thought of as an immutable characteristic, and the gay gene discourse helps them in this effort.” (Brookey, Reinventing the Male Homosexual: The Rhetoric and Power of the Gay Gene, p. 43)

“In 1973, by a vote of 5,854 to 3,810, the diagnostic category of homosexuality was eliminated from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (Bayer 1981).” (Donohue and Caselles, “Homophobia: Conceptual, Definitional, and Value Issues,” p. 66 Wright, and Cummings. Destructive Trends in Mental Health The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm, editors Wright, and Cummings)

“The decision of the American Psychiatric Association to delete homosexuality from its published list of sexual disorders in 1973 was scarcely a cool, scientific decision. It was a response to a political campaign fueled by the belief that its original inclusion as a disorder was a reflection of an oppressive politico-medical definition of homosexuality as a problem.” (Weeks, Jeffery. Sexuality and Its Discontents Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities, p. 213)

“Perhaps the greatest policy success of the early 1970s was the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973-74 decision to remove homosexuality from its “official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual list of mental disorders.” This decision did not come about because a group of doctors suddenly changed their views; it followed an aggressive and sustained campaign by lesbian and gay activists.” (Rimmerman, From Identity to Politics: The Lesbian and Gay Movements in the United States, p. 85-86)

“Writing about the 1973 decision and the dispute that surrounded it, Bayer (1981) contended that these changes were produced by political rather than scientific factors. Bayer argued that the revision represented the APA’s surrender to political and social pressures, not new data or scientific theories regarding on human sexuality.” (Donohue and Caselles, “Homophobia: Conceptual, Definitional, and Value Issues,” p. 66 Wright, and Cummings. Destructive Trends in Mental Health The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm, editors Wright, and Cummings)

“The APA’s very process of a medical judgment arrived at by parliamentary method set off more arguments than it settled. Many members felt that the trustees, in acting contrary to diagnostic knowledge, had responded to intense propagandistic pressures from militant homophile organizations. “Politically we said homosexuality is not a disorder,” one psychiatrist admitted, “but privately most of us felt it is.” (Kronemeyer, Overcoming Homosexuality, p.5)

The removing of homosexuality as a sexual disorder was as a result of a three year long social/political campaign by gay activists, pro-gay psychiatrists and gay psychiatrists, not as a result of valid scientific studies. Rather the activities were public disturbances, rallies, protests, and social/political pressure from within by gay psychiatrists and by others outside of the APA upon the APA. The action of removing homosexuality was taken with such unconventional speed that normal channels for consideration of the issues were circumvented. This action taken in the APA had dramatic consequences on psychosexual life according to Charles Socarides in a article published in The Journal of Psychohistory, “Sexual Politics and Scientific Logic: The Issue of Homosexuality.” Socarides writes the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual was a false step with the following results.

“This amounted to a full approval of homosexuality and an encouragement to aberrancy by those who should have known better, both in the scientific sense and in the sense of the social consequences of such removal.” (Socarides, Charles W. “Sexual Politics and Scientific Logic: The Issue of Homosexuality,” p.320-321)

In this article he described a movement within the American Psychiatric Association that through social/political activism resulted in a two-phase radicalization of a main pillar of psychosocial life. The first phase was the erosion of heterosexuality as the single acceptable sexual pattern in our culture. This was followed by the second phase the raising of homosexuality to the level of an alternative lifestyle. As a result homosexuality became an acceptable psychosocial institution alongside heterosexuality as a prevailing norm of sexual behavior.

“In essence, this movement within the American Psychiatric Association has accomplished what every other society, with rare exceptions, would have trembled to tamper with, a revision of the basic code and concept of life and biology: that men and women normally mate with the opposite sex and not with each other.” (Socarides, Charles W. “Sexual Politics and Scientific Logic: The Issue of Homosexuality,” p.321)

The hijacking of science in the APA by those advocating homosexuality has now taken a very interesting twist. Thirty years later after this decision by the APA, Robert L. Spitzer, M.D. who was instrumental in the removal of homosexuality in 1973 from the lists of sexual disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is once again facing the anger of others. The first time was by those who opposed the normalization of homosexuality. Now after publishing the results of a study showing that some people may change their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual, it is those advocating for homosexuality. Dr. Spitzer’s study and peer commentaries have just been published in the October 2003 issue of the “Archives of Sexual Behavior.”

“An additional personal parallel-the anger that has been directed towards me for doing this study reminds me of a similar reaction to me during my involvement in the removal of the diagnosis of homosexuality from DSM-II in 1973.” (Spitzer, “Reply: Study Results Should Not be Dismissed and Justify Further Research on the Efficacy of Sexual Reorientation Therapy”, p. 472)

Bibliography

Archer, Bert. The End of Gay (and the death of heterosexuality). Thunder’s Mouth Press. New York, 2002.

Bayer, Ronald. Homosexuality and the American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis. Basic Books. New York, 1981.

Brookey, Robert Alan. Reinventing the Male Homosexual: The Rhetoric and Power of the Gay Gene. Indiana University Press. Bloomington & Indianapolis, 2002.

Chauncey, George. Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate Over Gay Equality. Basic Books/Perseus Books Group. New York, 2004.

Clendinen, Dudley and Adam Nagourne. Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America. Simon and Schuster. New York, 1990.

Engel, Stephen M. The Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, UK, 2001.

Konemeyer, Robert. Overcoming Homosexuality. Macmillan. New York, 1980.

Kranz, Rachel and Tim Cusick. Gay Right: Revised Edition. Facts on File, Inc. New York, 2005.

Paigila, Camille. Vamps & Tramps. Vintage Books. New York, 1994. Phelan, Shane. Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians, and Dilemmas of Citizenship. Temple University Press. Philadelphia, 2001.

Rimmerman, Craig A. From Identity to Politics: The Lesbian and Gay Movements in the United States. Temple University Press. Philadelphia, 2002.

Socarides, Charles W. “Sexual Politics and Scientific Logic: The Issue of Homosexuality.” The Journal of Psychohistory Winter 1992, 19 (3), 307-329.

Spitzer, M.D., Robert L. “Reply: Study Results Should Not be Dismissed and Justify Further Research on the Efficacy of Sexual Reorientation Therapy.” Archives of Sexual Behavior October 2003, Vol. 32, No. 5, 469-472.

Weeks, Jeffery. Sexuality and Its Discontents Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1988.

Wright, Rogers H. and Nicolas A. Cummings. Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. New York and Hove, 2005.