An Instant Cure

When the board of trustees of the American Psychiatric Association makes a ruling, it is usually accepted as canon by the association's members. But when the board voted last December to cease classifying homosexuality as a "mental disorder," there was dissension in the psychiatric ranks. Opponents of the ruling circulated petitions, issued angry statements and forced the A.P.A. into unprecedented action: this month, for the first time in the A.P.A.'s 129-year history, a board decision is being put to a vote of the association's entire 21,000 members.

The December ruling, which the National Gay Task Force called an "instant cure," came after intense lobbying by homosexual groups and endorsement of the change by all the A.P.A.'s 68 district branches. In a statement accompanying the announcement of their vote (13 for change; two abstentions and four absent), the trustees declared that many homosexuals show no signs of psychopathology, are satisfied with their sexual preferences, and can function effectively in society. It therefore seemed inappropriate to call them "sick." Those who are troubled by their homosexuality, the board said, would henceforth be described as suffering from a "sexual-orientation disturbance."

New York Psychiatrist Charles Socarides, who circulated the petition demanding the referendum, calls the ruling "the medical hoax of the century." Says Socarides: "It is flying in the face of the one fact we know, which is that male and female are programmed to mate with the opposite sex, and this is the story of 2 1/2 billion years of evolution and any society that hopes to survive."

To the estimated 11 million homosexuals in the U.S., the reclassification is much more than a matter of semantics. They feel that the mental-disorder stigma has long been used to deny them fair housing, employment, child custody and immigration rights. Psychoanalyst Robert Spitzer, author of the board's position paper on homosexuality, supports their view. The new definition, he says, will remove "one of the justifications for the denial of civil rights to individuals whose only crime is that their sexual orientation is to members of the same sex." Many of Spitzer's colleagues concur. "It is unfair to label homosexuality in and of itself a mental illness," says Dr. Judd Marmor, a Los Angeles psychoanalyst and candidate for the American Psychiatric Association presidency. "That is a moral judgment."

Spitzer, Marmor and others have urged the A.P.A. membership to uphold the board's ruling. Though they seem likely to prevail when the votes are counted next month, they are unwilling to predict certain success. "Psychiatrists," warns Marmor, "are not immune to the prejudices of their culture."

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