December 15, 2023
A Major Milestone in LGBTQ+ Rights Occurred 50 Years Ago Today
READ TIME: 6 MIN.
The Post recalls he was presented to the audience wearing a baggy tuxedo, a wig and a distorted Richard Nixon mask under the name of "Dr. Henry Anonymous." Using voice-altering technology he told his colleagues it was possible "to be healthy and be homosexual." And informed them that more than 100 gay psychiatrists were attending the convention. They knew one another – many of them met informally in a group dubbed the Gay PA – but they were closeted to the rest of the association. And Fryer, at that moment, was their lone voice.
"This is the greatest loss: Our honest humanity," Fryer said. "Pull up your courage by your bootstraps and discover ways in which you and homosexual psychiatrists can be closely involved in movements which attempt to change the attitudes of heterosexuals – and homosexuals – toward homosexuality." Fryer received a standing ovation. He would not reveal his identity until 1994, 22 years later, wrote the Post.
In 1973 in Honolulu, the APA finally addressed the homophobic definition with panel members on both sides of the argument. One who wanted to maintain the definition was Charles Socarides, who received mostly boos from the crowd. Socarides asserted during the discussion, "All of my gay patients are sick."
The Post continues: "The last to speak was Ronald Gold, media director for the Gay Activists Alliance and the only panelist who was not a psychiatrist. Gold, who as a child was subjected to aversion therapy by a psychoanalyst, told the packed ballroom, 'Your profession of psychiatry – dedicated to making sick people well – is the cornerstone of oppression that makes people sick.' Gold's speech got a standing ovation, just as Fryer's had the year before."
But it was post-speech interaction between Gold and Robert Spitzer, the chairman of an APA task force examining homosexuality as a diagnosis, that led to change. Spitzer claimed he had never met a gay psychiatrist, at which time Gold took him to a gay bar where Spitzer was astounded. "Sitting in the bar were dozens of esteemed psychiatrists, some of whom were the heads of psychiatry programs at prestigious universities," the Post reports. As Spitzer spoke with them, an Army psychiatrist in a military uniform entered the bar, walked up to Gold, hugged him and broke down crying. Fearful for his career, he had been closeted all his life. He wanted to thank Gold for his speech, and he "saw me and all these gay psychiatrists," Gold told "This American Life." "And it was too much for him. He just cracked up."
What happened next is that Spitzer changed his belief and went back to his hotel room and started writing a position paper calling for the removal of homosexuality from the DSM and an end to discrimination against gay people.
The APA approved the final resolution unanimously, with two abstentions, on Dec. 15, 1973. "It included a provision for a new diagnosis of people who were troubled by their sexual preference called 'sexual orientation disturbance.' In 1980 it was renamed 'ego-dystonic homosexuality' in the third edition of the DSM, and removed in 1987,"adds the Post.
"Here we are 50 years on, and we have gay marriage, and we have a much more tolerant attitude," Scull tells the Post, reflecting on the APA vote in 1973. "Decades later, we can look back and say that was the start of something quite profound – something that changed a lot of lives."
For a look at the way American culture viewed homosexuality during this period, watch the CBS Reports "The Homosexuals," which was aired in March, 1967. At the time, Mike Wallace, who hosts, says that research said Americans considered homosexuality "more harmful to American society than adultery, abortion or prostitution."
