GLR November-December 2022

yet invisible. Further challenges to the pathological view of homosexual ity came from psychologist Evelyn Hooker at UCLA. Through one of her students, she was introduced to the gay community of L.A. and began conducting psychological testing of these non clinical subjects in the 1940s. Previous research had been based on prison cases or homosexuals seeking psychiatric treatment. Hooker’s gay subjects, however, were not significantly differ ent in their psychological adjustment from matched heterosex ual controls. Hooker began to publish her findings in the late 1950s and was a welcome speaker at homophile group meetings. She chaired a National Institutes of Mental Health research panel on homosexuality, whose initially suppressed report in 1969 de cried the widespread mistreatment of homosexuals and called for decriminalization and greater social acceptance as the way to improve their mental health. At the time, a variety of behaviorist conversion therapies were being actively promoted. Electrical shock aversion therapy (first used to treat alcoholism in the 1920s), chemical aversion therapy with emetics (developed the 50s), covert sensitization, and other conditioning therapies all tried to re-orient erotic at traction by associating homoerotic images with discomfort. They generally failed in the long run and later provoked vis ceral opposition by gay rights activists. At the 1970 American Psychiatric Association (APA) annual meeting, Dr. Nathaniel McConaghy’s presentation on aversive conditioning exploded in gay pandemonium as activists accused him of being a vicious torturer. The work of Kinsey, Hooker, and others all emboldened a new brand of post-Stonewall gay liberation activists ready to engage in dramatic and confrontational tactics, including dis rupting APA meetings and demanding equal time to refute the theories of homosexual pathology. With the assistance of key supporters within the APA, a panel of “non-patient” gays spoke at the 1971 APA meeting. At the 1972 meeting a similar panel included a gay psychiatrist, John E. Fryer, who wore a mask to preserve his anonymity. That year the APA’s Nomenclature Committee began considering the pathological status of homo sexuality as presented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders , 2nd edition ( DSM II ). With growing support for reform among psychiatrists, after extensive debate at the 1973 meeting, and with much behind-the-scenes lobbying both for and against de-pathologization, the APA Board of Trustees voted on December 15, 1973, to delete homosexuality from the DSM . Sensitive to many psychiatrists’ profound theo retical and emotional commitment to the pathological nature of homosexuality, the Board added the classification of “sexual orientation disturbance” (later labeled “ego-dystonic homosex uality”) for individuals who are disturbed by their same-sex ori entation. Newspapers around the world reported the decision, with one writer wryly noting it was the single greatest cure in the history of psychiatry. Many prominent psychoanalysts, such as Charles Socarides and Irving Bieber, were not pleased with this outcome and mounted a vocal battle against the change, ultimately forcing it to a vote by the APA membership. In 1974, a majority of APA members ratified the declassification of homosexuality. The American Psychological Association followed suit in 1975, and the social workers’ association in 1977. Gay and lesbian cau

cuses have sprung up within all of these organizations and have been formally recognized. Out gay and lesbian researchers have explored the mental health challenges and successes of gay peo ple within a homophobic culture. The American Psychoanalytic Association proved most resistant: only in 1992 did it officially reverse its longstanding, unspoken policy of excluding homo sexuals from advancement in psychoanalytic institutes. The 1994 edition of the DSM eliminated any diagnosis of homo sexuality, and the APA has officially criticized gay “conversion therapy” as useless and harmful. In the span of a century, the diagnosis of homosexuality had come full circle, from being “discovered” as a profound psychiatric illness to being a normal variation of human sex uality. This history serves as a powerful example of the social and political malleability of supposedly objective scientific knowledge. R EFERENCES Bayer, Ronald. Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosi s. Princeton University Press, 1987. Bérubé, Allan. Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II . The Free Press, 1990. D’Emilio, John. “The homosexual menace: the politics of sexuality in Cold War America,” in Passion and Power: Sexuality in History , Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons, eds. Temple University Press, 1989. Foucault, Michel. Histoire de la sexualité: La volonté de savoir . Gallimard, 1976. (Translated as A History of Sexuality , Vol. 1: An Introduction).

W hat I L earned from J oseph C ampbell Toby Johnson tells how learning the real nature of religion from the famed mythologist allowed him to fi nd the spiritual, even mystical, qualities of gay consciousness.

By the author of Gay Spirituality: Gay Identity and the Transformation of Consciousness and Gay Perspective: Things our [homo]sexuality tells us about the nature of God and the Universe

Johnson’s adventures in a federally-funded study of teenage hustling in the 1970s Tenderloin District with nicknamesake Toby Marotta forced him to reevaluate traditional religious teaching and to fi nd spiritual meaning

in sex, pleasure, and embodiment in fl esh.

Available in print and digital from amazon.com and tobyjohnson.com

November–December 2022

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