Embed Notice

Excerpt from Beyond Homophobia—by Gregory Herek
Sept 21, 2015.

https://herek.net/blog/is-homophobia-a-mental-illness/

As I discussed in a previous post, the mental health establishment classified homosexuality as an illness until 1973. That year, the American Psychiatric Association removed it from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The American Psychological Association soon followed suit.

The classification had always reflected value judgments and assumptions about homosexuality. There never was an empirical basis for it.

Another important event roughly coincided with the DSM change. In 1972, against the backdrop of a growing national gay rights movement, a new book was published, Society and the Healthy Homosexual. Its author, psychologist George Weinberg, began his first chapter with a provocative statement:

“I would never consider a patient healthy unless he had overcome his prejudice against homosexuality…. Even if he is heterosexual, his repugnance at homosexuality is certain to be harmful to him.”

A few pages later, Weinberg introduced a term he had coined during the late 1960s: homophobia, which he defined as heterosexuals’ “dread of being in close quarters with homosexuals” and homosexuals’ “self-loathing.”