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Original Message
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Good article which documents how homosexual activists attacked scientists trying to treat their disorder, and why therefore science is suspiciously pro-homosexual.
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“It was never a medical decision—and that’s why I think the action came so fast…It was a political move.” “That’s how far we’ve come in ten years. Now we even have the American Psychiatric Association running scared.”
(Barbara Gittings, Pro-Sodomy Activist)
Prior to December 14, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) considered same-sex attraction a disorder. The disorder was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-II (DSM-II) under the label, “Homosexuality.” Psychiatry’s authoritative voice influenced public opinion, which at the time was negative toward both sodomy and the types of people who engaged in such acts. Although public sexual activity in parks and public restrooms contributed to societies negative views, “scientific opinion” was crucial in the public attitude.
In an effort to remove “Homosexuality” from the DSM pro-sodomy activists began a program of intimidation aimed at the American Psychiatric Association circa 1970. Activist Franklin Kameny states the movement’s objective clearly, “I feel that the entire homophile movement…is going to stand or fall upon the question of whether or not homosexuality is a sickness, and upon our taking a firm stand on it…”[1] Franklin Kameny led the Washington D.C. chapter of the Mattachine Society during the 1960’s. In the tradition of Magnus Hirschfield and Alfred Kinsey, Kameny viewed one’s attraction to a specific gender as fluid, and viewed sodomy as morally equivalent to natural sexuality. Led by radicals like Franklin Kameny, pro-sodomy activists attacked psychiatrists across America, as Newsweek describes:
“But even more than the government, it is the psychiatrists who have experienced the full rage of the homosexual activists. Over the past two years, gay-lib organizations have repeatedly disrupted medical meetings, and three months ago—in the movements most aggressive demonstration so far—a group of 30 militants broke into a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington, where they turned the staid proceedings into near chaos for twenty minutes. ‘We are here to denounce your authority to call us sick or mentally disordered,’ shouted the group’s leader, Dr. Franklin Kameny, while the 2,000 shocked psychiatrists looked on in disbelief. ‘For us, as homosexuals, your profession is the enemy incarnate. We demand that psychiatrists treat us as human beings, not as patients to be cured!’”[2] Ironically, at the very moment Franklin Kameny was claiming that sodomy was healthy, safe, and natural a deadly virus was silently passing through communities of men all over the nation. Only a decade later, thousands of men would be dead or dying of AIDS.
On June 7, 1971, Franklin Kameny wrote a letter to the Psychiatric News threatening the APA with not only more, but worse, disruptions. In this letter he states, “Our presence there was only the beginning of an increasingly intensive campaign by homosexuals to change the approach of psychiatry toward homosexuality or, failing that, to discredit psychiatry.”[3]
Kay Tobin Lahausen, co-author of The Gay Crusaders, describes a variety of activism. “We did all sorts of protests…When the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations came out of some meeting and got in his big black limousine, I remember going crazy, rocking and beating on the limousine…He had never been besieged by a bunch of homosexuals before. But he had said something that got us going.”[4] Lahausen’s lover, Barbara Gittings was a well known activist during this time as well. Although Gittings was not a librarian, she was the first head of the American Library Association’s “Gay Task Force.” Her objective was to bring books advocating for sodomy to the attention of librarians, in hopes of having them included in their libraries. At one American Library Association meeting Gittings set up a same-sex kissing booth to attract attention to her cause. Gittings tells about her activism against the APA:
“Besides the ALA, I was also very involved, along with many other people, in efforts to get the American Psychiatric Association… to drop its listing of homosexuality as a mental illness. Psychiatrists were one of the three major groups that had their hands on us. They had a kind of control over our fate, in the eyes of the public, for a long time. Religion and law were the other two groups that had their hands on us. So, besides being sick, we were sinful and criminal. But the sickness label infected everything that we said and made it difficult for us to gain any credibility for anything we said ourselves. The sickness issue was paramount.”[5]
Gittings took place in disruptive “zap” attacks on the APA. She states, “I am not opposed to zap tactics. In fact, I spearheaded a zap at a psychiatrist’s meeting and I’m ready to do it again.”[6] Gittings recounts, “The 1970 convention in San Francisco was disrupted by a group of feminists and gay men who were enraged by what the psychiatrists were saying about them—and newspapers all around the country carried the story.”[7]
The “Gay” Militants, a book about that time, adds details, “On May 14, 1970 psychiatrists became the hunted. An invasion by the coalition of ‘gay’ and woman’s liberationists interrupted the national convention of the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco to protest the reading of a paper by an Australian psychiatrist on the subject of ‘aversion therapy,’ a system of treatment which attempts to change gay orientation by keying unpleasant sensations (such as electric shocks) to homosexual stimuli. By the time the meeting was over, the feminists and their gay cohorts were in charge…and the doctors were heckling from the audience.’”[8]
Pro-sodomy activists took over the podium and microphones. Then, “Konstantin Berlandt, of Berkeley GLF, paraded through the hall in a bright red dress. Paper airplanes sailed down from the balcony. With two papers still unread, the chairman announced adjournment.” As the meeting adjourned several arguments broke out between the psychiatrists who were angry about the disruption of the activists. One activist shouted to a Psychiatrist, “Don’t shake your fu**ing finger at me,” to which the psychiatrist replied, “I’ll shake whatever I please.”[9] As another argument arose, a Dr. Irving Bieber stated that he believed persons experiencing same-sex attractions were the subjects of “misplaced sexual adjustment,” to which a pro-sodomy activist shrieked and called him a “mother fu**er.”[10] Several months later, The Advocate reported on other disruptions: “PSYCHOLOGISTS GET GAY LIB THERAPY.”
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The remainder of the article is here:
[link to www.freewebs.com]
^^^^links not working atm....heres a backup url (article is midway down)
[link to hegazi.blogspot.com]
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