Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay victory teaches importance of struggle

April 19, 1974

New position of Psychiatric Assn.

In May 1970, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) held its annual convention in San Francisco. The gay liberation movement, at this time only about a year old, was nevertheless well known in San Francisco. There were several gay organizations in the city. There had been a number of demonstrations: against police harassment and brutality, and to protest the firing of gays who had refused to keep their homosexuality hidden on the job.

This reporter was working at that time as a clerk in the psychiatry department of one of the major hospitals in San Francisco. Each afternoon during the APA convention, reports were brought back to the hospital on what was happening there.

We found out the first day that not all the people attending the convention were psychiatrists. At least 16 gay militants showed up and, with the power of a growing movement behind them, denounced the psychiatrists, demanding that the psychiatric profession end it persecution of gay people. They argued that the use by professionals of such terms as "sick" and "perverted" when speaking of homosexuals was not only insulting and harmful to the self-images of gay people, but that these words, and the theories behind them were used to justify all kinds of discrimination against gays, and tended to sanction the treatment of gay people as criminals.

Each day, as reports of the disruption occurring at the APA convention were brought back to the hospital, I listened without visible emotion, but inside I was cheering. Then, on about the third day of the convention, something even more exciting happened. One of the young psychiatrist trainees attached to the hospital made it known that he was a homosexual and proceeded to join the other gays in their protests at the conventions. It was as though a bomb had dropped. Word of it spread through the whole hospital in a matter of minutes.

The "nonprofessionals," that is, the workers, responded in a variety of ways: some with cruel jokes, some with interest and sympathy. But among the psychiatrists and other professionals, the same cold, disdainful response could be observed in almost all of them. They all agreed, without saying it out loud, that the young homosexual intern had just wrecked his promising career. And you could see that it infuriated them that they had somehow let a "pervert" into their prestigious training program.

Last week, by a polling of its membership, the APA confirmed the decision its board of trustees had announced last winter: homosexuality is not a mental illness. This decree was no revelation to those millions of homosexuals who have managed to lead productive and healthy lives for years despite the former position of the APA and the prejudice and persecution which that position encouraged.

But how did the change come about? Were there perhaps major new studies on the question, or had a new revolutionary psychological theory been advanced? No, it was nothing like that. Scientific evidence would never have brought about the change in the APAs position for the simple reason that the position was not based on scientific investigation in the first place. It was, rather, based on bourgeois morality and plain, old-fashioned bigotry

In reality, it was the cumulative effect of actions like the one at the APA convention in San Francisco and hundred of other demonstrations around the country that forced the APA to change its stand. And this is particularly important to understand since the struggle against gay oppression is still so far from its goals. The lesson of the APA victory is, as the militants in the anti-war movement used to put it: "Stay in the streets!" It should be remembered that the APA statement will not, of itself, put an end to job and housing discrimination, police brutality, entrapment, prison behavior-modification programs, and all the other injustices which are inflicted against gays in this country. The public outcries against these practices must continue.