Homosexuality and Pathology in the US

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography grade: 1.0 University of Duisburg-Essen (Institut für Anglophone Kulturen) course: Gay Lesbian and Queer Literature from the 19th century to the present language: English abstract: For almost four decades now organized mental health has declassifiedhomosexuality as a mental illness in the United States of America. After several years of bitter dispute the American Psychiatric Association decided to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders its official list of mental diseases. Nevertheless it is remarkable that a demise of therapies designed to change homosexual orientation seems improbable at least given that some religious political activists and marginalized health professionals are apparently seeking to reinstate the disease-model of homosexuality by presenting stories of presumably cured homosexuals to the American public. Aside the professional media especially religiousgroups promoting sexual orientation change therapies recentlyexperienced unwanted popular media coverage.The treatment of homosexualityby medical practitioners is of relatively recent origin. Before 1800 homosexuality was essentially conceived asa merely theological-moral phenomenon. From then onward howeverlegislative declared it a legal matter until medical professionals declared it a sickness. While at it’s time of origin the medical practitioners’ concept of homosexuality as a sickness may have been a liberal and humaneadvance over the conception and punishment of homosexuality as a crime at the latest since the post World-War II years psychiatrists andpsychologists can be regarded among the major ideologues of homosexual oppression. Sexual conversion therapies or reparative therapies derive from thisdisease model portraying homosexuality as a mental disorder and a social evil. Since these terms in my opinio