Here's the real skinny on the APA's misguided and politically motivated decision that homosexuality was normal:


The article first appeared in Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, edited by H. Tristam Engelhardt Jr., and Arthur Caplan, Cambridge U. Press, 1987.
Dr. Bieber was one of the key participants in the historical debate which culminated in the 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from the psychiatric manual.

His paper describes psychiatry's attempt to adopt a new "adaptational" perspective of normality. During this time, the profession was beginning to sever itself from established clinical theory--particularly psychoanalytic theories of unconscious motivation--claiming that if we do not readily see "distress, disability and disadvantage" in a particular psychological condition, then the condition is not disordered.

On first consideration, such a theory sounds plausible. However we see its startling consequences when we apply it to a condition such as pedophilia. Is the happy and otherwise well-functioning pedophile "normal"? As Dr. Bieber argues in this article, psychopathology can be ego-syntonic and not cause distress; and social effectiveness--that is, the ability to maintain positive social relations and perform work effectively--"may coexist with psychopathology, in some cases even of a psychotic order."

NARTH President Charles Socarides argued the same point in a review he wrote of gender researcher Robert Stoller's Pain And Passion: A Psychoanalyst Explores The World Of S & M. In that book, Dr. Stoller acknowledged the psychodynamic causes of sadomasochism, and then described practices, utensils, and bodily parts used in sadomasochistic performances. He offered a six-page listing of the various methods used to inflict pain and humiliation on willing victims, including the different hanging techniques used to achieve orgastic ecstasy. But then Stoller claimed sadomasochism was no more abnormal than "dislike of zucchini"--asserting that only our "deep prejudices" about perversion lead us to label it abnormal.

Indeed, as some prominent cultural observers have noted, the political drive toward ever-greater equality has turned Americans against any conclusion which entails values and consequences - resulting in our culture's trend toward rejection of all evaluative conclusions as unkind and "undemocratic." Legal scholar Robert Bork sees this as a natural consequence of democracy untethered from its Judeo-Christian roots of self-restraint and responsibility, after which it began to be dominated by the philosophy of radical egalitarianism.

Reading the account by the eminent Irving Bieber, the reader is reminded of the historic role played by both Dr. Bieber, and NARTH President Charles Socarides. Both influential and courageous men stood, we believe, for truth in a profession that has increasingly set itself adrift from its theoretical and philosophical roots.

Dr. Bieber describes the deletion of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic and statistical manual as "the climax of a sociopolitical struggle involving what were deemed to be the rights of homosexuals."
"It is my aim here," he wrote, "to separate out the psychiatric and conceptual issues from the sociopolitical issues; to document my own theoretical and clinical position; and to describe the events that I participated in and observed--all of which I trust will bring into focus the elements that went into the American Psychiatric Association's decision."