One of the difficulties with the US Government’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is that when the Department Of Defense (DOD) discharges someone who has been determined to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual, the military has to list a reason why the servicemember in getting discharged on the discharge papers.
Up until a few weeks ago, the military listed homosexuality as a mental disorder — using rationale used by the APA prior to 1973. When members of Congress discovered this they — and the APA –complained, so the military changed how they classify homosexuality.
In June 2006, [Congressman Marty] Meehan and a group of lawmakers joined the APA’s in asking the Defense Department to revise a then-current instruction which classified homosexuality as a mental illness. The Pentagon re-issued the instruction on July 10, 2006. The revised instruction no longer says that being gay is a mental illness. Instead, it includes homosexuality in a list of “conditions, circumstances and defects” alongside bedwetting, alcoholism, personality disorders, mental retardation, and repeated venereal disease infections.
In this week’s letter, the American Psychological Association asked the Pentagon to revise the instruction again so as to “eliminate the continued stigmatization of homosexuality as a defect.” Meehan said that, “it is my strong belief that homosexuality is in no way a defect and that there is no scientific reason to include it in such a list.” And the American Psychiatric Association, which declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973, noted that, “homosexuality is not a defect…but could be construed as one by its inclusion in this section.” (emphasis added)
NARTH posted a news article on it’s website last month entitled Pentagon Under Fire For Document Stigmatizing Same-Sex Attraction that listed as additional reading Normality or Disorder: Answering the Question — one needs to consider that the question being asked in that additional reading article is “Is homosexuality a psychopathology?”
I’m disturbed that the Department of Defense has gone from including homosexuality in its lists of mental disorders to now including it within a list of “conditions, circumstances and defects.” I’m concerned about NARTH bootstrapping on how the DOD classifies GLB people to point up that they believe homosexuality is a psychopathology.
And as a 20-year US Navy retiree, I’m disturbed that GLBT people can’t be out of the closet and serve the military — especially when the Army has recently had to lower its standards to get enough recruits to meet their recruiting goals.
Just about everything about this story — minus the APA’s and congressional inquiries about the military classifications of homosexuality — seems senseless to me.
The DOD has it’s own problems with regard to homosexuality that sorely need to be updated and dealt with and I hope that the APA and other medical institutions hold their feet to the fire on this one. In the meantime it’s about time that NARTH be exposed in the national news and in the general public for the fascist bigots that they are. It is my hope that the day will soon come when the vast majority of the public will know general information about NARTH and when they think of them that they think of Joe McCarthy and also the KKK. If NARTH is exposed and stigmatized enough I believe their influence will shrink exponentially. The more the public sees the truth about them the less money that organization will get because their pocketbook depends on people viewing homosexuality as a mental illness, etc. I cannot tell you how sick I am of NARTH’s lies, pseudoscience and bigotry.
I’m not surprised at the classification. The DOD has to provide some justification. That it isn’t medically indicated or supported by science is beside the point. They have to provide a classification to support an insupportable policy. As the old saying goes – there’s a right way, a wrong way, and the army way.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if the classification hadn’t been increased from “conditions & circumstances” to “conditions, circumstances, & defects” when they added homosexuality to the list.
The military believes that most straight men would never work with or be comfortable with openly gay men and there is no way a change of policy could be imposed like the racial integration of the military in the 1950’s. The problem is with the straight men, or so they think, not the gay men.
Hello. Just a thought. Since our government has decided to classify this as a defect — I think all gay people should seek help from a psychologist. We could all use a visit every once in a while anyway — maybe just to help them deal with the lack of support from our government. Then, we could all file it against our insurance — since it is a defect (by their classification). Therefore, the insurance companies and big businesses will have to pay the cost — I believe once these guys think enough is enough — our current political leaders will decide it isn’t worth losing the support of the big business, with their big money — catch my drift?
Thoughts?
Oh, and if the insurance company refuses to cover the expenses, even with this on the list of defects — then would it not be grounds for suing the insurance provider — since this would then be discrimination. The lawsuits would ultimately hurt the government.