Why was homosexuality de-listed as a paraphilia by psychology/psychiatry?

Homosexuality was listed as a paraphilia in psychology/psychiatry until fairly recently, and I'm aware that "political" motivations abound in regards to the subject.

Can anyone explain what the rationale for de-listing it as a paraphilia is?

 

Science is rarely absolute. Science of the mind even less so.

As we learn more, we can often change our perceptions of things. Used to be that paraphilias were considered "bad". Now they're not considered to be a problem until the interest in the particular paraphilia interferes with the person's ability to function in society. BDSM was a big one. For the longest time people thought that if you were into Bondage, you were a deviant that was a danger to yourself (if you were the submissive) or to others (Dominants). Now as we've actually started looking at it with unbiased preconceptions, they've learned that it's not a indication that a person is going to go psychopathic.

Specifically regarding homosexuality, we've had a chance to study it more now that it's been increasingly accepted. Was a lot harder before when almost everyone was in the closet out of fear of their lives (physical or social). But now that they're out in the open, it's easier to study and to see how the minds work when it comes to sexuality. The definition of a paraphilia is "a condition characterized by abnormal sexual desires, typically involving extreme or dangerous activities."

To many, homosexual activities may be abnormal, they're typically in of themselves dangerous.

 

Consensual rough sex is not the same as actual sadism, and there have been laws on the subject of consensual rough sex going back as far as the 19th century.

 

After you guys get your ass kicked in California next Tuesday you should start a petition to get the paraphillia tag reinstated.

 

It was removed once people started questioning why it was added in the first place. There is no medical or psychiatric reason for homosexuality to be listed as a paraphilia per the requirements of the term.

 

You answered your own question, POLITICS! Covid and other pathogens can't hold a candle to it, EVERYTHING it touches it pollutes and ultimately destroys.

 

There are about a dozen basic human functions we need to survive, and among them is eat, sleep, defecate, and reproduce. Someone who can't do any of these things has to get medical or psychological help.

The de listing of homosexuality as a medical problem happen iirc in 1973 when the LGBTTQM gang packed the vote & fudged the quorum of the American Psychological Association & the issued new guidelines. It had nothing to do w/ new research or consensus, it was pure politics.

 

So they used the same “no research” to delist homosexuality as they did to list it — the church played a role in the initial classification. I am fine with that.

Looking at it from a psychological standpoint, homosexuality does not meet the minimum criteria to be labeled a disorder.

 

If you are 'aware', I am sure you can educate us. I am waiting on pins and needles.

 

I am a homosexual who can and has eaten, slept, defecated and reproduced. I can even urinate and digest food if I haven't watched gay porn on the same day.

 

I'm not specialized on that matter, but here is my modest understanding : I don't know for USA, but there was many countries where homosexuality could lead you in a forced manner into a psychiatric asylum. So basically, sane, harmless people where with people with severe psychiatric sickness (which doesn't mean they're harmfull, but often if they're in a psychiatric asylum, it's because they' are harmfull, at least to themselves).

Many people got their lives destroyed because of that, so I suppose it's more a symbolic act.

Psychology and psychiatry create definitions based among theraptic interest, they're not philosophers specialized in semantics, and so their semantics match pragmatic issues, not philosophical issues (what is a paraphilia would be more a philosophical question).

 

--and when we get into particulars we can go anywhere we want & make the entire conversation meaningless.

My personal guess is you didn't reproduce w/ a same-sex spouse but rather w/ an opposite sex surrogate/former spouse. Then again, you may be stretching the definition of homosexual to anyone who lusts after the same sex, however occasionally --and that's a definition that might take in virtually everyone. So this takes us to the idea that hey, EVERYONE's a homosexual, even while being straight at the same time so why the fuss?

The other tack is to say the homosexual you & I are talking about is overwhelmingly same-sex oriented --the kind the U.S. Census Bur. puts at about one or two percent of the U.S. population. So maybe our bottom line here is which way we want to go --how do u (for the sake of our discussion) want to define homosexual?

 

Like I was saying to btthegreat if we get into particulars we can stretch this discussion all out of shape & it'll never fit again.

When heterosexual lusts become out of control they can cause all sorts of problems. Do we label heterosexuality a disorder? When homosexual lusts become a burden to the patient he (or she) can be forbidden by law in some jurisdictions from hiring a counselor for therapy. I don't think that's right. Another problem w/ homosexuality might be that if everyone engaged in it then the human race would cease to exist. Of course that's not that big of a worry because it probably won't happen any time soon.

However this thing about "the church played a role" doesn't seem to have much meaning considering the fact that virtually everyone has some kind of religious values, and that has religion "playing a role" in everything.

 

Would you mind expounding on your statement that a homosexual person can be forbidden by law in some jurisdictions from hiring a counselor for therapy? Where is this happening? And, what is the justification?

This isn't an issue and won't be as you stated.

This is the problem. Church and state are supposed to be separate. No particular religious doctrine should ever be behind our laws. Freedom of religion also means freedom FROM religion.

 

First keep in mind that the noun usage of 'homosexual' is now deemed offensive in some circles as a label in disrepute, but I don't mind being called a homosexual so we will move on from that. I am not picky about the definitions because most cover the same territory in the same way.
Here's wiki :
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender.[1][2][3] As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to people of the same sex. It "also refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions."[4][5]

Along with bisexuality and heterosexuality, homosexuality is one of the three main categories of sexual orientation within the heterosexual–homosexual continuum"

Here is a more scientific angle that attempts to delineate several related concepts from Sciencedirect https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/homosexuality. " “homosexuality” refers to the experience of exclusive or nearly exclusive erotic preference for others of the same sex in fantasy and, characteristically, through realization of sexual intimacy with others of the same sex. It can be conceptualized as desire, behavior, and identity (although it is not always congruent within one person at any one time and so may represent a source of personal conflict). Homosexual desire is the affective experience of same-sex attraction. Homosexual behavior occurs when members of the same sex engage in sexual activity. Homosexual identity represents the assumption of a self-label in which one acknowledges the primacy of homosexual desire and behavior in his or her self-composition. In contrast to homosexual identity, homosexual orientation reflects the affective experience of primarily same-sex erotic desire beyond conscious control and outside the purview of historical and social construction.

As long as we are not straying far afield, I am good with either.

Neither precludes heterosexual intercourse either as a 'lifestyle' or an outlier episode and that is why us homosexuals can reproduce and do reproduce. We get to celebrate Fathers day with the same ties and tools the rest of America does.

Just realize I don't spend a lot of time on posters who promote homophobia or homophobic stereotypes as a policy. I am not patient with your sort, so any post to you may be my last!

 

Discussion of classifying 8%+ of the population with a mental illness should absolutely be stretched out. Especially when that classification doesn’t fit the basic perimeters of such.

Gay people can absolutely seek counseling for sex addiction. I know you are probably speaking of conversion therapy which is rarely done by medical professionals and has been shown to cause significant damage — adults can seek out conversion therapy it just isn’t accredited and children cannot be forced any longer.

That isn’t really a problem

When the church is influencing medical decisions that is absolutely an issue. Especially when the argument is that “new science” is needed to reclassify homosexuality away from a mental illness when none was used during its initial classification as such.

 

Tx fer the headsup, there's a bit of controversy over this & personally I feel it's morally wrong to gratuitously antagonize someone by calling them a name they find offensive. The situation's fluid & in some groups using "gay" as a noun is considered a pejorative so your patience is appreciated.

Where our convo may be running amuck is over the notion that I wasn't talking about establishing a concept for examination, but rather I just wanted to define a term so we could move forward.

This is kind of the story of my life, I'm just not that much of a people person & I sometimes offend w/o knowing it. fwiw, please accept my apologies for whatever I said & please also consider that I really meant no harm. If u get a chance, I'd be grateful if u could tell me what part of my posts u felt were offensive that I might be able to tweak my wording in the future.

If not, cheers!

 

This is where we may be talking at cross purposes. If we say a "gay" is anyone who can be aroused sexually by someone of the same sex then we have to include any kid getting goosed in a PE class --just about the entire population. If we say to be a true "gay" you need only same sex partners permanently then ur getting back to what the U.S. Census Bur. found w/ about one or two %.

--and this calls back to what I was saying about the continuum of experience, that virtually everyone has some kind of "gay" experience in their lives & it's what we want to do about it that counts. There's no such thing as "converting" a LGBTTQM to become straight in real life. If we're talking about lust management then lets understand that some folks seek counseling. I personally feel that if someone seeks to repair heterosexual interactions then the state should not interfere.

Unless we're talking about public policy. Heterosexuals increase the tax base & that's what governments want.

You keep on referring to "the church". Are u saying that "the synagogue" is exempt? How about "the mosque". Is this some kind of hang up we're supposed to have about just Christians or do we mean all religions? My take is that any acceptance of an absolute right and wrong is a religious bent, and the medical profession definitely and officially has adopted a solid grasp of right and wrong in establishing it's code of ethics.

 

It is absurd to not count bisexuals — Recent polling puts it at the low end of 5.8% for the general population and increases substantially up to 15.9% for younger generations that didn’t grow up with the same level of stigma.

Do you have a source for your “one or two %” claim?

Adults do have that right.

Which has nothing to do with classification of same sex relations as a mental illness.

By the church I mean the Christian church as I am speaking of their interference in medical classifications over the past 100+ years in the US.

Had another religion been as egregious I would be saying the same about those.

 

You have not yet irretrievably offended me, its just this is a discussion I have had with 100s of people and if you are selling homosexuality as an 'illness' a la 1962 that belongs in back in the DSM, and conversion therapy as a credible and effective treatment plan for homosexuality, this is not going anywhere. Nobody with qualifications and without a very fervent anti-gay agenda is selling that narrative anymore or has been in the last 35 years. The science has moved past that.

'We' are not moving forward on a definition that is inconsistent with either one or both that I supplied above. Homosexuality often correlates with some same gender sexual conduct, but it is not defined by its presence, or defined out by heterosexual conduct.

 

Whether homosexuality should be described as one among many paraphilic sexual interests or an altogether different dimension of sexual interest has long been discussed in terms of its political and social implications. The present article examined the question instead by comparing the major correlates and other features of homosexuality and of the paraphilias, including prevalence, sex ratio, onset and course, fraternal birth order, physical height, handedness, IQ and cognitive neuropsychological profile, and neuroanatomy. Although those literatures remain underdeveloped, the existing findings thus far suggest that homosexuality has a pattern of correlates largely, but not entirely, distinct from that identified among the paraphilias. At least, if homosexuality were deemed a paraphilia, it would be relatively unique among them, taxonometrically speaking.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3310132/

 

can you explain why you have homersexuals on yer mind all day?

 

maybe cause it's not as dangerous to come out of the closet as it once was

at least in the USA, our religious nuts have calmed down, now if the SHTF, Christian fanatics will be a danger to them again

 

This might be a good time for both of us becoming more accurate in what we say. I did not say "a homosexual person can be forbidden by law", what I said was --

--the idea being that someone who wants to be predominantly heterosexual but finds homosexual lusts a distraction and seeks professional help. Wikipedia (everyone's favorite source of disinformation) says "...jurisdictions around the world have passed laws against conversion therapy..." and it looked like it would take a bit of digging to find out which jurisdictions they're talking about and how the laws define "conversion therapy". It's my personal bet that the law would apply to also to psychiatric professionals & defining exactly what constituted "conversion therapy" would most probably be something that would make lawyers rich.

What I "stated" was--

--but I'm not sure if you're saying that it is a big worry & it will happen soon. Your post is beginning to be hard to follow.

There is no statement in the U.S. Constitution requiring a "separation of church and state". The closest we get is the first amendment-- ...Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... and as far as "freedom from religion" goes, once again this is what makes lawyers rich. Let's face it, virtually every jurisdiction in the world has laws against murder, theft, bearing false witness, it's a universal acknowledgment recognizing an absolute sense of right and wrong. Say what you want but most people would consider that some kind of religious basis for law.

 

My question didn't change the meaning of your statement so this is just you trying to be persnickety.

If you had used the phrase "conversion therapy" or some other qualifier in your post, I wouldn't have needed to ask the question. Your comment implied that this was "a thing" for all homosexual people who find themselves burdened by their lusts.

That's a YOU problem, not a ME problem.

Agreed.