NPR Devotes 27.5 Minutes to DADT Repeal, All of It Gay Interviews

INTERVIEW - "PC" intimidation changed the 81 words in the DSM

Submitted by MaximusBraveheart on Sun, 09/25/2011 - 5:00pm.

You clearly don't know history. They self proclaimed infiltrated the annual 1973 meeting in San Francisco and intimidated them:

snip: From NPR's "this American life" http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/204/transcript

"From its earliest days, one of the main goals of the gay groups, alongside civil rights which was really number one, was removal from the DSM. So naturally Bieber's study, which billed itself as definitive proof that homosexuality was a pathology, kind of rubbed them the wrong way. In 1970, the American Psychiatric Association made the mistake of holding its annual convention in San Francisco, which then, as now, had a large gay community. And the gay activists decided to protest.

Irving Bieber was their very first target.

The Washington Post, May 14, 1970. "The gay liberation and their women allies out shrinked the head shrinkers today and took over an American Psychiatric Association session on sex. Before the morning was over, the 500 psychiatrists who'd gathered to hear scientific studies on sexual problems demonstrated that they're just as prone to anti-social behavior as anyone else. 'This lack of discipline is disgusting,' said doctor Leo Alexander, a psychiatrist at the meeting. Then he diagnosed the problem of one of the lesbian protesters. 'She's a paranoid fool,' the doctors said, 'and a stupid bitch.'"
Garry Allender

As I recall, there were evidently, you know, closeted gay and lesbian people who were inside the APA who wanted something to happen, and I think they just passed along information to us. And somebody got us press passes so that we could get through the front door.
Alix Spiegel

This is Garry Allender, one of the gay activists who infiltrated the APA convention. He says that while one group of activists stormed a session on behavioral therapy, another combed the halls looking for Bieber. They found him at a panel on transsexuals and homosexuality. Bieber, who was sitting in the front of the room, had just settled in for a nice long chat about close-binding mothers when, according to his wife Toby, there was a loud noise from outside the auditorium.
Toby Bieber

And a group came storming in, dressed rather fantastically, with feathers in their hats as though they were going to attend to some costume ball. Making noise, and broke up the meeting. They broke it up.
Garry Allender

We were not polite. We were not quiet. We were not asking for favors. We were just trying to delegitimize their authority and we felt they were oppressing us and here was finally a chance to talk back to them.
Alix Spiegel

The protesters yelled at the psychiatrists. They called them sadists, they called them oppressors. But the protesters had an entirely different word for Irving Bieber. A word, which in the account that circulated after the event got a disproportionate amount of attention. To the protesters Dr. Bieber was not just your run of the mill sadist oppressor. No sir. Irving Bieber was a mother[BLEEP]."

snip 2: "The Young Turks were all psychiatrists, all members of the APA, and all liberal-minded easterners who had decided to reform the American Psychiatric Association from the inside. Specifically, they had decided to replace all the gray-haired conservatives who ran the organization with a new breed of psychiatrist. More sensitive to social issues of the day, with liberal opinions on Kent State, Vietnam, feminism. They figured that once they got this new breed into office, they could fundamentally transform American psychiatry. And one of the things this group was keen to transform was American psychiatry's approach to homosexuality."

snip 3: "But several of the key players were gay. People like Dr. Larry Hartmann, who was a founding member of the Committee for Concerned Psychiatry. And later, like my grandfather, became president of the APA. Of course, none of these men were out at the time. They weren't even members of the GAYPA. They were too buried, buried even to friends and family. Adam Spiegel.
Adam Spiegel

It was not clear to me. In fact, when I learned that Larry was gay, I almost fell out of my chair. Because he was so not gay in his affect. Impossible to discern.
Alix Spiegel

Although the gay activists who were protesting the APA from the outside didn't know it, it was this group of men, these Young Turks and their allies who laid the groundwork for the change in the DSM. Without moving liberal minded psychiatrists into positions of power in the APA, without changing the organization's internal infrastructure, there would have been immediate veto of any attempt to change those extremely troublesome 81 words."

snip 4 "Alix Spiegel

It was around this time, fall of 1972, that the Young Turks saw the first fruits of their labor. One of their candidates for office, a man named Alfred Freedman, was elected president of the APA. My grandfather, John Spiegel, was installed on the board of trustees. And another man, Judd Marmor, one of my grandfather's best friends and an outspoken critic of the idea that homosexuality should be categorized as a disease, was selected as vice president."

snip 5 READ this:

"In fact, it's now considered unethical to treat homosexuality. And any psychiatrist who attempts to change the sexual orientation of his patient can face professional censure. If a gay person finds his sexual preference disturbing, if he's interested in becoming heterosexual-- and there are many people who fit this description-- the APA guidelines suggest that the therapist counsel his patient that change is impossible. He must learn to accept, embrace even.

My family always told me that my grandfather single-handedly changed the DSM. But what's striking is all the different forces that had to be in place in order to make this happen. It took both Evelyn Hooker and Dr. Anonymous, John P. Spiegel and Ronald Gold. People on the outside, people on the inside, and people at every point in between.

snip 6

"There are a couple of interesting postscripts to this story. Dr. Irving Bieber died in 1991 and the New York Times published an obituary which focused on his work in homosexuality in a way that his wife Toby found hostile and insulting. Most of the quotes were from people who never agreed with him. Worse, the newspaper mistakenly printed a picture of Robert Spitzer, Dr. Bieber's longtime opponent, in Dr. Bieber's place."

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