Behind the movement that brought homosexuality — and psychiatry’s power — to a vote 50 years ago

Fifty years ago, the nation’s psychiatrists effectively put gay people’s mental health — and their very place in society — to a vote. Five months prior, on Dec. 15, 1973, the 15-member board of the American Psychiatric Association had voted unanimously, with two abstentions, that homosexuality should no longer be considered a mental illness. The epochal elimination of the homosexuality diagnosis from the APA’s influential bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, made the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Chicago Gay Crusader ran the cheeky, if world-weary, banner headline, “20,000,000 Gay People Cured!”