In his own words, Dr. Franklin E. Kameny details the nearly decade long campaign to overturn psychiatry's definition of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

"After the Mattachine Society of Washington (MSW) was organized in November, 1961, and we began to assess the issues facing us, we realized at once that we had to deal with the "sickness theory" of homosexuality, as formalized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM -- then DSM II) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA),  Our push then, as ever since, was for equality, and it was clear that equality would never be granted to a bunch of "loonies", which is what the sickness theory made of us.  Along with me, the late Jack Nichols, among others, was particularly rabid about this.  Barbara Gittings, although not of MSW, but serving as Editor of the Ladder, the publication of the Daughters of Bilitis, was strongly supportive in her publication.

It seemed clear that if the theory were well founded, then we would have to make the best of a bad deal, but if it were ill-founded, then we would have to work for change.

I had no idea of the scientific basis for the sickness theory, but, as a scientist by training and background, who knows good science and bad science when he sees them, I commenced to explore not knowing where I would come out..

I was appalled by what I found:  Shabby, shoddy, sloppy, sleazy pseudo-science.  Moral, cultural, and theological value judgements, cloaked and camouflaged in the language of science without any of the substance of science.  Abominable sampling techniques: As psychiatrists, they only saw patients who, of course, were troubled people or they would not have been coming to a psychiatrist, so the psychiatrists never saw happy, well-adjusted homosexuals and assumed that we were all emotionally disturbed.

Assumptions, plugged in at one end, only to be drawn out at the other end, unexamined.  Dr. Irving Bieber, in his 1962 book, states, on page
18: "All psychoanalytic theory assumes that homosexuality is psychopathological" ---- a perfectly legitimate starting point, provided that that assumption is examined and validated; Bieber never did or even attempted to.

There was not even a meaningful definition of such concepts, as applied here, as "psychopathology", "emotional disorder" and the like.

Therefore I drafted the MSW statement quoted.  The key clause in that is the opening subtantive one "In the absence of valid evidence to the contrary -- ".  What that did was to shift -- to reverse -- the burden of proof. from us to the sickness theorists, to provide that valid evidence.

In the entire ensuing decade they never did; they never even attempted to shoulder their burden.  At the very meeting of the APA Board of Trustees, on December 15, 1973, at whch they were in process of voting on the motion to delete Homosexuality from the DSM, three of the major sickness-theory bigwigs presented papers to the Board attempting to dissuade them.  Those papers did not even touch on validating the theory; for them it remained a "given" not requiring evidence or proof. And so the Board went ahead to "cure" all gay people, en masse.

In the first half decade or so after the issuance of the MSW statement, we saw no way to get at the issue within the APA, and we were deeply occupied with other issues.  Following Stonewall, the effort was picked up in New York, with the welcome cooperation of Dr. Robert Spitzer who edited the DSM.  A not-too-well thought out zap of the San Francisco APA meeting in May, 1970, by the Gay Liberation Front, and some other similar disruptions, got things moving within APA officialdom, leading to the invitation to me to organize the panel at the May, 1971 Washington, DC meeting; to our zap; to the famous panel discussion with the masked Dr. Fryer at the 1972 meeting in Dallas with our "Gay, Proud, and Healthy" booth created by Barbara Gittings and my leaflet of the same title, and my dancing with another gay man at the APA banquet; to the huge seminar on the "sickness theory" at the 1973 meeting in Honolulu, during which Bob Spitzer, Ron Gold, and I, sitting in a nearby gay bar, surrounded by frightened, closeted gay psychiatrists drafted two resolutions, one, the "curative" one and the other designed to eliminate homosexuality as a disqualifying factor in security clearance cases, both of which were adopted by the Board of Trustees that December.

Aside from a failed APA referendum in 1974, initiated by disgruntled sickness proponents, that settled the issue except for the matter of what came, finally, to be termed "Ego-dystonic Homosexuality", which was thrown into the DSM as a sop to the sickness advocates.  It made a disorder out of discontent with being gay.  It was finally deleted around 1987, closing out the entire issue in a formal sense.

The APA now has a formally-recognized Gay and Lesbian Caucus, consisting of very "out" gay psychiatrists, who will be presenting an award this October jontly to Barbara Gittings and me, in recognition of our past contributions to the cause.  Progress indeed, and well worth the effort!!  Much of that enormous progress and the advances which the gay community has enjoyed over the past three decades just simply would not have occurred had we remained a bunch of "loonies"."

Frank Kameny
from a personal communication, July 8, 2006