An Inclusive Litany

12/15/97

In 1993, 20 years after the American Psychiatric Association (APtA) abandoned its official position that homosexuality was a form of mental illness, the organization approved a resolution stating that it "does not endorse any psychiatric treatment which is based either on a psychiatrist's assumption that homosexuality is a mental disorder or a psychiatrist's intent to change a person's sexual orientation." But the resolution was tabled the following year after therapists and their supposedly homosexual patients protested vigorously. Patients seeking to change their sexual orientation demonstrated outside an APtA meeting in Washington and threatened to sue the organization if the resolution passed.