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Charles Silverstein, who helped declassify homosexuality as illness, dies at 87
Washington Post ^ | 7th February 2023 | Emily Langer

Posted on 02/07/2023 1:56:52 PM PST by Ennis85

Charles Silverstein, a psychologist who helped achieve one of the most significant victories of the gay rights movement by persuading the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness, died Jan. 30 at his home in New York City. He was 87.

He had lung cancer, said his executor, Aron Berlinger.

Dr. Silverstein spent decades of his life — as an activist, a psychologist and an author — advancing the cause of gay rights. He had felt the sting of discrimination and the burden of shame as a gay man who came of age at a time when expressions of homosexuality were stigmatized if not outright illegal, and when gay people were treated not only as morally deviant but as mentally ill.

Dr. Silverstein, who felt he had no choice but to conceal his sexuality during his early professional years and into graduate school, came out as the gay rights movement gained momentum in the wake of the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969.

He was nearing completion of a doctoral degree in social psychology and had joined the Gay Activists Alliance, an advocacy group that organized high-profile protests known as “zaps,” when he was invited to speak to the APA’s nomenclature committee on the matter of homosexuality.

At the time, homosexuality was categorized as a mental disorder and “sexual deviation” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a reference volume regarded as the authoritative guide to mental health diagnoses. In February 1973, Dr. Silverstein was one of several speakers who appeared before the nomenclature panel to challenge the scientific and clinical basis of that classification.

“Psychoanalysts believed that gay men were doomed to lives of depression and, eventually, suicide because of their shame,” Dr. Silverstein later told the Windy City Times,

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Miscellaneous; Unclassified
KEYWORDS: charlessilverstein; chat; gay; homosexualagenda; homosexuality; lgtb; mentalillness; newsforumabuse; notnews; silverstein
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To: All

Those darn Amish doctors


21 posted on 02/07/2023 2:21:53 PM PST by escapefromboston (Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.)
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To: Ennis85
Not sticking up for him, but historically no less than Sigmund Freud said homosexuality was not a mental illness. Later "Freudians" disagreed of course.

The real error is using psychiatry as a universal explanation for all aspects of defective behavior.

22 posted on 02/07/2023 2:22:47 PM PST by Salman (It's not a slippery slope if it was part of the program all along. )
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To: Ennis85

It figures. Yet another in a long line of golden calf Bolsheviks who’s mission is to destroy America. Moses had it right when he crashed the tablets on their heads.


23 posted on 02/07/2023 2:23:27 PM PST by Flavious_Maximus (Tony Fauci will be put on death row and die of COVID!)
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To: Ennis85

What a deception. How many in 1973 actually knew what homos did in the bedroom and in bath houses? And that they wanted to adopt children as the only way to perpetuate that lifestyle? If people knew then what they know now, no way would this guy have ever been listened to.


24 posted on 02/07/2023 2:24:38 PM PST by mikey_hates_everything
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To: Ennis85

But it is an illness.


25 posted on 02/07/2023 2:24:57 PM PST by enumerated ( )
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To: Ennis85

Sorry Charles, but your biggest accomplishment in life was to misdiagnose a serious mental illness which only served to spread it to more deluded people.


26 posted on 02/07/2023 2:24:59 PM PST by Telepathic Intruder
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To: BenLurkin

I see no road back to sanity


27 posted on 02/07/2023 2:25:28 PM PST by gibsonguy
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To: Ennis85

Objectively, the doctors accepted the mental illness designation but political considerations swayed them to shut up and accept the trendy changes.

Abstract only:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1037/1089-2680.1.3.256?journalCode=rgpa

From pro-homosexual viewpoint but has details:
https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2019.10b11

another
https://ipgcounseling.com/queer-mind/the-dsm-5-and-lgbt-rights-still-crazy-after-all-these-years/


28 posted on 02/07/2023 2:41:00 PM PST by frank ballenger (You have summoned up a thundercloud. You're gonna hear from me. Anthem by Leonard Cohen)
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To: Ennis85

Did he ever repent for the hell he wrought upon our nation?


29 posted on 02/07/2023 2:41:04 PM PST by Levy78 (Reject modernity, embrace tradition. )
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To: Ennis85

(He had felt the sting of discrimination and the burden of shame as a gay man)

There’s the answer as to why


30 posted on 02/07/2023 2:43:18 PM PST by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ......)
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To: Ennis85

better put astroturf on his grave as grass doesn’t stand a chance...


31 posted on 02/07/2023 2:44:33 PM PST by Chode (there is no fall back position, there's no rally point, there is no LZ... we're on our own. #FJB)
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To: Ennis85

It’s illness or depravity...or both.


32 posted on 02/07/2023 2:45:06 PM PST by Gay State Conservative (No Doubt Now: Stolen Election)
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To: Ennis85

Zaps. I heard of Zaps the other day.

So much overlap with the homosexual agenda and communist agenda and movement.

The movement. The revolution.


33 posted on 02/07/2023 2:57:40 PM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: Ennis85

No one pointed out the conflict of interest.


34 posted on 02/07/2023 2:58:18 PM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: Seruzawa

Danang in 1969. Did you ever go into the back waters? To get to this article’s topic of homos’s. Any SF man would kick one of these pukes badly. I ran into only one in over 8 years. The puke was an MI Major who was TDY to Fort Bragg. I was just out of Womack Army Hospital on convalescent leave. I went to the 82nd Airborne O’ Club early Saturday and ran into him. He wanted to see Fayetteville, NC. I drove this — to two SF owned clubs. He sucked an egg and he darn near was killed.


35 posted on 02/07/2023 3:00:12 PM PST by Lumper20 (no combat- no remarks)
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To: afchief

yep, this was the first step to where we are today.

they took over the APA and simply declared themselves sane!


36 posted on 02/07/2023 3:09:12 PM PST by TexasFreeper2009
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To: Ennis85

I knew it! This guy was a fag!


37 posted on 02/07/2023 3:35:57 PM PST by Delta 21 (MAGA Republican is my pronoun.)
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To: Seruzawa

You must not have listened to psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson when he was discussing transitioning with a de-transitioning woman. None of her psychologists told her what he told her about why she was drawn to transitioning. She might have been saved a lot of suffering if they had been giving her useful information instead of pushing her to throw away her natural gender.

Many psychologists are charlatans, needing helping themselves, but some are competent and helpful.


38 posted on 02/07/2023 4:04:59 PM PST by skr (Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people. - Proverbs 14:34)
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To: Roadrunner383

Shel was a notorious lady’s man.


39 posted on 02/07/2023 4:06:01 PM PST by leaning conservative (snow coming, school cancelled, yayyyyyyyyy!!!!!!)
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To: skr

A small percentage. Jordan’s competence is innate. He didn’t learn it in college.


40 posted on 02/07/2023 4:14:40 PM PST by Seruzawa ("The Political left is the Garden of Eden of incompetence" - Marx the Smarter (Groucho))
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