My criminal law class is having a raging debate over this very point right now, with a case involving alcoholics being arrested for being intoxicated in public. (Are they being arrested for being addicts? For doing some wrong act that they cannot prevent themselves from doing? Or are they simply being arrested for committing an illegal act that they have control over?)
The distinction is a very fine one, and easy to get muddled. It also has wide-ranging implications in law.
E.g., addictive disorders, which are essentially mental and physical diseases. The homosexual lobby has already won the battle with the pointy-heads to have their particular pathology reclassifed as normal. Gay activists will take great offense at your equating the compulsive desire of a man to engage in serial high-risk acts of sodomy (and fisting, and felching, and golden showers etc.) with other men in public toilets with a disorder such as alcoholism.
By liberal fiat, the homosexual behavior disorder has been adjudged healthy, normal, and benign. If it were still considered by the medical community to be what it is--a disease-ridden life-shortening behavior disorder--men afflicted with it might be able to claim protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Because their strategy denies them the use of that weapon, they rely on trying to prove their behavior disorder to be equivalent to gender, race, or ethnicity.