Political Science
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Abstract
When I was three years old, in 1973, all I cared about was collecting plastic dinosaurs and toy soldiers. Little did I know that I, similar to all gay people at the time, was considered mentally ill by the world’s most respected psychiatric organizations. All that changed, however, in this year, in part to the openmindedness of one researcher, Dr. Robert L. Spitzer. Similar to many psychiatrists of this time period, Spitzer never questioned why lesbian and gay people were considered mentally ill. He simply assumed that homosexuality automatically disqualified a person from basic sanity and mental fitness. His schooling reinforced these ideas by presenting the biased work of antigay psychoanalysts Bergler, Socarides, and others as undisputed fact.1 Spitzer’s view was unexpectedly turned upside down in the fall of 1972 while watching a presentation by the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, a group that specialized in electroshock “treatment” of gay people. Suddenly, the meeting was interrupted and overrun by screaming advocates from the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) who stormed the presentation to protest the abuse of homosexuals by these psychiatrists. Aside from the activists in the room, nearly 100 protested outside the New York building, handing out fliers that asked, “Torture Anyone?”2 Spitzer was livid and wanted the protesters removed from the building, but, in the heat of the moment, he and gay activist Ronald Gold began talking, and Spitzer for the first time listened to what the activists were saying. A married man with children and trained in the old school of psychiatry, it had never dawned on him that gays actually might be sane and grossly mistreated by the