Political activism, not clinical evidence, removed homosexuality from psychiatric diagnosis.

Evidence

Obviously, today such a claim would not be widely accepted. This is also highly problematic from a normative perspective. In retrospect—and even at the time—it seems amazing that homosexuality is in a list together with rape and mutilation. It took Stonewall and gay activism in the 1970s to finally incite the DSM to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder in the DSM-III supplement (American Psychiatric Association 1987). — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 80

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in classificatory systems as institutions with political consequences (AI training taxonomies, colonial racial classification).
• SEED: Angle: “Diagnosis Is a Political Act” — the DSM as a case study in how expert categories encode the moral panics of their moment.
• ADDENDUM: Echoes the ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ thread: moral panics over bodies and behavior as class/identity signaling, here medicalized rather than sartorial.