The 1973 vote to remove homosexuality from the DSM was upheld by 58 percent of about 10,000 psychiatrists
Drescher's open-access history: activists disrupted the 1970 and 1971 APA meetings, the board voted in December 1973, a referendum upheld it by 58%, and the last replacement diagnosis left in 1987. Kinsey's 10% is "closer to 1%-4%".
Weak or heavily disputed. Treat as a question, not an answer. how we score evidence
Caveat on this rating: A narrative history by one author with a stated position. The 58% referendum and the disrupted meetings are the case that the decision was political as well as scientific; the paper reports both. Kinsey's and Hooker's figures appear here as Drescher reports them, not from the originals.
This is the history of the decision, written by a psychiatrist who has spent a career on it, and it is open access. It is the row to read if you want the whole arc in one place.
Significant findings
Drescher's abstract states the frame: "In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed the diagnosis of 'homosexuality' from the second edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). This resulted after comparing competing theories, those that pathologized homosexuality and those that viewed it as normal."
The full text carries the record. On where the diagnosis came from: Krafft-Ebing "believed that although one might be born with a homosexual predisposition, such inclinations should be considered a congenital disease." On the mid-century analysts whose views shaped DSM-I and DSM-II, their "claims of psychoanalytic 'cures' of homosexuality were broadly accepted by their professional community although never verified in any meaningful or empirical way."
On the two data sets that changed the sample: Kinsey's famous figure, "his now-famous '10%' statistic is today believed to be closer to 1%-4%"; and Hooker's 1957 study, in which "she compared psychological test results of 30 gay men with 30 heterosexual controls, none of whom were psychiatric patients. Her study found no more signs of psychological disturbances in the gay male group."
On the politics: "In the wake of the 1969 Stonewall riots... gay and lesbian activists, believing psychiatric theories to be a major contributor to anti-homosexual social stigma, disrupted the 1970 and 1971 annual meetings of the APA"; "in December 1973, APA's Board of Trustees (BOT) voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM"; "The decision to remove was upheld by a 58% majority of 10,000 voting members." And the finish: "ego-dystonic homosexuality was removed from the next revision, DSM-III-R, in 1987."
The other direction
Fifty eight to forty two is a margin, not a landslide, and the decision was made after two disrupted meetings. Drescher does not hide that. The evidence that moved the profession was thin by today's standards: Hooker had thirty men a side, all volunteers who were not patients, and Kinsey's sample was regional and partly institutional. What those studies could show was that the clinic's patients were not the population. They could not show that no gay man was distressed, and they did not claim to.
What this does not show
A history is not a trial. This paper explains how a decision came about; it does not measure anything. It does not say what causes sexual orientation. The excess of depression and anxiety documented in gay, lesbian and bisexual people since is a separate literature, and the Meyer 2003 row in this set is where it starts.
Worth asking
If the diagnosis rested on the people psychiatrists happened to see, what else in the manual rests on the same kind of sample?
Source
Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality — Drescher J (2015)
Indexed peer-reviewed journal
Read the source: https://doi.org/10.3390/bs5040565
DOI: 10.3390/bs5040565
How this was scored
- Study design
- Narrative review
- Funding
- Funding not disclosed
- Published in
- Indexed peer-reviewed journal
- Sample size
- not recorded
- Preregistered
- not recorded
- Conflicts disclosed
- not recorded
- Independent of proponent
- not recorded
- Retracted
- No
Read the full scoring rubric, including what it can't tell you.
Published September 29, 2026.
Questions
How strong is the evidence behind this?
veisund rates this source "contested". Weak or heavily disputed. Treat as a question, not an answer. It scores 29 out of 100 on our published rubric. One caveat travels with that badge: A narrative history by one author with a stated position. The 58% referendum and the disrupted meetings are the case that the decision was political as well as scientific; the paper reports both. Kinsey's and Hooker's figures appear here as Drescher reports them, not from the originals. The score is calculated from recorded facts about the source — study design, funding, publication venue, sample size, preregistration — not typed in by an editor.
What is the source for this?
Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality — Drescher J (2015). Published in: Indexed peer-reviewed journal. DOI: 10.3390/bs5040565. The full source is linked on this page so you can read it yourself.
Who paid for this research, and does that matter?
Study design: Narrative review. Funding: Funding not disclosed. Independence from the proponent is not recorded. Industry sponsorship is one of the most reliably measured biases in medicine, which is why funding carries real weight in the score rather than sitting in a footnote.
Is this medical advice?
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.