Was being gay ever clarified as a mental disorder

Spider, spider, along the ceiling slide spin your prison cell locking me inside, now should my fearful trembling send a tremor through your webbed descent then it is true what I surmise that men their dreadful dooms devise on as thin a silk as yours. But electroconvulsive shock therapy was in full force, for all kinds of patients, not just gay ones.

But Ampon was a juvenile, so all he had to do to get locked up was skip school and hang around the gay scene. Now in its Fifth Edition, clinicians still rely on it in diagnosing mental disorders. Soon, Ampon was lying about where he was spending the night to hang out with other gay teens — and hook up with men for a place to sleep and a free meal.

It was the early s, and across the country, state laws and psychiatric diagnoses had converged to create a grim era for LGBTQ people — especially gay men. In , members of the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM. Not until. The declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness by the APA and WHO was an important step in removing the negative stigma surrounding LGBTQ+ identities.

Sodomy and oral copulation carried more serious consequences. The teens at Atascadero were in the minority, housed with grown men, some of whom were seriously mentally ill and had committed violent crimes. His story is part of a dark history when gay men, and even teens, were confined by the state and subjected to treatments that today would be considered torture.

Hodges , the case giving gay couples the right to marry. Charges included solicitation, loitering, vagrancy and indecent exposure. Undercover cops who posed as potential sex partners entrapped men in public parks and restrooms. Atascadero would get called out by the radical gay press in the early s for a host of inhumane treatments.

Some received as many as 60 treatments in a single year. Ampon insists that his years at Atascadero do not define him. Republish This Story. You can listen to the audio documentary here. Shockingly, it wasn’t until that the World Health Organization (WHO) officially no longer categorized being transgender as a “mental disorder.” These decisions carry a heavy weight and often serve as a signal to society on how to treat LGBTQ individuals.

Texas , a case that struck down sodomy laws; and Obergefell v. Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) beginning with the first edition, published in by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

Ampon was born in the Bay Area in to a Filipino father and Irish mother, who soon split up. Sitting, watching his childhood fade thru the rear-view mirror into mile-long years of fog behind. Ampon suffered a stroke in and at the time of the interview had just completed a round of chemotherapy for cancer in his liver and lungs.

One day, while he was having lunch at a diner, officers strolled in to question him. Like everyone committed to Atascadero, Ampon was considered a patient, not a prisoner. Connecticut , a decision granting married couples the right to contraception; Lawrence v.

The year-old Gene Ampon agreed to an interview in August Wind chimes that Ampon collected cover the porch. Psychiatric medication was relatively new but widely used, often with the sole goal of sedating patients. The car sped south along the California coast stretching, snapping the ties of family and home.

Instead, he got a morning dose of phenobarbital for more than two years. First published in , DSM-II listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. To reclaim some power, he converted future assaults into transactions — agreeing to sex in exchange for cigarettes and food. Ampon was just 16 years old when law enforcement delivered him to the locked hospital.

Gene was also punished with solitary confinement, he said. Money was tight and chaos in his home life gave him the freedom to explore.